Education

LNH opponents attack parents of children with special needs

March 11, 2025

Ray Carter

Members of the Oklahoma Senate have overwhelmingly passed legislation to reduce the red tape facing the families of children with special needs who wish to access a state scholarship program.

“We are talking about a very small minority of vulnerable students and their families, and we have created this wonderful program to provide opportunity to each one of these individuals to be the best that they can be,” said state Sen. Julie Daniels, R-Bartlesville.

Since 2010, Oklahoma’s Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarships for Students with Disabilities (LNH) program has allowed students to use state tax dollars to pay for private-school tuition. Those eligible for the program are primarily children with special needs, such as autism.

The scholarships range from $4,196 to $22,236 per child, based on a child’s diagnosis.

However, children cannot currently receive an LNH scholarship until they have been in the public-school system for at least one year, even when a local school cannot properly serve a child and parents have identified a private school that can.

Senate Bill 105, by Daniels, eliminates the one-year requirement.

“I see it as an undue obstacle to children who are very vulnerable and their families who are looking to do the very best they can for their child,” Daniels said. “We have this excellent program in place and it serves a very special population, and I would like to assist some more families in being able to access it.”

The bill passed despite opposition from at least one lawmaker who suggested the parents of children with special needs cannot be trusted to determine if the program is benefitting their child.

“What metrics do we currently have to make sure that the individuals who are participating in this program are being served well?” said state Sen. Carri Hicks, D-Oklahoma City.

Daniels said parents provide that accountability since parents are most invested in their child’s success.

“If the child is getting the services he or she needs in a particular school situation, to me that is a success,” Daniels said. “And that puts that child on the road to perhaps being better able to make their way through life.”

While LNH opponents suggested there is less accountability for tax dollars with the LNH program than with a traditional public school, Daniels noted there is no real penalty for public schools that do not serve children.

“I’m not aware of us actually taking away funding from a public school if the test scores are low or not up to standard,” Daniels said.

Recent testing indicates that many children have been underserved by Oklahoma public schools.

According to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests administered in Oklahoma and nationwide in 2024, just 23 percent of Oklahoma fourth grade students were proficient in reading.

Academic outcomes in Oklahoma have steadily declined over the last decade despite a massive increase in funding.

Researchers with the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University found Oklahoma’s per-pupil spending increased 47 percent from 2013 to 2024, but NAEP scores in both reading and math are far lower today than in 2013. Oklahoma’s spending increase far outpaced inflation during that time.

Daniels noted that families can face significant financial stress or hardship related to the one-year delay for LNH eligibility.

“I know of somebody going through assessment right now with a child who’s just been diagnosed with autism and the cost of the assessment out of pocket, outside of the school by a psychometrist is $2,500,” Daniels said. “And it’s costing that family $4,000 a month to get services for their child, and they would really like to be able to qualify for LNH—which they do—without the one-year public school requirement.”

She also noted that current law forces some families to effectively squander a year that a child could be receiving appropriate services. In some instances, Daniels noted families have found a private school provider that better served their child, but then had to re-enroll their child in a public school for a year to qualify for the LNH program so the family could better afford private school.

“That seems, to me, really an unkind way to deal with these families and these kids,” Daniels said.

Daniels said the one-year requirement was initially included in the LNH law because at that time schools were able to receive “ghost student” funding for departed students for up to two years after a child left, leading school districts to want those children included in enrollment counts.

“The one-year public-school requirement was put in the original language of the bill because, at that time, we allowed for counting of ghost students in our funding of public schools,” Daniels said. “We allowed schools to have a student and then count two years beyond when that student leaves and still receive state aid for that student.”

Lawmakers have since reduced ghost-student funding in schools and today’s school district state revenue is more closely tied to actual student counts, not inflated prior-year counts. When lawmakers passed that reform in the spring of 2021, schools were receiving approximately $195 million in funding for more than 55,000 “ghost” students who did not actually attend classes in a district.

Hicks debated against the bill, claiming SB 105 would create “financial instability for our public schools,” because it is “funneling public dollars” into private schools.

While school-choice opponents have long claimed the LNH program harms public school finances, state records show otherwise. Public school funding has surged to record levels in recent years, and the total expenditure on LNH scholarships is not even a rounding error against that backdrop.

The Oklahoma State School Boards Association (OSSBA), a lobbyist organization funded by payments made with schools’ taxpayer dollars, has attacked the LNH program, saying that from the 2010-2011 school year to the 2021-2022 school year LNH program provided a cumulative total of $47.4 million in scholarships.

But from the 2010-2011 school year to the 2021-2022 school year, Oklahoma public schools received a cumulative total of $80 billion in funding from all sources, according to state records. For every $100 spent on public schools during that time, only 6 cents went to LNH students.

On average, the LNH program has funded the private education of special-needs students at a lower per-pupil cost than what would occur if those same students were in public schools.

In the 2023-2024 school year, the most recent for which data is available, the LNH program provided $12.2 million in scholarships to 1,557 students for an average LNH scholarship of $7,866 per student.

That’s substantially less than the average per-pupil revenue provided for all public-school students.

According to financial data reported by schools to the state’s Oklahoma Cost Accounting System (OCAS), per-pupil revenue in Oklahoma public schools reached $9,600,703,488 in new revenue in the 2023-2024 school year. Since student enrollment was 698,923 that year, that comes out to an average of $13,736 per pupil.

Supporters of SB 105 noted the bill would also maximize special-education teachers’ time.

State Sen. Kristen Thompson, R-Edmond, noted Oklahoma has a shortage of special-education teachers, and said it makes little sense to force those teachers to handle an increased workload as families comply with an arbitrary one-year requirement to qualify for an LNH scholarship.

“When we know these kids are going to leave after a year, it seems quite silly to force them into a classroom to increase student count for special-education teachers when we don’t have enough of them or enough paras in the classroom,” Thompson said.

SB 105 passed the Oklahoma Senate on a 35-10 vote. The bill now proceeds to the Oklahoma House of Representatives.