The Special Education -- Pre-School Program provides educational services to children with disabilities who are three to five years of age. Since 1992, Federal law (Public Law 99-457) requires that children with disabilities ages three to five years receive an appropriate free public education.
Formula -- Program WPUs equal "special education preschool enrollment (aged 3 through 5 excluding 5-year-old special education students enrolled in Kindergarten) as of December 1" (USOE Finance & Statistics, MSP Descriptions, November 2006). The program formula provides a weighting factor of 1.47 of the value of the WPU for each student enrolled in the preschool program. Growth is defined as the actual increase in the number of children, age three through preschool aged five, reported on December 1st child counts.
Formula Restrictions -- The formula excludes children served by the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind. Student growth in the preschool program cannot exceed eight percent annually. This eight percent growth cap is used in the formula for budget requests and distributing program funding. If this growth is not realized, the budget request is reduced to equal actual growth.
During the 2015 General Session, the Legislature appropriated for Fiscal Year 2016, $30,542,800 from all sources for Special Education - Preschool. This is a 5.4 percent increase from Fiscal Year 2015 revised estimated amounts from all sources. The total includes $30,542,800 from the General/Education Funds, an increase of 5.4 percent from revised Fiscal Year 2015 estimates.
In addition to statewide compensation and internal service fund cost increases, the following appropriation adjustments were made during the 2015 General Session:
The Special Education Preschool Program is governed by the following statutes.
- UCA 53A-17a-112 -- establishes the requirement for the allocation of program funds, determining WPUs and provides for the formula restrictions mentioned above.
COBI contains unaudited data as presented to the Legislature by state agencies at the time of publication. For audited financial data see the State of Utah's Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports.