TEA’s May 28, 2026 update: the reporting plan changes

How is this about funding determination?

Directly — and specifically, this is the letter that changed the rules the April 16 letter set. If you read April 16 and built a plan around it, this is the letter that tells you what moved. It does three things: it splits the deadline for reporting your new tier-and-service-group data, it puts money on the table to help you do the work over the summer, and it pushes one data element back a year. Same funding model, revised mechanics.

What it says

The reporting deadline is now split into two. This is the headline. April 16 said: enter every student’s tier, service group(s), and minutes-per-day by the first PEIMS submission (October 8, 2026). May 28 splits that population across two submissions:

• By October 8, 2026 (1st Six-Weeks): the new data for at least 50% of your students receiving special-education services.
• By December 3, 2026 (2nd Six-Weeks): the data for the remaining students — those not included in the October 8 submission.

For both groups the data carries a begin date of the first day of the school year (unless an ARD revision mid-year changes services, in which case the new values begin-date from when they applied). By the December 3 submission, eligible days present are reported for both the instructional-arrangement/setting code and the tier of intensity, for all funding-eligible special-education students.

A summer stipend grant to fund the IEP-review work. TEA is making a one-time extra-duty stipend grant available to cover staffing costs for the record review — reading IEPs to determine each student’s tier, service group(s), and minutes-per-day. Administered by Education Service Center (ESC) 10. Eligibility: school systems with at least 50 students receiving special-education services (a Shared Services Arrangement can qualify on its members’ combined count if the fiscal agent runs the review). Grantees must affirm the funds support this summer work and commit to submitting at least 10% of their own special-education population through TEA’s early-data request by August 14, 2026.

The “educational environment” element is delayed a year. April 16 introduced this new data element for 2026–27 collection. Based on field feedback, May 28 pushes it to 2027–28.

What it means for you

The deadline split changes your timeline, not your total. The April 16 plan — every special-education student classified and reported by October 8 — was a hard lift to land in the first six weeks of school, on top of everything else those weeks demand. The split gives you until December 3 for the back half of your caseload. It does not reduce the work; all students are still due, the determination is still built from each IEP, and the begin date is still the first day of school. It changes the cadence, not the scope — you now stage the caseload across two windows instead of clearing it in one.

The stipend grant is the part to act on early, because it has a string attached that lands in August, before the school year’s deadlines. If you take the grant, you’ve committed to getting at least 10% of your own special-education population through TEA’s early-data process by August 14. That’s a summer obligation, not a fall one — so the decision to apply is also a decision to staff the review over the summer. The upside: TEA is paying for review time you were going to spend anyway, and front-loading 10% in August makes the October/December submissions easier, not harder.

Keep two August-14 numbers distinct, because they’re easy to conflate: April 16’s voluntary early-data ask had TEA aiming for 15% of the statewide population in aggregate; May 28’s grant condition is a 10% of your own population commitment for districts that take the stipend. Different denominators, different purposes — one is TEA’s statewide goal, the other is your obligation if you accept the money.

The educational-environment delay is one less thing on the 2026–27 plate — note it and move on.

Does it change anything prior?

Yes — explicitly. May 28 states it supersedes a portion of the April 16 letter under the “Data Collection and Reporting Requirements” heading. Concretely:

• Reporting deadline: April 16’s single October 8 deadline for all students → October 8 for ≥50%, December 3 for the remainder.
• Educational-environment element: April 16’s 2026–27 collection → delayed to 2027–28.
• New this letter (not a change, an addition): the ESC-10 summer stipend grant and its 10%-by-August-14 condition.

Everything else from April 16 — the framework, the funding tool, the double-reporting structure, the §48.1022(b) floor and the ~$250M statewide top-up, the September 2027 settle-up — stands unchanged. This letter restates the §48.1022(b) lineage verbatim; it revises the how and when of reporting, not the model or the money.