What the 7-District ACFR Dashboard Shows About Special Education Costs (Part 4)  

This is the fourth in a series intended to help families better understand how to hold their School District spending student-centered and accountable.

Federal and state mandates tied to individual student needs drive special education spending. Once an IEP is in place, an obligation exists regardless of where enrollment is going or how much state aid comes through.

Another factor is timing – commitments to provide services happen before districts know what next year’s revenue picture is going to really look like – especially more recently with what has been occurring at the state level. So special education can feel like a fixed structural cost instead of a discretionary program choice, and you can see that play out in the ACFR.

Just like we saw with athletics (Part 2), special education is usually buried inside instructional totals. When you break it out, several distinct components show up.

Out-of-district and other school placements
Resource room instruction
Related services like speech, OT and PT
Autism programs
Language and learning disability services

Each of these lines moves differently, so lumping them together under one category hides the details driving costs and masking differences between districts.

7-District Comparison

Using the 2025 special education and enrollment totals leads us to a per pupil spend on Special Education.

That’s an $800 – $850 per-pupil spread across districts dealing with the same legal mandates and while enrollment size explains part of the difference in cost, it doesn’t even come close to explaining all of it.

The more significant factor is how services are delivered.

Out of District Placements

Out of district placements show the widest cost differences across districts and they don’t follow the same pattern everywhere.

New Providence shows up with the highest per-pupil placement costs with Westfield close behind. Chatham and Madison are living above $1,100 per pupil, and point to higher placement costs not swings. Berkeley Heights comes in relatively flat and presents with a more stable placement profile. Millburn is up but below the highest tier. Summit continues to hover lower on average.

Remember that volatility and cost level aren’t the same thing. Some districts have to deal with budget shocks from a placement change while others experience high or rising placement costs year to year.

Note: All per-pupil cost figures in the article use ‘Total Enrollment’ which measures the budgetary impact on the district as a whole rather than a cost attributable to specific students.

Resource Rooms

Resource room spending is steadier year to year but still varies across districts.

Summit and Chatham devote the most per pupil to resource room services, Berkeley Heights and Madison are middle. Millburn, New Providence and Westfield spend less per pupil, with New Providence at the low end, with all three seeing small movement up over time.

The patterns aren’t a reflection of recent decisions, they’re connected to staffing models and service structures that have been in place for years.

Speech, OT and PT

Speech, occupational therapy and physical therapy costs are going up pretty much everywhere.

Westfield, Berkeley Heights and Madison show some of the largest per-pupil increases. Summit and New Providence are slower but still rising.

Once these services expand, they rarely roll back, creating another quiet pressure point in long-term budgets.

Autism and Language Based Programs

Autism and language and learning disability spending varies widely across districts with some spots showing zeros, which usually means services are being delivered in a different way.

Some districts serve students in-district, others depend on placements or shared programs. The ACFR shows this is more about the cost of service design, not how many students need support.

Why Different?

Two districts with the same enrollment numbers and demographics can have very different financial snapshots for a bunch of reasons.

IEP’s aren’t chained to budget calendars.
A single high-cost placement can create a big year to year ripple
Capacity takes years to build.
Costs show up in two places – instruction and placements.
Costs don’t go down simply because enrollment does.

Boards can’t deny mandated services, delay placements to hit a budget target or make special education costs proportionate to enrollment declines.

They can make longer-term program decisions, invest in capacity over time, monitor placement patterns and push for better policy at the state level. None of that deals with the numbers today.

Questions residents should be asking

Special education is another area of need competing for a finite pool of resources under New Jersey’s cap system. When it grows, it chews up dollars that might otherwise go to general instruction, facilities or new programs.

Ignoring special education leads to incomplete and misleading conversations about school spending.

How many out-of-district placements do we currently have and how has that changed over the last three years?

What’s the split on placement costs vs. in district services?

Are there services we’re providing in-district now that we weren’t providing five years ago?

Are we investing in in-district programs to reduce future placement costs? What’s the time frame in realizing those savings?

What portion of our special education spending is locked in before the board votes on the budget?

How does 2025 special education cost per pupil compare to similar districts and why?

Which categories explain most of the difference between us and our neighbors? Are they due to the kind of service model being used, placement patterns or legacy decisions?

So far in this series, we’ve seen three forces shaping school budgets -rising per-pupil costs (despite declining enrollment), internal distortions in instructional spending (the biggest opportunity for change) and structural obligations that crowd out choice (the harder nut to crack).

Special education sits right in the middle of all three.

Note: All per-pupil cost figures in the article use ‘Total Enrollment’ which measures the budgetary impact on the district as a whole rather than a cost attributable to specific students.

Spreadsheet with Raw Data

You can review the source documentation here.

Reference: DOE ACFR Page