The corpus › Formula Parameter
Preschool Special Education Amounts
$4,000 flat per preschool child with a disability, plus the six special education multiples at half strength. The flat grant is 69% of the program and the state share does not touch it, so this is the one component where the wealthiest district and the poorest are funded alike.
parameter/preschool-special-education-amounts · 5 nodes point here
R.C. 3317.0213(A) states the calculation in one line and then six: ($4,000 × the number of students who are preschool children with disabilities) plus, for each of the six categories,
count × the multiple in R.C. 3317.013 × the statewide average base cost per pupil × the district's state share percentage × 0.50. verified the section
Two parameters in one formula, and they behave oppositely.
The $4,000 is flat and unequalized. It is not multiplied by the state share percentage. A district at the 10% minimum state share receives the same $4,000 per preschool child as a district at 90%, which makes this the one place in the plan where property wealth changes nothing. verified
The halving is the General Assembly’s, and it is explicit. Every one of the six weighted terms carries “X 0.50” written out in the section — it is not a departmental convention and not a proration. A preschool child in Category 6 generates half what a school-age child in Category 6 does, before the flat grant. verified
The multiples themselves are not restated here. The section names each division of R.C. 3317.013 by letter, so special education category multiples is the parameter and this section is a consumer of it. That construction is why the two must not be merged: a change to the multiples moves both programs, and a change to the 0.50 moves only this one.
What this repository computed Contents
Not what Ohio publishes. Figures derived here from committed fixtures, each one citing the test that reproduces it.
The flat grant is most of the money, which inverts the usual reading Contents
The flat component is $102.7m of the program’s $148.4m, or 69%. So the part that responds to disability category and to district wealth is the minority of it, and a description that leads with the six weights describes a third of the payment. verified
The program runs under an appropriation that does not appear in its own formula Contents
Preschool special education is paid out of GRF ALI 200540, Special Education Enhancements, and the calculator prints a $147,500,000 limit beside it. The program totals $148.4m across the FY2027 model — $908,184 over the figure printed on the sheet — while the enacted FY2027 appropriation for the line is $193.3m, leaving $5.6m of headroom against the residual the department actually computes. The printed limit is stale rather than binding. verified
That is a constraint with no term in the formula, which is what the proration factor exists for.
The rule is older than the reason given for it Contents
Both figures in this section are now sourced back to Am. Sub. H.B. 59 of the 130th General
Assembly, the FY2014-15 budget — 6 consecutive enacted budgets state the same $4,000 flat
grant and the same 0.5 multiplier, across the change from the Bridge formula to the Fair School
Funding Plan and across the change from a state share index to a state share percentage in
the term the halving is applied to. verified crates/project
What moved is the justification. H.B. 59’s analysis states the rule and no reason: “Special education aid is then multiplied by 0.5.” The clause this node quotes — “to reflect the half-day nature of those programs” — first appears in H.B. 64 of the 131st and has been repeated verbatim in every analysis since. verified
That is worth recording because a reader who finds the rationale in the current document will date the rule to it, and the rule is two years older. It also bears on the substance: a justification supplied a biennium after the fact is a justification that was not the reason the rule was adopted, whatever its merits since. inference
Thirteen years unmoved is a 28.6% cut nobody voted for Contents
The same six analyses that make the $4,000 well-sourced make it the longest nominal freeze in
the plan, and that is what a constant-dollar series is for. Deflated by CPI-U June — the
convention crates/deflator uses and the Ohio Auditor’s
— $4,000 set in FY2014 is worth $5,604.56 in FY2026 dollars. The grant pays $4,000. It has
lost 28.63% of its value, and every dollar of that was lost without a vote, because a
nominal figure that nobody amends requires no amendment.
verified crates/project
It is the largest erosion among the plan’s dollar parameters and it is largest for one reason: it has been frozen three times as long as the rest. Everything set in FY2022 — DPIA’s $422, all five gifted figures — has lost 11.27%, because erosion is a property of when an amount was set and of nothing else. verified
And this is the one no guarantee floor can absorb Contents
Across the FY2027 model the freeze costs this program $59.5m against what the same formula would pay at the grant’s FY2014 value — 45% of the $133.2m the three frozen components lose together, on a component that is a twentieth of the money. verified
All of it reaches districts. The guarantee is a max against [H] Foundation Funding, so a
shortfall inside the formula is absorbed for a district the floor holds — and preschool special
education sits outside [H]. Of the 294 districts the guarantee currently pays, the
in-formula part of this shortfall is absorbed in full for 282 and in part for 12; the preschool
part is absorbed for none of them. verified
So the parameter that has lost the most value is also the only one of the three that no floor
cushions, and the two facts are independent — one follows from how long it has been frozen, the
other from which side of [H] it is paid on. inference
Properties Contents
| Name | Preschool special education amounts |
|---|---|
| Unit | dollars-per-pupil |
| Kind | Legislated, both of them, and expiring. $4,000 and 0.50 are digits in R.C. 3317.0213(A) and only an act moves them. The section's closing paragraph hands FY2028 and thereafter to a "formula specified by the general assembly" — not merely an amount, a whole formula — so the structure as well as the values lapses with the biennium. Worth separating from the multiples it borrows. The six multiples are the one schedule in the plan that does not expire; the halving that this section applies to them does. So the same six numbers have two different lives depending on which section is applying them. |
| Values over time | |
FY2014 $4,000 the earliest analysis in the committed greenbook series to state it FY2016 $4,000 and every enacted budget since, unbroken to FY2025 FY2026 $4,000 flat, per preschool child with a disability, no state share applied FY2027 $4,000 the same FY2028 — a formula specified by the general assembly FY2026 0.50 on every one of the six weighted terms FY2027 0.50 the same FY2028 — part of the same handoverThe weighted terms multiply the statewide average base cost per pupil, $8,241.61, and the district's state share percentage; the flat term multiplies neither. verified FY2027 scale, from the committed panel. verified crates/project program total $148,408,183.76 of which the flat component $102.7m, 69% appropriation for GRF ALI 200540 $193,272,426 the residual the calculator prints $147,500,000 the program's overrun against it $908,183.76 | |
| Statutory basis | R.C. 3317.0213, read. Division (A) states the formula, names each division of R.C. 3317.013 for the six categories, and writes "X 0.50" on each. The categories themselves are the ones prescribed in R.C. 3317.013, which the section says in terms. verified ohio-laws |
| Simulation key | Not bound as a named constant. crates/project reproduces the program in its panel and the flat amount and the halving are inline there rather than exported.No lever. |
| Sensitivity | The flat grant and the halving move different populations. Raising $4,000 is a per-child increase identical everywhere, so it is the most wealth-neutral lever in the plan; raising 0.50 toward 1.00 is an increase concentrated on districts with high-category preschool caseloads and high state shares, which is the ordinary equalized shape. A proposal that "increases preschool special education by 10%" therefore has two entirely different distributional answers and the fiscal cost is nearly the same. inference The appropriation is the binding constraint rather than the formula. The program already exceeds the limit printed beside it, so an increase to either parameter runs into the proration factor before it runs into anything else. verified the overrun inference the consequence |
Links Contents
| Instance of | Formula Parameter |
|---|---|
| Read by | FSFP Preschool Special Education |
| Valued in | FY2026-27 Biennium |
| Set by | Am. Sub. H.B. 96 (2025) — FY2026-27 Budget |
| Applies | Special Education Category Multiples |
| Constrained by | Appropriation Proration Factor |
| Sourced from | Ohio Revised Code — the sections this corpus cites |
| Sourced from | FY27 TRAD State Foundation Funding Calculator |
Also mentions
Pointed at by
| Equity | mentions |
|---|---|
| FSFP Preschool Special Education | Governed by |
| Disadvantaged Pupil Impact Aid Per-Pupil Amount | mentions |
| Gifted Funding Rates | mentions |
| Special Education Category Multiples | mentions |
What this node does not hold Contents
the flat grant and the halving before FY2014 — Both are now sourced back to Am. Sub. H.B. 59 of the 130th, the earliest enacted budget whose LSC analysis discusses the component at all. Six consecutive analyses state them and none before H.B. 59 mentions either, so FY2014 is where the *evidence* starts and not where the practice does. Prior versions of R.C. 3317.0213 would reach further.