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Kali Larsen sat at her desk at Fruitland Elementary School in Idaho earlier this year, trying to read the test questions as her classmates silently worked around her. Her anxiety climbed as she stared at the paper. She asked to use the bathroom and left the room.
Her mother, Jessica Larsen, had been substitute teaching that day when she received a call from the front office, notifying her that her 9-year-old daughter was having a panic attack. Kali, now 10, has dyslexia and struggles with reading and writing, Larsen said.
“Wouldn’t you be anxious?” Larsen told the Idaho Statesman and ProPublica.
For years, Larsen had been pleading with the Fruitland School District to get Kali qualified for special education for reading. Larsen, who herself was diagnosed later in life with dyslexia, had her daughter tested in first grade in 2021 by a private specialist who said Kali had the same disability. But a diagnosis doesn’t automatically qualify a student for special education. The school still wouldn’t evaluate Kali for help, saying she likely wouldn’t qualify, in part because her scores weren’t low enough, Larsen said.
Larsen grew more frustrated with each passing school year as her child — a shy girl who feels most confident when competing in rodeos on her horse, Pie — would cry after school and tell her she felt “dumb.” A year before her daughter’s panic attack in fourth grade, Larsen had filed a state complaint against the district, saying it refused to evaluate Kali for special education. A few months later, in March 2024, a state investigator agreed: The district had broken the law.
Parents of students with disabilities have increasingly resorted to filing complaints with the state over their schools’ failure to educate their children, alleging districts are violating federal law. Most of the time, state investigators have agreed and found that districts refuse to identify and evaluate children with disabilities, such as dyslexia or autism, and fail to follow plans to educate them fairly.
In Idaho, students with disabilities have performed worse in reading and math than many of their peers in other states, federal data shows. Idaho was among the states with the most founded complaints per capita in recent years, according to a national center that analyzes data on complaints and provides support to states. Over the past five years, investigators found in over 70% of the complaints filed in Idaho that districts had broken the law.
But the state often closes cases without making sure the districts have fully solved the problems, parents across Idaho told the Statesman and ProPublica.
Districts can resolve the violations without “really changing their ways,” said Amy Martz, a Utah-based attorney who has worked with families in Idaho. “There’s no teeth.”
State Superintendent Debbie Critchfield said the state Department of Education expects districts to make any corrections needed to be in full compliance with state and federal law, and that it has conducted listening sessions and piloted other programs to help meet the needs of students and parents.
Critchfield said the challenge with educating students with disabilities comes down, in part, to the way the state distributes funding, which is based on a flat percentage and not the actual number of students with disabilities in each district. She said staff members have large caseloads and districts lack trained staff and specialists.
Parents say it can take months for the districts to evaluate a child for services, and in some cases, districts have refused to provide the instruction or behavioral interventions students need.
Lawmakers have been reluctant to approve changes to the funding formula despite warnings from state officials about a shortfall between what districts spend on special education and what the state allocates. An independent oversight office this year estimated the gap to be over $80 million. Idaho routinely ranks last in the nation for funding per student overall.
Larsen said she didn’t want to get the district or teachers in trouble when she filed her complaint. But she said she risked retaliation, in a small community where speaking out can be damaging, because she intended to make public schools better for her daughter and other kids.
“We’re failing our kids. This is our future,” Larsen said. “Why are we failing them? And that’s my question to them, but they can’t answer.”
Jessica Larsen and Kali at their home in Fruitland, Idaho. Kali is passionate about horses and competes in rodeos with her horse, Pie.
Credit:
Sarah A. Miller/Idaho Statesman
What Investigators Found School districts nationwide are required to identify children who have disabilities or health impairments that could make it harder to learn, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or dyslexia, and evaluate them for special education services. A parent can also formally request an evaluation of their child. Under federal law, if the school has any reason to suspect a disability, it must provide that evaluation.
But when Larsen asked the district to evaluate her daughter, the school pushed back.
Records show that district officials over a period of 1 1/2 years provided numerous reasons Kali didn’t need or wouldn’t qualify for special education: Her low reading scores were mainly due to anxiety, rather than a disability; she needed to advocate for herself; she was “making progress”; a special education evaluation would take a long time; if she received special education services, she’d miss out on valuable instruction time in a general education classroom.
Fruitland Elementary School
Credit:
Sarah A. Miller/Idaho Statesman
A few months after Larsen filed her complaint in 2024, an investigator contracted by the state Department of Education concluded that the district didn’t have procedures in place to make sure all students with disabilities were identified and helped, and that it hadn’t conducted a full evaluation of Kali, even after Larsen requested it. The investigators issued a corrective action plan and ordered the district to begin the evaluation process with Kali within about two weeks and to help her within two months if they found she qualified for special education.
Fruitland Superintendent Stoney Winston, who started in July 2024, after the state issued the corrective action plan, said the district has “made corrections” and is meeting current requirements. He said he can’t speak to what happened before he assumed his role.
Disability advocates have said the lack of funding makes it hard for school districts in the state to attract qualified specialists or special education teachers who fully understand the law, which can lead to improper education plans or other violations. High caseloads for staff members also mean less time for making or implementing specialized education plans, they said.
The state relies on a decades-old funding formula that assumes a set percentage of students in every district would qualify for special education: 6% in elementary school and 5.5% in middle and high school. State education officials acknowledged those percentages were never adequate. Officials said they don’t know how lawmakers first arrived at that formula.
“That 5.5 and that 6%, which was already insufficient back in 2016, is even more insufficient,” said Casey Petti, from Idaho’s Office of Performance Evaluations, an independent oversight agency.
According to the most recent data, about 12% of students in Idaho qualify for special education services — the lowest in the country.
In 2009, that agency told Idaho officials to consider tying special education funding to the actual cost of educating those students. In 2016, the office came out with a report with the same findings.
That same year, the Legislature created a committee to research the issue and rewrite the state’s funding formula. The committee met for three years, and in 2019, lawmakers proposed legislation. While those proposals would have provided money for special education based on the number of students actually receiving services, state education officials and school administrators said they were left out of the process and the legislation would be difficult to implement. The state superintendent at the time questioned whether it would even adequately fund special education.
Most Idaho School Districts Had to Spend More on Special Education Than the State Allocated
Nearly 75% of school districts that received state funding for special education programs spent anywhere from $640 to $19 million more than what the state provided during the 2023-24 school year.
Districts that
spent less than
they received
Districts that
spent more
than they
received
Lapwai reported
spending $1.1 million,
more than quadruple
what the state allocated
Districts that spent more
than they received
Lapwai reported
spending $1.1 million,
more than quadruple
what the state allocated
Districts that
spent less than
they received
Districts that spent more
than they received
Lapwai reported
spending $1.1 million,
more than quadruple
what the state allocated
Districts that
spent less than
they received
Districts that
spent less than
they received
Districts that
spent more
than they
received
Lapwai reported
spending $1.1 million,
more than quadruple
what the state allocated
Districts that spent more
than they received
Lapwai reported
spending $1.1 million,
more than quadruple
what the state allocated
Districts that
spent less than
they received
Districts that spent more
than they received
Lapwai reported
spending $1.1 million,
more than quadruple
what the state allocated
Districts that
spent less than
they received
Explore each district’s special education spending:
Source: Idaho Office of Performance Evaluations. Note: West Bonner and Wendell school districts are not shown because they did not have financial data available for 2023. Prairie Elementary School District is not included because it had no estimated special education state allocations. Pleasant Valley Elementary District, Avery School District and Three Creek Joint Elementary School District are also not shown because they reported no special education spending and had no estimated special education allocations. All allocations are estimates based on Idaho’s funding formula.
Credit:
Chris Alcantara/ProPublica
In the years since, lawmakers have introduced other bills to revise the funding formula, but the Legislature did not approve any of them. The cost to investigate complaints overall has nearly tripled since the 2020 school year, according to the state Department of Education, with each investigation ranging from a few hundred dollars to $30,000.
This year, the Idaho Legislature approved adding another specialist to help handle complaints. During the 2023-24 school year, the state received 53 complaints and found districts were out of compliance in most of them.
But while the state has spent more money to investigate the problems, administrators said they have been given little to fix them. In Idaho, districts rely on local taxpayers to fund special education more than in many other states, according to a 2024 study by Bellwether, a nonprofit that analyzed data from the National Center for Education Statistics for the 24 states where it was available.
Boundary County Superintendent Jan Bayer described special education as an “unfunded mandate.” The district spends about $1.7 million from its general fund to educate students with disabilities and goes to its taxpayers every two years to ask for additional funding to provide other programs.
Other superintendents said it was difficult to meet the needs of every student in special education.
“While we provide the vast majority of our students with the services they need, we do have a couple of higher need students who need more services than we can provide,” Butte County Superintendent Joe Steele, who retired this summer, said in an email to the Statesman. But finding educators or specialists with the proper training, and paying for them, would be challenging in the remote area, he said.
Kendra Scheid watched her son struggle in a larger district with high caseloads and inexperienced staff. Scheid’s son, who is autistic and nonverbal, qualified for developmental preschool before moving into the Pocatello-Chubbuck School District in eastern Idaho. But the district told her that her son could attend preschool only two days a week for 2 1/2 hours each day.
Before her son started attending full-day kindergarten, Scheid asked the school for a meeting to put together a revised education plan for her son. But the district refused, according to the complaint investigation.
Scheid went to school with her son on the first days, where he was placed with other students with disabilities, and witnessed what she described as chaos: kids climbing on tables, students injuring themselves with no staff intervention and teachers restraining children in their chairs. “They had no idea what any of these kids needed, what any of these kids were like coming into the classroom,” she said.
Pocatello school district spokesperson Courtney Fisher said the district is committed to “proactively addressing parent concerns” and improving its special education services. That includes putting into place a plan that meets all state requirements and hiring more staff, she said, and trying to address any gaps in its system to prevent issues in the future.
I feel like a bad mom because I didn’t know this stuff at the time. And I feel like I let my son down.
—Kendra Scheid
After school on the second day, Scheid’s son came home crying and covering his ears, something she said he hadn’t done before. After day three, Scheid disenrolled her son from the district. For the rest of that year, he saw outside therapists and Scheid worked with him at home.
After she filed a complaint with the state, an investigator found the district had broken the law when it failed to create a plan that would work for her son and to ensure the teacher had his previous education plan before school started. The state said the district must create a new education plan for her son should he reenroll, but Scheid had lost faith. Instead, she entered and won one of the few available lottery spots in a charter school, which her son now attends.
“I feel like a bad mom because I didn’t know this stuff at the time,” reflected Scheid, who said her son is now doing well in a charter school that’s more accommodating. “And I feel like I let my son down.”
“I Would Never Move Back There” About 20% of Idaho districts have broken federal disability law multiple times in the past five years, and nearly 40% have violated the law at least once, according to data from the state Department of Education. When they do, the state, which enforces the federal law and corresponding state rules, asks them to fix the problems through corrective action plans.
The plans reviewed by the news outlets ask district staff to undergo training, and sometimes a child gets additional hours of education to make up for the time missed. But a Statesman and ProPublica review of corrective action plans and interviews with parents showed districts repeatedly receive training for the same problems and commit similar violations.
Critchfield, the state superintendent, said there are several factors that could play a role in whether training is successful for districts permanently, including staff turnover and access to resources.
“Compliance with state and federal law is the ultimate goal,” she said in an email. “As a department, we are always prepared to provide remedial training and intervention to address additional concerns as they arise.”
The Pocatello school district received 11 complaints over the past five years, according to data from the state Department of Education. The Garden Valley School District received 10. In both of these districts, federal investigators found systemic violations in special education law that impacted more than one student. The state Department of Education refused to provide the number of founded complaints per district, citing federal law on student privacy, though some other states publicly post much of their complaint investigations online.
Andrew Branham was among several parents who filed complaints against the Garden Valley School District over the past three years.
The Branhams wrote in the complaint that their daughter received “virtually no education” and was denied services, such as speech and counseling. At one point, they said a school resource officer called her parents threatening to arrest her. Her parents said they rushed to school to find her barefoot in the middle of the parking lot as several adults looked on. A state investigator concluded that the district in some instances had “relied” on the resource officer to address the student’s behavior.
Branham said the district was “unwilling” to meet the needs of their daughter. The Branhams elevated their case, hiring an attorney who presented it before a state-contracted hearing officer. The Branhams received a financial settlement with the district and moved to Washington to get their daughter a better education.
“It is a shame what Idaho is doing to kids in that state,” Branham said in December. “I would never move back there, and I would never recommend anyone live in that state, especially if you have special needs kids.”
After the Branhams filed their complaint and went public, more than 20 families shared similar experiences, they said. So they filed a complaint on behalf of other families that alleged that the district ignored state and federal laws meant to protect students with disabilities and denied them an education.
The resulting state investigations concluded that at least 13 of the allegations were founded. The district failed to properly construct education plans for students. It also didn’t have the proper plans for supporting a child with behavioral issues. The district did not gather or share the data it needed to assess student progress and could not adequately determine whether students were meeting their learning goals, the investigations found.
The state decided the district needed extra help, ranking Garden Valley in 2024 as one of three districts in need of substantial intervention. The state now requires the district to follow an improvement plan and monitors its progress — but the district’s funding remains the same.
The Garden Valley School District did not respond to requests for comment.
Families in other districts have also pulled their children from local schools. Some parents and advocates who talked to the Statesman said they are especially worried about President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and leave it to the states when Idaho has long struggled to provide an education to students with disabilities.
In Kali’s case, the state’s corrective action plan issued in 2024, in addition to requiring that the district start to evaluate Larsen’s daughter, also mandated that the district help teachers learn how to spot students who should be evaluated for special education and identify those with disabilities.
The state closed the case earlier this year, about a year after it was filed. Kali had been struggling without adequate help for three years before the district conceded she was eligible for special education services.
Kali now has an education plan, but Larsen said the district still isn’t giving her the help she needs. She just finished fourth grade and still hasn’t mastered reading and writing. As her daughter prepares for middle school, Larsen is considering pulling her from the district next year. But Larsen doesn’t plan on filing another complaint. It was too much stress with little to show for it, she said.
When Kali was moved to a different classroom each day to receive more specialized instruction, her teachers sometimes told her to sit and read quietly, Larsen said.
“She can’t read,” Larsen said, exasperated. “It’s so frustrating.”
Kali uses a voice search tool on Google to help her with spelling.
Credit:
Sarah A. Miller/Idaho Statesman
