This article from 2007 says SDUSD spends 18% of it’s budget to support special needs. Of the total student population 12% have special needs. So if you work out the math a special needs kid gets about twice as much spending as the non special needs kid. It does have an impact but not a huge impact. If you had 10% of your school special needs and it took twice as much spending to educate them versus a regular kid, then you’d have to boost prices by 10% across the board. So any private school that costs less than a 10% discount to public education is doing a better job financially.