The Illinois State Board of Education partners with school districts to provide programs and services for students with specialized educational needs.
The Special Education Department assures that these programs and services meet state and federal requirements. This involves both compliance and technical assistance functions.
Compliance functions include monitoring least restrictive environment compliance, administering due process system, providing mediation services, conducting complaint investigations, approving policies and procedures, conducting focused and comprehensive reviews and approving nonpublic special education facilities.
Technical assistance functions involve providing information and guidance on promising practices in educating students with disabilities, including the operation of numerous statewide training and technical assistance initiatives, administering the comprehensive system of personnel development for special education and management of grant programs to schools for special education service delivery.
Important Announcements
Public Act 103-0644 Information
PA 103-0644 stipulates that a “Separate public special education day school” means a separate special education program or facility that is established by a school district, public school, regional office of education, or cooperative exclusively to meet the needs of special education students who cannot be educated in the general school environment and that provides services comparable to a private special education school.
- All programs or facilities seeking qualification for reimbursement need to apply by submitting a completed application for the2024-25 school year as soon as possible, but absolutely no later than
April 15, 2025, to
publicsped@isbe.net
- Please note, to qualify as a separate public program, the program or facility must be located in a separate building completely apart from the regular school building
- All questions related to PA 103.0644 can be sent to
publicsped@isbe.net
A potential list of programs used for informational purposes only is included below. Please note, inclusion on the list does not necessarily mean that a program meets the requirements and exclusion from the list does not mean a program will not meet the requirements.Facilities and associated programs ARE NOT considered as included in the new reimbursement stream until a completed application has been submitted to ISBE and approved.
ISBE & SELA 2025 Special Education Directors Conference
Partnering for Positive Impact
June 9 - 10, 2025
Save the Date!
