(Idaho) $5M for new 'high-needs' SPED program will be 'gone in a minute': SUPT

June 26, 2026,  Idaho Ed News:  Special education faces two big changes. But the constant budget crunch isn't going anywhere.

Debbie Critchfield is starting a new state special education program — while watching an overhaul at the federal level.

They are two big changes — two important transitions — affecting special education services for roughly 41,200 Idaho students. And Critchfield, the state’s superintendent of public instruction, is also hoping to see a changing mindset on Idaho’s special education crisis.

“For people that have been outside of the educational system for a while, I respect and can appreciate why this feels new and sudden. We haven’t talked about it,” Critchfield said in a recent Idaho EdNews interview. “I’m hoping that I don’t have to convince people anymore that it’s a thing.”

No matter how things play out, Idaho is still going to face a serious special education budget problem. That said, here’s what’s at stake this summer.

Critchfield’s new program

Critchfield has $5 million for a new “high-needs” special education program — to help schools pay for full-time staff or expensive equipment, for students requiring more than $30,000 in support.

The $5 million probably won’t be enough. It’s just what Critchfield could piece together from interest and other accounts.

“We think $5 million is going to be gone in a minute,” she said.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield speaks at a Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee meeting on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (Sean Dolan/EdNews)

It would be easy for the West Ada and Boise districts — serving about a fifth of Idaho’s students — to burn through that $5 million all by themselves, she said. The new law won’t allow that to happen. Up to 40% of the money is earmarked for rural schools. . . .

It’s important too, because Idaho’s special education debate didn’t end with this year’s bipartisan passage of the high-needs law. The law created a program — but a program with no long-term funding mechanism. If Critchfield is re-elected this November, she plans to come back to the 2027 Legislature with a short-range plan to fund Year Two of the high-needs program, using $5 million in interest.

And let’s keep the $5 million in full context. Idaho’s special education shortfall, the gap between local costs and state and federal funding, is on the order of $100 million. . . .

The budget crisis

Here’s something else that isn’t going away: the special education spending crunch.

No matter which federal agency winds up in charge of IDEA, the law provides Idaho about $71 million a year for special education. Medicaid, a program serving low-income households, kicks in about $50 million to $60 million a year.

Idaho’s special education bill runs about $400 million a year — leaving the state and local schools to pick up the rest, and leaving legislators to resort to passing a nonbinding memorial urging the feds to step up spending.

Even if HHS can run special education services more efficiently than the Education Department — and that’s a big and unproven assumption — the streamlining isn’t going to erase Idaho’s shortfall. It would more likely, and at best, represent an incremental step. Not unlike the state’s high-needs program.

The more things change, the more the fiscal realities seem to remain the same.