Special Education

Growing needs. Chronic underfunding. Exhausted staff and families. We can — and must — do better for every student with a disability.

"Every child with a disability deserves to learn in the least restrictive environment that meets their needs, with stable, well-supported staff, close to home, and without their family having to become full-time advocates just to get basic services. I have spent years in the budgets, the FCMAT reports, the CAC recommendations, and the classroom reality. This is not a side issue. It is a core test of whether SFUSD truly serves every student."
— Laurance Lee

The Reality in 2026

Special Education is one of the fastest-growing and most strained parts of SFUSD.

  • Students with IEPs now represent roughly 14–16% of enrollment (and rising), even as overall enrollment has declined. Autism identification has surged.
  • Roughly 160 students are still sent to non-public schools (NPS), often facing multi-hour daily bus rides.
  • Cost of NPS and related outside services: over $40 million per year.
  • Staffing has been in near-constant crisis (hundreds of teacher and paraeducator vacancies in recent years). Even after hiring pushes, stability remains fragile.
  • A $30 million budgeting error in 2024 made an already difficult situation worse for families and staff.

Families are exhausted. Educators are stretched thin. Students lose learning time, belonging, and community.

The Hidden Cost of Failure: Legal Claims and Compensatory Education

When the district fails to deliver required services, families are often forced into due process complaints, state complaints, or lawsuits — and the costs are real.

  • The Special Education budget routinely sets aside roughly $4 million per year for "Legal Claims & Parent Reimbursements."
  • After the 2024 staffing and budgeting crisis, SFUSD acknowledged it owed more than 546,000 minutes of missed services to approximately 129 students — with compensatory education costs estimated at over $1.18 million.
  • Individual non-public school placements can exceed $200,000 per student per year, and legal settlements add still more.

What makes this especially frustrating for families is the lack of transparency: detailed payouts and settlement terms are rarely shared publicly. Parents who fight for their children's rights often do so in the dark, while the broader community cannot see the full financial impact of systemic shortcomings.

Building strong, fully staffed programs inside SFUSD (exactly what the Edwin & Anita Lee extensive-needs program begins to do) is the clearest way to reduce both the suffering of families and these avoidable legal and compensatory costs.

Real Progress Worth Celebrating — and Scaling

Superintendent Su's program at the Edwin and Anita Lee School is a concrete, positive step. Beginning fall 2026, SFUSD and the County Office of Education are opening a dedicated extensive-needs program at the former Edwin and Anita Lee Newcomer School site in Chinatown. The first phase serves 16 students (grades 5–12) with complex needs who previously traveled long distances to NPS placements. It is designed to double in year two. This keeps students closer to home, reduces punishing commutes, and begins bringing expensive out-of-district placements back in-house.

Other positive moves include improved hiring fairs, reduced vacancy rates, and use of FCMAT recommendations to strengthen the continuum of services.

What the SFUSD SPED CAC Has Consistently Recommended

The Special Education Community Advisory Committee (made up primarily of parents and family members) has given the Board clear, repeated guidance in its annual reports. Key themes from the June 2025 and June 2026 CAC Annual Reports to the Board of Education include:

  • Fully align all Special Education funding, staffing allocations, and reporting with the SELPA Local Plan and legally required IEP services — no more gaps or surprises
  • Build one integrated system — strengthen Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) with fidelity so academic, behavioral, and social-emotional supports are not siloed
  • Fix staffing for real: improve onboarding and recruitment, reduce administrative/case-management burden on teachers, create career pathways for paraeducators, and address turnover and emergency credentials
  • Make mental and behavioral health supports truly inclusive of students with disabilities
  • Start the budget process earlier and review actual prior-year spending before finalizing the Local Plan
  • Reduce over-reliance on expensive contractors and NPS by building stable internal capacity

These are not new asks. They are consistent, parent-driven priorities that a serious Board member must champion and measure.

What California Bright Spots Show Is Possible

  • Poway Unified — Multiple schools named Inclusive Practices Schools of Excellence; strong co-teaching, Universal Design for Learning, and measurable growth in students learning in the least restrictive environment.
  • Palo Alto Unified, San Ramon Valley Unified, and Pleasanton Unified — Consistently high rankings for special education infrastructure, on-site specialists (SLP, OT, psychologists, BCBAs), and support for students with moderate-to-severe needs.
  • Capistrano Unified — Well-structured continuum of specialized programs located strategically so students can stay closer to home.
  • Districts in the state's Supporting Inclusive Practices (SIP) network have increased the percentage of students with disabilities in general education settings at roughly double the statewide rate.

We do not need to invent the solutions. We need the will, the funding discipline, and the Board-level accountability to implement them here.

My Plan

  1. Treat Special Education as a core academic and equity priority, not a compliance or residual budget item.
  2. Accelerate expansion of high-quality in-district programs (starting with the Ed Lee extensive-needs model) so far fewer students need multi-hour bus rides or NPS.
  3. Fully implement the CAC's repeated recommendations on funding alignment, integrated MTSS, staffing relief, and earlier transparent budgeting.
  4. Create public dashboards on vacancies, caseloads, NPS costs, inclusion rates (LRE), legal/compensatory costs, and outcomes — disaggregated by disability, race, and school.
  5. Invest in early intervention and true inclusion so fewer students require intensive restrictive settings later.
  6. Partner with families as experts and reduce the need for parents to become full-time case managers and lawyers.
  7. Protect and scale the progress under Superintendent Su while demanding faster timelines and clearer metrics.

What Success Looks Like

  • Students with disabilities learning in the least restrictive appropriate setting, preferably in San Francisco and connected to their community
  • Dramatically fewer long bus rides and out-of-district placements
  • Fully staffed, stable classrooms with supported teachers and paraeducators
  • Families who feel genuine partnership instead of constant battle
  • A district that meets both its legal obligations under IDEA and its moral obligations to every child — with full transparency on costs

Why I'm the Right Ally on This

I am not a special education parent or a current CAC member — and that is intentional. I approach this work as someone who has spent years reading the budgets, the bond documents, the FCMAT findings, the CAC annual reports, and the enrollment data. I understand both the human cost and the spreadsheet realities.

My commitment is systemic, independent, and long-term. I will be the Board member who makes sure Special Education is never again treated as an afterthought when the next budget crisis arrives — and who demands the transparency families deserve.

Citations & Sources

  • SFUSD Special Education Community Advisory Committee — Annual Reports to the Board of Education (June 17, 2025 and June 9, 2026), BoardDocs
  • The Frisc — "School of Their Own: SFUSD Opens Chinatown Site to Disabled Kids" (June 2026) and coverage of the $30M error and legal costs
  • SF Chronicle — reporting on compensatory education obligations ($1.18M+ for 129 students) and the 2024 staffing crisis
  • KQED and SF Examiner — coverage of the Edwin & Anita Lee extensive-needs program (2026)
  • SFUSD SELPA Local Plan (Legal Claims & Parent Reimbursements line item ≈ $4M) and FCMAT Special Education review (2025)
  • California School Dashboard / CALPADS special education enrollment data
  • Poway Unified Inclusive Practices recognition
  • Supporting Inclusive Practices (SIP) network results

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