KCK special ed co-op could break up. Mom hopes change boosts daughter’s services
Cori Harris’ daughter, Oakley, is a happy kid. She loves her friends, her family and picks on her brother like any other 7-year-old would.
And although Oakley, a student in Bonner Springs-Edwardsville Unified School District, has received special education services since she was a toddler, Harris finds she still has to constantly advocate on her daughter’s behalf to make sure she’s getting what she needs.
When problems come up at school — like the program turning Oakley down for speech therapy, or someone taking her headphones away — Harris doesn’t see that as any one person’s fault, but rather as proof of problems in an entire system.
“I think everything trickles down,” Harris told The Star. “I think there are people that are afraid of retaliation, so they’re not going to rock the boat and push too far.”
Harris, who has filed multiple complaints to the state against the Wyandotte Comprehensive Special Education Cooperative, sees the program’s pending dissolution as an opportunity. She hopes the changes to the structure of special education in her school district will make it easier for her to understand and have a say in decisions being made on behalf of her child.
Come next school year, Wyandotte County’s long-standing special education cooperative could be but a memory to area educators and advocates.
And that memory would be a complicated one for some.
After more than 40 years, the Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools-led cooperative operation that once serviced all the county’s school districts, may dissolve this summer. That decision is pending state approval that could come in a matter of months or take even a year, according to a state special education official.
The cooperative’s plans for dissolution come at a time when special education staff in Wyandotte County, and in public schools across the state and country, are struggling to keep up with increased demand for student evaluations, staffing limitations and rising expenses that have outpaced state aid.
Those plans also come as area special education leadership are grappling with teacher shortages and operating on action plans in response to low staff morale detailed in reports conducted by the University of Kansas.
Despite the fact that special education programming in Wyandotte has been a controversial topic in recent years, the school districts that recently left or requested to leave the cooperative, Piper Unified School District and Bonner Springs-Edwardsville Unified School District, attributed their exits to their being more qualified to offer their own services and not to any problems with KCKPS.
Those districts said they hope the cooperative breaking down will allow each school district in the county to better focus on their own students, and address their concerns individually instead of under the KCKPS umbrella.
Cooperative breaking down
KCK school board members in December formally initiated the process of breaking down the cooperative, which has been in place since before 1986.
The cooperative method dates back to the 1970s, when the federal government passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It’s used in similar formats in states across the country.
Given it’s the largest Wyandotte County school district, KCKPS, at one point, acted as a sponsoring district over Turner, Piper and Bonner Springs-Edwardsville.
It offered shared services and staffing to those smaller school districts that “did not yet have the enrollment size, staffing capacity, or infrastructure to provide the full continuum of special education services independently,” said JaKyta Lawrie, who runs the KCKPS program and leads the cooperative.
But, those districts aren’t the small, rural outlets they once were. They’ve since seen enrollment and capacity growth. And as districts grow and build their own expertise, they can get to the point where they don’t need that sponsoring school district’s help anymore, according to Piper USD.
“As a result, the cooperative model is no longer necessary to ensure access to services,” Lawrie said.
Bonner Springs-Edwardsville was the final member district to try to exit the cooperative. It voted to do so during a school board meeting this year, and the district’s superintendent confirmed that plans to break off had been in the making for several years, as the district started hiring its own staff.
That decision would formally take effect during July 2026 if approved by the state board of education. As of publication time, the dissolution of the cooperative had not appeared on a state board agenda, nor was that scheduled for an upcoming meeting, according to the state.
A pair or group of local school districts may form a cooperative to offer special education services on a “shared-cost” basis, according to state law. The state board has to review and approve plans for that cooperative’s establishment before it can operate.
About 249 of the state’s 285 school districts were members of Kansas’ 24 special education cooperatives and 15 interlocal agreements, said Dean Zajic, an assistant director of Special Education and Title Services at the Kansas Department of Education.
It’s a process
It’s rare for cooperatives to dissolve, but this isn’t a first-time thing either, Zajic said. Throughout his numerous years working for the department of education, he’s seen it happen less than a handful of times.
When a cooperative does break up, that’s a multi-year process, he added. Getting state approval takes a while because the request has to be factored in with budget planning for the school year ahead. Cooperative changes would take effect on the July 1 preceding the start of a new school year. But a school district going off on its own also means that it has to establish a new special education program that’s entirely its own but still in line with federal requirements. Instead of sharing policies, procedures and resources among a pool of school districts, a lone school district needs to set up its own pillars.
If the state denies the Wyandotte cooperative districts’ requests to dissolve, they’ll have to wait another three years before making another request.
That said, in the past 15 years, Zajic hasn’t seen the state department of education deny a request to dissolve.
Services in Bonner, Piper
Officials in Bonner Springs and in Piper’s public school districts said leaving the cooperative would allow them more flexibility to best serve their specific student populations.
“By employing our own special education service providers, we can better align resources, tailor services to meet specific needs of our students, and allow for stronger collaboration among staff in USD 204,” Bonner Springs Superintendent Rick Moulin wrote in a statement to The Star.
Moulin said that the district and KCKPS worked together throughout that process to “ensure the needs of students in both districts continue to be met and that the transition is smooth and well planned,” according to the statement.
Piper Unified School District left the cooperative last school year, according to the district.
“Over the past several years, Piper has been one of the fastest-growing school districts in the state, with sustained enrollment increases that have significantly impacted the scope and scale of our special education services,” according to the district. “As the district has grown, so has our internal capacity to directly design, staff, and manage those services.”
Turner Unified School District was the first to leave the cooperative, according to KCKPS. KCKPS said it was not certain when the cooperative was originally founded, but that it’s been around at least as long as when Turner left in 1986.
‘Closer to home’
Harris often sees a disconnect between what teachers are telling her about the services Oakley is receiving, and how she’s doing, and the behavior she sees at home.
She’s worried that program administrators aren’t always telling her the truth about how they’re helping her daughter during the school day. One time, when she requested Oakley’s service minutes, staff gave her a general schedule instead of proof of services offered, Harris said.
Harris thinks the cooperative breaking down will simplify some parts of her daughter’s school days. At the very least, more of the people who are making decisions on behalf of Oakley will likely see and interact with her on a more regular basis.
“It does feel better in a sense to know it’s going to be closer to home next year,” Harris said of special education program leadership. Even so, she’s worried about whether services will improve within her local school system.
This story was originally published March 26, 2026 at 6:08 AM.
