Funding law & guidance.

Texas's new special-education funding law, read letter by letter.

Texas rebuilt how it funds special education, effective the 2026–27 school year. The law is two bills and a running series of TEA guidance letters — all public, all primary-source statute and raw PDFs, and none of them read for you. This is that reading: what each document says, what it means for a district, and where the pieces connect. Funding only — not all of special education, just the funding model.

The whole story in two minutes

The 89th Legislature (2025) passed two bills with identical special-education funding language — SB 568 and HB 2, Article 4. They replaced the old formula, which keyed funding to a student's placement/setting (resource room, self-contained, homebound), with a formula keyed to what the student's IEP requires. A student now generates two stacked allotments: an intensity-tier allotment (TEC §48.102, eight tiers) and a service-group allotment (§48.1021, at least four groups), both earnable for the same student.

The bills set the structure and left the rubric and the dollars to the commissioner. TEA filled that in through TAA letters. April 16, 2026 released the working framework, the online funding tool, and the 2026–27 reporting plan. May 28, 2026 revised that plan: it split the reporting deadline (≥50% of students by October 8, the rest by December 3), added a summer stipend grant, and pushed one data element to 2027–28. A third letter, May 14, 2026, looks related but isn't part of the student-level determination — it funds placement programs and sets their standards, a parallel track under the same bills.

Where it came from

The statute itself — what the legislature actually changed, before any TEA guidance.

gavel

HB 2 (Article 4) & SB 568

Texas stopped funding special education by where a student is taught and started funding it by what the IEP requires. The old instructional-arrangement weights are repealed; in their place, two allotments that stack — an intensity tier (§48.102) and a service group (§48.1021), both earnable for the same student.

Read the bills arrow_forward

The TEA guidance letters

The "To the Administrator Addressed" letters that turned the statute into something a district can actually do — in the order they landed.

April 16, 2026

The framework goes live

The foundational letter. TEA released the rubric, the online funding tool, and the 2026–27 hybrid reporting plan — report both the legacy setting code and the new tier + service group(s). Carries the straight answer to "how much will I get?": the September 2027 settle-up and the one-way floor.

May 14, 2026

Day & residential placement

Looks like part of the determination; isn't. It funds placement programs and sets their standards. The number is where the two get confused: its §48.304 allotment is $250,000 per cooperative — a different figure from the ~$250 million statewide top-up, despite sharing the same "$250" and the same two bills.

May 28, 2026

The reporting plan changes

The letter that changed April 16's rules. It splits the new-data deadline — ≥50% of students by October 8, the remainder by December 3 — adds an ESC-10 summer stipend grant, and delays the educational-environment element to 2027–28. The framework and the money are unchanged.

A note on sources

Everything here is read against the primary documents — the enrolled bill text and the TEA TAA letters themselves — each linked from the page that covers it. As new funding-related TEA letters drop, they get added here.