While AISD’s overall student enrollment is growing, enrollment for Friendswood and Pearland ISDs has stagnated in recent years, according to enrollment data from the Texas Education Agency.
Despite this, special education enrollment from 2014-15 to 2023-24 has increased by nearly 47% in PISD, and by nearly 78% in FISD, TEA data shows. In AISD, officials said the district’s special education enrollment has more than doubled in that time.
Districts are looking to allocate more resources and hire more professionals into its special education programming, district officials said. Districts and advocacy groups are looking to the state for more help on funding and programming.
The overview
There are several ways a student can be eligible to receive special education services at AISD, FISD and PISD, according to each district's respective special education website. Among those include a child having autism, deaf-blindness, an intellectual disability, a health impairment, a speech or language impairment or a specific learning disability.
While each district offers services such as speech therapy, early childhood special education and occupational therapy, AISD, FISD and PISD partnered up to establish a Therapeutic Education Center, or TEC, beginning in the 2023-24 school year, according to FISD's website. The TEC serves students with autism, low incidence disabilities, an emotional disability that requires extensive self-contained support for behavior, and for students with significant behavioral difficult with needs that can't be met by their district, said Lisa Nixon, assistant superintendent of education services at PISD.
Special education as a whole has been a challenge for Texas, as the state in recent years has expanded for how many students qualify for special education, according to different special needs advocacy groups. This has increased the number of students districts must serve.
To meet demand, PISD has spent nearly $300,000 since the start of the 2024-25 school year on 11 additional personnel for special education, including teachers, aides and bus monitors for special programs, according to district documents.
While additional staff members have not had to be hired for AISD and FISD, FISD's Executive Director of Special Education Dahria Driskell said she believes state funding and staff attrition need to be a priority in the upcoming legislative session.
Students with disabilities who are part of general education classrooms and instruction are calculated in the average daily attendance, or ADA, allotment from the state, which has been $6,160 per student since 2019, according to TEA documents.
While the TEA gives school districts an adjustment allotment for special education students, the adjustments are weighted differently based on the accommodations an individual student receives, TEA documents show.
Furthermore, school districts must spend at least 55% of the ADA allotment for the special education department, according to the TEA.
Special education has been a challenge for Texas, said Jolene Sanders, advocacy director for Coalition of Texans with Disabilities, an advocacy organization for people with disabilities, according to its website.
The state has seen a spike in students needing special education, which came after a series of investigations and lawsuits dating back to the late 2010s that found Texas was not providing special education services to enough students, Sanders said.
Previously, Texas had a cap on the number of students a school district could classify as needing special education at 8.5%, Sanders said. Since removing the cap in 2017, that number across the state has increased from around 9% of students in the 2017-18 school year to 14% during the 2023-24 school year. For the U.S., the average number of students receiving special education services is 15%, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.
From 2017-21, Texas saw a 21% spike in students needing special education, TEA data shows, the highest increase of any state. The second-highest increase was less than 12%, and the national average was 3%.
Sanders said this correction has not only led to more students in special education but has created more challenges with funding. Advocacy group Disabilities Rights Texas noted in a 2023 report that school districts funded $6.3 billion worth of special education programs in 2020-21, of which the state paid for $4 billion, creating a $2.3 billion gap.
PISD parent Maria Landingin has a child who's been in special education programming within the district since pre-K. She said she has concerns on a statewide level for funding and a lack of resources from the state.
“[My child] needs speech [therapy] more, he needs longer sessions, but when you have 50 to 60 kids in the school, how is that one therapist supposed to provide enough support for all these kids on an ongoing basis to where they're growing and evolving?” Landingin said.
PISD parent Leigh Ann Cutting, who also has a child in the district's special education programming, said she looks for ways to accommodate her child's specific needs. Her child has been in special education since pre-K as well, she said.
“I’m generally content with the services,” Cuttings said. “However, I do wish there were more unique and innovative opportunities for students who learn at grade level, but in different ways.”
Looking ahead
The TEA does a systematic review of every school district's special education department over a six-year time period, according to the TEA.
While FISD will have its review in January, Driskell said the district has already partnered with Region 4 Education Services Center—a service center for Greater Houston area school districts, which assists school districts in improving and operating more efficiently and economically—and TEA Liaisons to learn more ways to improve on special education practices, including trainings and audit practices.
PISD will have its review in spring 2025. Nixon said in a previous review from 2018, TEA highlighted the districts for its "data-driven decision making, as well as inclusive practices and supporting families."
Meanwhile, AISD, FISD and PISD officials and special needs advocates said they’re looking to the upcoming legislative session in January and hoping for some changes to both funding and the special education model.
Sanders said she believes the current model, which bases much of the funding districts get on the physical placement of a student, is “woefully inadequate.” Instead, advocates are looking to a service intensity model, which would base services for individual students around their specific needs—and providing funding based on that.
The 2023 legislative session did not net much in the way of public education funding, Sanders said.
The base student allotment of $6,160, which has been the amount since 2019, remained in place. Many other funding bills were also left on the cutting-room floor due to, in many cases, officials attaching items to them that didn't receive as much support from the legislature, such as school vouchers.
“The [current] model hasn’t been revised in over 30 years,” she said. “[Legislators] are fighting back and forth because everyone wants their bills passed and their priorities. And somehow special [education] funding ends up being a bargaining tool. And nobody has won so far.”
