House Budget: “Weyler Amendment” would force special education, school building aid, CTE to be funded from General Fund

April 8th, 2025

An amendment to the 2026-2027 state budget would strip many education programs from being funded through the Education Trust Fund and instead require them to be funded from the General Fund, raising questions about their viability in the future. It also requires any surplus in the Education Trust Fund to be transferred to the General Fund after each fiscal year.

Known as the "Weyler Amendment" because it was initially proposed by Ken Weyler (R-Kingston) in 2023, the idea was rejected in the past because it would require education programs to compete for general funds with other state programs, like Medicaid, Health and Human Services, and Transportation.

When it was proposed in 2023, it received heavy pushback from House Finance committee members. 

“There’s a sense of a guarantee if it’s funded by the Education Trust Fund, and that goes away if it’s taken out of the Education Trust Fund,” Representative Kate Murray (D-New Castle) said in a hearing. 

Representative Weyler pushed back, saying that those programs weren’t funded through the ETF before, and should “compete” with other state priorities. 

“I want to bring [the Education Trust Fund] back to what it was intended for, it’s off the tracks and I want to bring it back to what it was intended for,” he told the committee at the time.

In 2020, lawmakers voted to fund those programs from the ETF because it was running a surplus. The change freed up General Funds for other non-education programs and ended the school building aid moratorium, which was in effect from 2011 to 2020.

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