Medicaid Treats Small Districts and Rural Schools Unfairly, Report Says
February 20, 2019
By: Andrew Ujifusa
Source: Education Week
The Medicaid program—a big source of federal funding for the nation’s schools—needs an overhaul in order to make it easier for more schools to access and use, a group representing superintendents says in a new report.
Using survey data from hundreds of superintendents, the report from AASA, the School Superintendents Association, found that 84 percent of districts that reported not seeking reimbursements from Medicaid for school-based health services are rural. More than half of those, 55 percent, have enrollments of less than 1,000 students. And 37 percent of rural districts in the survey say that the costs of complying with Medicaid’s administrative requirements led them to avoid seeking funds from the program.