Florida's ABA Task Force Turned to Schools, and Asked Where the Numbers Came From

We reported on August 29 that Florida had convened a task force to consider capping how many months a child can receive ABA. Two things have happened since, and one of them tells you more than the agenda did.

The minutes are out, and the questions are the tell

Meeting 1 was held on August 12. The approved minutes were published on August 31, and they record what members asked AHCA staff after the overview of Florida Medicaid behavior analysis services. Three questions:

• How many children are using 30 or more hours of ABA in the school setting.
• How other states are subsidizing ABA services.
• The time period and source material for the expenditure and utilization data in AHCA's presentation.

The first question is the one to plan around. Nothing in the authorizing statute singles out school-based delivery, and it was the first thing members wanted quantified. The third is worth noting for a different reason: a body that opens by asking where the agency's numbers came from is not there to ratify them.

The minutes also record six of ten members present, with "pending three appointments." The task force that writes the December report is not yet fully constituted.

Meeting 2 went to the schools

Meeting 2 was held on August 31, and the agenda was handed to the Florida Department of Education. Its presentation put numbers on the population:

• 453,217 students with disabilities in Florida;
• 71,688 of them — 16% — eligible under Autism Spectrum Disorder, the second-largest category after specific learning disability.

Two meetings in, and the second one was about schools. Read alongside the statute's second evaluation area — transitions "across developmental, educational, and community settings" — school-based delivery is not a side topic in this process.

A correction

Our August 29 piece said the bulk of recommendations was targeted for the end of October. That was wrong. The statute and AHCA both give one date: recommendations are due to the Governor, the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House by December 31, 2026. The article has been corrected.

The limits

Neither meeting produced a recommendation, a draft, or a position. Meeting 1 was an overview and meeting 2 was an outside presentation — this is a task force gathering information, and questions asked in August do not bind what it writes in December. Three appointments were outstanding as of the first meeting, and we have not confirmed whether they have since been filled. FDOE's figures describe educational eligibility under IDEA, which is a different determination from Medicaid eligibility for ABA; the two populations overlap but are not the same, and nobody at the meeting claimed otherwise.

What you must know or do

• If you deliver ABA in Florida schools, count your 30-plus-hour cases now. That is the specific figure members asked for, which means it is the figure AHCA will produce. Knowing your own number before it appears in someone else's slide is the difference between commenting and reacting.
• Three meetings remain and the report is due December 31. Not October — if you were pacing your input to an autumn deadline, you have longer than you thought, and one fewer excuse.
• Bring source data, not positions. Members questioned the provenance of AHCA's own utilization figures. A provider who can show where a number comes from is answering the question the task force is actually asking.
• Watch who fills the three open seats. Ten members write this report and seven were seated at the first meeting.