AUSTIN, Texas — Austin ISD is looking for new ways to address the spike in requests for special education evaluations within the school district.
According to KVUE’s media partners at the Austin American-Statesman, district data shows that over the past three years, the number of requests for special education evaluations have increased by an average of 900 each year.
Many of those requests are reevaluations for students already enrolled in special education services getting regularly scheduled tests. The district did not anticipate the uptick to be so high.
Austin ISD doesn’t have the staffing needed to address the increasing demand, so it outsources with contracted services. But now, administrators want to shift to on-site specialists because those contractors are more expensive.
Bringing those services in-house could save the district money, but the transition will be expensive.
In September 2023, the Texas Education Agency entered an agreement with the district due to an ongoing backlog of overdue requests for evaluations, which included hundreds of overdue evaluations and reevaluations. Under the state order, Austin ISD has until September to fully move over to a new platform to track changes to the special education system.
From 2021 to 2023, the district nearly tripled how much it spends on contract services for special education specialists, from $3.5 million to $10 million, according to the Statesman.
Austin ISD has worked to attract more special education personnel by approving staff pay increases.