Chalkbeat

Should Tennessee fully fund special education pre-K programs?

2026-08-25T19:48:10+00:00

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A top committee of Tennessee educators wants lawmakers to include special education prekindergarten students in the state’s public school funding formula.

The recommendation follows pleas from school boards and superintendents who say they’ve been saddled with the price tag of an unfunded mandate because federal and state laws require local school districts to serve students with disabilities as young as 3.

“The problem is, they’ve legally compelled us to serve kids for whom they’re not proportionally funding us,” said Bob Nardo, the executive director at the Libertas School, a Memphis charter school, during a TISA Review Committee meeting this month.

Lawmakers established the committee last year. Made up of top education officials and public school leaders from around the state, the committee is tasked with recommending revisions to the state’s overarching K-12 funding formula and will issue its first report later this fall.

A survey completed this summer showed the majority of committee members ranked special education pre-K funding as a top priority, in addition to revising how the state identifies economically disadvantaged students.

“Early childhood education is widely recognized as an important factor in long-term academic success,” committee member Ron McPherson said in the summer survey. McPherson serves as the finance director at Knox County Schools.

Reworking TISA, the state’s funding formula, would require legislative action. The formula currently only funds Tennessee K-12 students.

“Change the rules about who we’re required to serve, or fund us for the kids we’re required to serve,” Nardo said, noting that his school has an “acute population” of special education students with “severe” needs.

It’s not clear how much weight the TISA Review Committee’s recommendations will carry with state lawmakers.

A previous legislative effort to fold these pre-K students into public school funding stalled in 2025, likely over funding concerns. The legislature estimated that fully funding the programs could cost the state more than $159 million annually.

On Thursday, state Board of Education Chairman Bob Eby sent a formal list of TISA recommendations to Gov. Bill Lee.

The pre-K funding recommendation wasn’t included in the official list, but Eby noted it at the end of the letter.

“This topic, being outside the K-12 formula, was omitted from the list, as it is not necessarily authorized by the statute creating this Committee; however, we wanted you to know of this high level of interest from the committee members,” Eby wrote.

West Tennessee school leaders said last year that they’ve encountered “fundamental” misunderstandings of how special education pre-K programs work and are funded, even among state officials responsible for education oversight.

Tennessee has an $18 million grant fund for special education pre-K costs. But district leaders say the grant program is less stable than recurring funding streams, and it’s still not enough to cover the costs of their special education pre-K classrooms.

“Yes, the grant program exists, and I’m very grateful for it,” Nardo said. “But it’s not actually proportional to the need.”

Special education costs for pre-K classes can balloon quickly, school leaders say.

Lakeland School System in Shelby County currently has 29 special education students to whom it is federally required to offer pre-K services, including specialized teachers and therapies.

But these students must also be educated alongside general education peers to meet federal and state class size and inclusivity regulations. Lakeland is serving an additional 30 general education students in those pre-K classrooms as peer models for its 29 special education students.

Lakeland’s 59 students are spread across four classrooms, each with a special education teacher and two special education assistants.

The cost to run those classrooms? More than $621,000, according to data provided by the district. The district is receiving $15,058 in federal funding and another $124,660 from the Tennessee special education preschool grant, which together cover about 22% of Lakeland’s total costs.

That means Lakeland must dip into its TISA funding — calculated and intended for K-12 students — to pay the remaining $481,282.

Other district officials said the existing funding models do not factor in the costs of peer students and the enrollment increases they bring.

“That’s where we’re getting in a bind,” said TISA Review Committee member Eddie Pruett, the director of schools at Gibson County Special School District. “We have to provide this, and don’t have the funding we need to do it with.”

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia parents describe ‘devastating’ toll of preschool exclusion and suspensions

2026-08-06T20:36:38+00:00

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Philadelphia parent Hadria Leon was excited when her son started preschool in 2024, snapping a photo as Otto went off to his first day.

But when she went to pick him up, the preschool staff told her Otto could no longer attend. Otto has an autism diagnosis, and preschool leaders said they didn’t have the resources to support him, Leon said.

“I was devastated, I was crying,” Leon said. “I begged the director. The school refused my offers of support and my ideas for how to best support my child.”

Leon was one of several parents who testified during a City Council Education Committee hearing Thursday on young kids being suspended, expelled, and excluded from Philadelphia preschool programs.

The practice, often called “preschool pushout,” is difficult to quantify because many exclusions are never formally documented, and data collection is limited in Philadelphia and nationwide. But parents and advocates say excluding young kids from preschool programs in the city has taken a toll on their learning and development. They want the city to prohibit preschool exclusion and suspensions across the board and invest more in early childhood funding and training, especially to support kids with disabilities.

The city prohibits any prekindergarten program that receives city funding from excluding children from the classroom or sending children home early. But Sean Perkins, chief of early childhood education in the city’s Office of Children and Families, acknowledged that “in some cases, this commitment has been challenging for providers.”

The city funds around 5,000 preschool seats through its PHLpreK program, which all Philly families are eligible for. Perkins said the city has provided more coaching and paid professional training sessions meant to improve services for kids with disabilities.

The Philadelphia school district runs many of the publicly funded preschool programs in the city. Diane Castelbuono, the district’s assistant superintendent for early childhood education, said it also does not permit the expulsion of preschool students. She said there are limited circumstances during which a “temporary exclusion” may happen, like if a student presents a direct threat to themselves or others.

Still, families and advocates said exclusions persist across the city’s wide range of preschool programs, including those that are publicly funded, run by the school district, or privately operated. They called for a ban on preschool suspensions in all programs, as well as more funding and resources for preschool providers.

“Pushout occurs across the board in both public and private preschool programs in Philadelphia, and is not the result of any single provider’s actions,” said Rose Wehrman, an attorney with the Education Law Center-PA. “These exclusions are rooted in discrimination and are both harmful to children’s development and are developmentally inappropriate for all children.”

Council members appeared sympathetic to the concerns, though none at the hearing committed to pushing for specific policy or funding changes.

“What I think we need is a system that says, if we’re going to ask the providers to take the child, no matter what, then there should be resources available to address the needs of the child, no matter what,” said Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, who chairs the Education Committee and called for the hearing.

Councilmember Nina Ahmad acknowledged the difficulty of understanding the scope of the problem.

“Pennsylvania has no system of tracking exclusion in early childhood settings, so most of it never happens in any record,” Ahmad said. “What we do not count, we cannot fix.”

Educators seek resources to support kids with disabilities

Several preschool providers testified during the hearing that they need more resources, including funding and training, to better support kids with disabilities.

“What is being asked of childcare providers is fair,” said Taneema Fannings, who runs Christ Like Childcare Center. “But no support or resources makes it impossible.”

Unlike K-12 public schools, most preschools don’t receive additional public funding when a student has a qualifying disability. Though Philadelphia families are supposed to get support services for infants and toddlers through publicly funded early intervention, they often wait weeks or months for those services. That can leave kids and preschool teachers without support when they need it.

Representatives from Elwyn, the nonprofit that runs the city’s early intervention program, did not attend the hearing.

“Educators need help with children with special needs,” said Natrice Johnson, who runs Candy’s Kids Learning Academy. “We don’t want to expel them. We don’t want to suspend them. But we need help, supports, so we can be able to maintain them in our classrooms.”

For parents, preschool pushout is ‘devastating’

Preschool pushout can take many forms, parents said, from being asked to pick up kids early to being told that a certain program can’t meet a child’s needs.

Chandell Craig-Cromwell said her son Romaine’s preschool told her the center was “no longer a good fit” for her child. Though she said she advocated for him to remain in the program, she was told the decision was final.

“I carried a lot of guilt,” she said. “It felt like our only option was to keep him home again.”

Another parent, Jennifer Garrison, who is Black, said she feared her son Terrell’s preschool discriminated against him because of his race and disability. Terrell is on the autism spectrum and requires support to eat and communicate.

When she picked Terrell up from preschool, he was routinely hungry and thirsty, she said. She feared he did not get the support he needed during the day, leaving him without food and water. As a result, she felt she had no option but to withdraw him.

“The impact on my son has been devastating,” she said. “As a Black parent of a child with disabilities, there is an added layer of concern that behaviors and needs associated with autism may be misunderstood or responded to differently.”

For Hadria Leon, a few months after Otto was excluded from his first preschool, she was able to find a new program that welcomed him. Teachers there supported her son, and he later went on to elementary school. He graduated from kindergarten in June.

“We are all so happy that he is improving,” Leon said. “What our family went through should not happen to anyone else.”

Rebecca Redelmeier is a reporter at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. She writes about public schools, early childhood education, and issues that affect students, families, and educators across Philadelphia. Contact Rebecca at rredelmeier@chalkbeat.org.

Education Department scaled back special education monitoring: report

2026-07-08T20:15:05+00:00

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Federal teams charged with making sure states are doing right by students with disabilities appear to have visited fewer than half of the states originally scheduled for review in 2025 and 2026.

That information comes from U.S. Department of Education documents compiled and analyzed by the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a group that supports students with disabilities and their families, as well as additional review by Chalkbeat of publicly available monitoring schedules.

If federal reviews of state special education systems continue at this pace, each state would be reviewed only once every 25 years, COPAA said in a report released Tuesday. That would mean many students would go their entire school careers without federal oversight of state systems.

“The new administration has quietly rolled back their state oversight,” said Chris Roe, COPAA director of state policy. “We are worried that this sends a signal to states and eventually to local schools that this is not important, and they don’t need to be concerned about it.”

Drawing on nearly a dozen state monitoring reports based on reviews that started under the Biden administration, the COPAA report also raises concerns about states’ capacity to adequately monitor school districts’ compliance with special education requirements as the Trump administration pledges to “return education to the states.”

The Trump administration has taken steps to dismantle the Education Department by assigning key duties to other federal agencies. Most recently, the department announced that special education oversight would move to the Department of Health and Human Services, a change that has drawn significant organized opposition and some bipartisan skepticism.

U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a Republican who chairs the Senate education committee, has promised Democratic colleagues a vote on that change later this month. By itself, a committee vote won’t reverse the Trump administration’s actions, but a vote against it would represent the strongest formal objection from Congress to date.

COPAA opposes having another government agency handle special education oversight. The group’s report calls on Congress to intervene.

A spokesperson for the Education Department said COPAA’s “entire premise is false,” without describing any specific errors in the findings. The department pointed to monitoring reports — the same ones that COPAA reviewed for its analysis — as evidence the department continues to keep tabs on states.

Citing previous remarks by Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the spokesperson said the partnership between Health and Human Services and Education would improve coordination and benefit families and students, and “ensure states are in compliance with federal law.”

“Students will not lose any rights, including their right to a Free Appropriate Public Education,” the unnamed spokesperson said. “No agreement can alter the rights that students with disabilities are afforded under federal law.”

But Roe said the flaws identified in the monitoring reports show that students and families might struggle more to defend their rights without federal involvement.

Meanwhile, Politico this week highlighted the large number of states flagged by the Education Department as needing assistance or intervention to meet their goals for serving students with disabilities.

“When they say let’s return education to the states, there’s an assumption that states will backfill those responsibilities,” Roe said. “The case that that is not going to happen is pretty strong.”

Federal oversight finds gaps in special education protections

The Biden administration had previously urged states to take more responsibility for ensuring school districts meet their special education obligations. But according to monitoring reports, auditors repeatedly found shortcomings.

These included lax fiscal oversight; limited supervision of school district practices; states allowing districts to pick which student files they wanted reviewed; states not investigating parent complaints in a timely manner; and states either not informing parents of their rights or giving them incorrect information.

Roe said this system isn’t perfect. COPAA’s reviews of federal monitoring efforts over the years have found many cases where auditors identified problems, but there was limited follow-up and the problems continued. Nonetheless, the reports provide an important tool for advocates and lawmakers to press for changes, he said.

“Without them, we definitely face more of an uphill battle to getting systems in place to support our students,” Roe said.

The Education Department spokesperson said the department is “on track” to complete monitoring visits to all states by 2028, in keeping with a schedule established in 2022.

However, the spokesperson did not provide a schedule that showed how monitoring teams would visit roughly half the states in the next two years. The schedule that’s been posted on the department website since the spring of 2025 identifies only four states, Puerto Rico, and a few Pacific island territories for monitoring during the 2025-26 cycle and none thereafter. One of those states, Georgia, was supposed to be reviewed this spring, but monitoring visits have been pushed back to the fall, the department said.

During the Biden administration, the Education Department set a goal of monitoring 10 states a year, creating a five-year cycle for regular monitoring, in addition to off-cycle visits to address specific issues. COPAA found the Education Department monitored eight states in 2023 and 10 in 2024. A monitoring schedule archived by the Wayback Machine shows the department previously had plans to monitor nine states plus the territories in the 2025-26 cycle, and another 10 the next year.

It’s not clear why states previously identified for monitoring were removed from the schedule. However, the Education Department has laid off large numbers of workers. A report from the Office of Inspector General published last month raised questions about whether the department could carry out its responsibilities at current staffing levels.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Linda McMahon says she heard parents. Parents say special education changes show she didn’t listen.

2026-06-17T00:23:04+00:00

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Education Secretary Linda McMahon had a message for parents of students with disabilities on Tuesday as she announced seismic shifts to federal special education oversight: “I’ve heard you.”

In listening sessions and at school visits, McMahon said thousands of parents described struggles to get their children the services to which they’re legally entitled. Moving special education oversight out of the Department of Education, she wrote in an op-ed for Fox News, will reduce red tape and open opportunities.

McMahon may have heard parents, many advocates said Tuesday, but she didn’t listen.

“It is accurate what they said today, that they spent six months talking to people, but we’ve been very consistent in our message that we didn’t want this to happen,” said Jennifer Coco, interim executive director for the Center for Learner Equity and a parent of students with disabilities.

Agency officials announced Tuesday the department will move oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services and aspects of civil rights enforcement to the Department of Justice through interagency agreements without approval from Congress. The Department of Education touted holding multiple listening sessions with hundreds of parents, educators, and special education directors.

But some of those same people said the decision flies in the face of what they’ve told McMahon and agency leaders. They raised concerns about dysfunction across special education programs nationwide, but they did not want the department to fracture the system even further.

“To remove that federal oversight piece in an already fragmented system, it just feels like an extra blow to parents of kids with disabilities who are already dealing with so much,” said Jillian Benfield, whose son Anderson, 11, has Down Syndrome and attends public school in Florida.

Some conservative organizations say the steps the Trump administration has taken to dismantle the Education Department will be positive for students with disabilities, arguing too many layers of bureaucracy limit opportunities.

A senior department official said the changes would not change students’ rights and would instead lead to more effective services for students and families, with more coordination of services for young children and adults.

But many advocates said they are worried about how much is at stake in these agency agreements and what could be lost in the transition, particularly because the Office for Civil Rights — where the bulk of the case load involves complaints from students with disabilities — has also been upended.

Calling it the “next step in a lawless decimation” of an agency created by Congress, Catherine Lhamon, who ran the civil rights office in the Education Department under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, said the new structure may ensure dollars will flow from one agency to another, “but rights will not flow to anyone.”

“It’s incredibly dangerous for the rights of kids in schools to learn on an equal basis,” she said.

Parents worry federal shifts could trickle down to their children

Lanya Elsa is the parent of two children who are deafblind. She is a special educator who helps support families while they pursue school accommodations.

Program officers with the Department of Education oversee multiple state and federal programs for students who are deafblind, she said. And parents with children with those disabilities worry these programs will be the next to be cut or shifted away from the Department of Education.

“If my kids were born 40 years ago they would have been put in an institution,” she wrote in a text message. “Instead they have college degrees and are working. That’s why many of us are uneasy about moving oversight away from education.”

Benfield and other parents also are skeptical of the department’s argument that shifting responsibilities to other agencies is an efficient choice.

“There’s already so much as a parent of a kid with a disability that you have to navigate, so many different systems,” she said. “Now, where are parents going to go? You’re just making an already complex system more complicated for parents.”

Education Department dismantling continues: special ed oversight to HHS, civil rights to Justice

In addition to tangible impacts on families, disability advocates say moving the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to the Department of Health and Human Services reinforces stigma by associating disability with an agency dealing largely in healthcare and medical issues.

Robyn Linscott, director of Education and Family Policy at the Arc of the United States said it’s notable that other K-12 functions were moved to Labor, ostensibly because the long-term goal of education is a good job, while special education was not.

“I think it can’t be overstated enough that the way we think about students with disabilities and the messages we send about the potential of students with disabilities really matters,” she said. “And the irony that we’re talking about this 50 years after IDEA is not lost on me. The idea that it’s OK to segregate students with disabilities, that they can’t learn with other students, really concerns me.”

Shifting agency duties to Health, Justice departments

Linscott said Tuesday’s announcement caught many advocates off guard, even though the idea has been discussed since the early months of the Trump administration and even earlier in Project 2025. Advocates had spoken repeatedly with senior administration officials and thought their message might be heard.

“Despite the number of families sharing the difficulty their students were having accessing services, not a single person said moving OSERS to HHS was the way to approach this,” Linscott said, describing an hours-long listening session held in January. “Not a single parent, advocate, or educator said that.”

But Coco recalled one meeting where agency officials were explicit that these functions would move out of the Education Department.

“It wasn’t a question of whether this should be done or whether it was right —- that had already been predetermined,” she said. “The question that’s been lingering is, well, where are they going to move it to?”

Asked what problems the Education Department was trying to solve and how services would improve through moving functions to other agencies, a senior department official said that McMahon “has been very clear about the final mission of the U.S. Department of Education,” referring to promises to dismantle the department entirely. Moving oversight to other agencies allows the federal government to meet its legal obligations, the official said.

While HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised in a press release to “help every child reach their full potential,” advocates worry about how a department led by him will approach special education. Kennedy has spent over a decade spreading misinformation about autism, and 13% of students served under IDEA fell under the autism category, according to federal data from the 2022-23 school year.

McMahon tried to reassure parents their children will be treated as students, not patients.

“IDEA, as an education law, ensures that a child’s disability isn’t viewed as a medical condition that needs to be treated,” she wrote.

Advocates’ concerns are compounded by moving special education and civil rights enforcement to different agencies. Having the two under the same roof meant the department had multiple ways to communicate with schools about how to best serve students, said Eric Duncan, director of P-12 policy for the progressive advocacy group The Education Trust.

“The Office for Civil Rights is not just a punitive office,” Duncan said. “It’s really to support the systemic issues that are affecting why certain students are overly disciplined or referred for certain things, why students are in settings where they’re not comfortable or aren’t able to learn because of their specific challenges.”

The Department of Justice can’t replicate the work done by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, Lhamon said. It’s a “totally different agency,” she said, whose work ranges from helping entire school communities resolve issues to answering “any mom’s question about whether civil rights have been violated.”

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Education Department dismantling continues: special ed oversight to HHS, civil rights to Justice

2026-06-16T17:27:13+00:00

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The U.S. Department of Justice is taking over aspects of civil rights enforcement in schools, while oversight of special education is moving to the Department of Health and Human Services, the Trump administration announced Tuesday.

The change will move some of the most essential and integrated functions provided by the federal Education Department to two separate agencies and further accelerates the dismantling of the department without congressional approval.

Senior department officials said the changes would not reduce or affect students’ rights and would instead lead to more effective services for students and families. But many details are still being worked out.

“The Trump Administration has been clear: as we scale back federal micromanagement when it hinders success, we are equally committed to bolstering the efficacy of federal oversight where it is essential,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a press release.

Advocates for students with disabilities have been fighting the move involving special education for more than a year. They had hoped that the overwhelming opposition voiced during listening sessions earlier this spring might sway officials.

They fear that Health and Human Services lacks not only the experience but also the appropriate perspective to support the education of students with disabilities, most of whom are educated alongside their peers in general education classrooms.

Meanwhile, complaints related to children with disabilities make up a significant portion of the work of the Office for Civil Rights. While the Department of Justice has always played a critical role in civil rights enforcement, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights historically has focused specifically on getting school districts to change their practices rather than penalizing violations. Advocates have valued that approach as a way of improving education for a larger group of students.

The law that established the Department of Education says the agency is responsible for overseeing and funding the education of children with disabilities, and for enforcing civil rights in schools. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act also places special education oversight within the Department of Education.

Recent budget laws give control of IDEA funds to the Department of Education and say that money can’t just be transferred to another agency.

Education advocates quickly condemned the move.

“These continued disruptions will create confusion for states and school districts, undermine accountability, and inject uncertainty into services that students and families depend on every day,” The Education Trust, a progressive advocacy group, said in a statement. “Without a clear plan, these shifts risk weakening implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and decades of hard-fought civil rights progress.”

The Education Department is using interagency agreements to move the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to HHS and the Office for Civil Rights to Justice without a green light from Congress. Historically, such agreements were used to allow departments to contract with other agencies for certain services outside their core mission.

It’s the same mechanism that the department used to move career and technical education and the bulk of K-12 programming to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Members of Congress have raised questions about these moves, with Democrats even calling them illegal, but there has been no meaningful congressional oversight or other steps to block the changes.

Supporters of the changes have said it would better align educational programs with workforce needs.

Moving special education to Health and Human Services is a much bigger change, and one where the policy justifications are less clear.

Linda McMahon says she heard parents. Parents say special education changes show she didn’t listen.

Supporters of IDEA and its critics can both point to many problems with the law, including persistent underfunding and a focus on compliance rather than meeting students’ needs.

But many advocates fear moving special education to Health and Human Services will mark a return to a medical model of dealing with disability. A recent study found that students with disabilities benefit from special education services, suggesting the system is working for at least some students.

A senior department official said partnering with Health and Human Services will improve coordination of services for infants and toddlers, on one end of the spectrum, and services for adults with disabilities on the other end, with the education provided in schools.

The official said the Trump administration also plans to increase funding for special education by roughly $500 million, although it remains to be seen if Congress will agree to that.

The move follows a blueprint laid out in the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which calls for moving special education to HHS and converting funding into a small voucher for individual families. Project 2025 also calls for moving civil rights enforcement to Justice.

Lindsey Burke, the lead author of Project 2025’s education chapter, is a top official at the Education Department.

“Downsizing this agency and returning education to the states achieves a long-standing goal to empower families and local communities,” Burke said during a Chalkbeat event earlier this year. She said that the Education Department has proven to be a costly failure.

Under McMahon, the Office for Civil Rights has been cut significantly even as it’s continued to receive thousands of discrimination complaints. The office received more than 9,000 complaints of alleged discrimination between March 2024 and Sept. 2025, according to a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office report. The department resolved more than 7,000, though 90% were resolved through dismissal.

The administration previously laid off Office for Civil Rights staff before more recently moving to rehire attorneys. It also closed seven out of 12 regional offices, reassigning caseloads to the five remaining offices.

National reporter Lily Altavena and Ideas Editor Matt Barnum contributed.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado may tighten the rules for specialized facility schools serving students with intense needs

2026-06-15T22:37:16+00:00

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The state board that oversees publicly funded Colorado schools for students with intense needs is considering tightening the rules for how such schools are approved and regulated.

The proposed changes come as one such school faces state sanctions and a potential loss of funding after complaints about how it physically restrains students, among other concerns.

A Chalkbeat investigation found that the school, the Austin Centers for Exceptional Students in Westminster, had been sued at least five times in Arizona over staff allegedly breaking students’ arms and wrists before opening its first school in Colorado in 2024.

In Colorado, schools for students with severe behavioral, mental health, or special education needs are called facility schools. They serve as placements of last resort for children whom the public schools can’t or won’t serve. Facility schools are funded in two ways: directly by the state and by school districts that pay tuition to send students there.

As the number of facility schools dwindled over the years and more students were stuck on waiting lists, state lawmakers in 2023 boosted funding and created a new, less clinical category called a “specialized day school” in the hopes that more schools would open. It worked. In the past three years, 11 new facility schools have been approved by the Colorado Facility Schools Board of Education, and more are seeking to open.

But issues with the Austin Centers for Exceptional Students, one of the first specialized day schools the board approved, raise questions about whether the process lacked adequate safeguards.

The current requirements are “pretty minimal,” Colorado Senior Assistant Attorney General Jason Langberg said at a Thursday meeting of the Facility Schools Board.

For instance, the rules “do not include provisions for out-of-state investigations,” a spokesperson for the Colorado Department of Education told Chalkbeat, meaning that Colorado might remain in the dark about lawsuits involving an out-of-state school that is seeking to open here.

There is also no expiration date on facility school approval, the spokesperson said. And Langberg said the board has “almost no discretion” about whether to let a school open under the current rules. If a potential school meets basic requirements, the board must approve it, he said.

Among the changes the board is considering are:

Requiring potential facility schools to disclose in their applications any legal settlements, and any pending or finalized lawsuits, civil rights complaints, state complaints, or licensure proceedings within the previous five years.
Allowing the board to use its discretion to approve, conditionally approve, or deny any facility school application based on a variety of factors, including the applicant’s history.
Explicitly requiring facility schools to follow state rules on the restraint and seclusion of students and submit data to the state each year on their use of those practices.
Increasing the frequency and specificity with which facility schools are monitored by the state from “periodically” to at least once every two years.
Creating a process for parents, advocates, attorneys, and school districts to file complaints alleging violations of the state facility school rules.

Changing state rules is not a fast process. If the process goes to plan, the new rules would go into effect in July 2027, an education department spokesperson said.

One board member asked Langberg on Thursday what happens in the meantime if a facility school is violating state rules. The Colorado Department of Education is currently conducting “a broader review” of the Austin Centers for Exceptional Students after additional concerns about its restraint practices, staffing sufficiency, and more surfaced while the school was under a state corrective action plan this past school year.

Langberg said he’d prepare a memo and share it with the board.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado needed more specialized schools. Now this one is facing scrutiny for restraining students.

2026-06-05T18:10:21+00:00

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Mark Brostrom’s 11-year-old son was struggling in public school when his school district suggested what seemed like a better fit: a new specialized school near the family’s home.

Brostrom remembers thinking that the Austin Centers for Exceptional Students in Westminster could offer the flexibility that his son, who has autism, needed to thrive. A bright boy who scores well on tests, his son also sometimes responded to stress by destroying property or harming himself, his father said.

But Brostrom quickly became disillusioned with The ACES, as the school calls itself.

His son, whom Chalkbeat is not naming to protect his privacy, experienced multiple restraints, including one that the 11-year-old called “the crucifixion,” Brostrom said. The boy described being pinned to the floor on his back with staff members holding his arms and legs, a situation that his father said only made the boy struggle harder.

“It was so obvious that they did not have his safety in mind,” said Brostrom, who pulled his son out of the school after the boy came home with scratches and bruises. “Their intention was to get him to stop behaviors through fear and coercion.”

The ACES is what Colorado calls a facility school, a placement of last resort for students with intense behavioral, mental health, or special education needs whom public schools can’t or won’t serve. As the number of facility schools dwindled, state lawmakers in 2023 created a new, less clinical category called a “specialized day school” — opening the door for providers like The ACES.

Now, less than two years after opening, the school faces state sanctions and a potential loss of funding after complaints about how it physically restrains students, suggesting the state’s changes meant to grow the number of facility schools lacked adequate safeguards.

Colorado education officials put The ACES under a rare corrective action plan, and two of the state’s largest districts say they pulled all or some of their students out of the school this spring. Facility schools are funded directly by the state but districts also pay tuition to send children there.

“They have this way of doing things that is not something we’re going to accept in Colorado,” said Meryl Duguay, an advocate for students with disabilities who sounded the alarm with state education officials after visiting The ACES this spring.

To report this story, Chalkbeat spoke with four parents who either removed their children from The ACES or decided not to send them after going on a tour, as well as a former teacher who said she left because she disagreed with how The ACES treats students and staff.

Chalkbeat also interviewed advocates and attorneys in Colorado and Arizona, where The ACES was founded more than 30 years ago, and reviewed state documents and local police reports obtained via public records requests, as well as documentation provided by parents.

Meryl Duguay is an advocate for students with disabilities. After visiting the Austin Centers for Exceptional Students, she expressed concerns to the Colorado Department of Education.

Officials with The ACES, including President Garen Austin, declined to be interviewed. The school provided written statements in response to Chalkbeat questions.

The school said many students are referred there because “they exhibit severe behavioral challenges” and may require “physical management interventions to prevent injury to themselves or others,” especially when they first arrive. Minor bruising may unintentionally occur when a student is restrained, The ACES said, and students are examined by a nurse afterward. The evaluation is documented and parents are notified of “any identified concerns.”

“While we cannot comment on individual student cases for privacy reasons, this school year we have occasionally found minor bruises and no significant injuries,” The ACES said.

The ACES said it responded “promptly and proactively” to the state corrective action plan by expanding training, strengthening policies and procedures, increasing supervision, and enhancing documentation and internal reviews.

“The ACES is committed to continuous improvement and to providing safe, high-quality educational services for students with significant and specialized needs,” the school said. “Our focus remains on helping students build the behavioral, emotional, and academic skills necessary to successfully return to their referring school district.”

The ACES was sued in Arizona over broken arms

The ACES, which has five locations in Arizona, was one of the first of the new category of facility schools approved by the Colorado Department of Education. An Arizona Department of Education spokesperson said The ACES is in good standing there.

But court records show that The ACES has been sued at least five times in Arizona, dating back to 2002. Four cases involve allegations that staff members broke students’ arms during restraints. Another alleges that staff members broke a student’s wrist.

All five Arizona lawsuits were either dismissed, settled, or forced to go through arbitration, court records show. The ACES has parents sign an agreement that says any dispute arising out of behavioral intervention must be “decided by binding arbitration only, not a judge or jury,” according to the lawsuits and advocates in Arizona.

The ACES required Colorado parents to sign the same agreement, copies provided to Chalkbeat by parents and advocates show.

The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights is also investigating a complaint out of Arizona alleging that The ACES uses restraint too much and inappropriately, causing injuries, according to a copy of the complaint provided by Hope Kirsch, the attorney who filed it.

In approving The ACES as a facility school in Colorado, the state education department said it followed a “thorough process” in which The ACES submitted budget projections, curriculum information, staff licensure information, its educational policies and procedures, and more.

But Colorado didn’t look into The ACES’ operations in Arizona. “The rules do not include provisions for out-of-state investigations,” a department spokesperson said.

In Colorado, many students are placed at facility schools because the special education options in their local school districts can’t meet their needs. Michelle Abeyta’s 10-year-old grandson, who has autism, started at The ACES soon after it opened in the fall of 2024.

“Looking back, it all sounded really good on the surface,” Abeyta said. But as time went on, she said, “I started to see through the cracks of the facade.”

Her grandson started refusing to get out of bed or eat breakfast for fear of being sent to the school’s behavior intervention room, where he’d been made to stand silently facing the wall, she said.

Then this winter, he came home with fingerprint-sized bruises on his arms, said Abeyta, the boy’s legal guardian. He told his grandmother that he’d gotten into a fight and been restrained by school staff. Abeyta said there was no mention of it in his daily report from the school.

“I feel betrayed, I feel angry, and I feel lied to,” said Abeyta, who pulled her grandson out of the school in mid-April. “I am deeply saddened that … so many kids now have trauma, or further trauma, from a place that was supposed to help them.”

The former teacher at The ACES in Colorado, who asked that her name not be used for fear of retribution, said The ACES was the first school to train her to hold a student against the wall or on the floor, even though she’d worked in special education for years. Public records reviewed by Chalkbeat show other teachers told state officials similar things. The ACES said some of those comments were “simply inaccurate” and that its staff receive approximately 34 hours of crisis and behavior intervention training per year.

The teacher said she refused to restrain her students but did sometimes send them to the behavior intervention room. She said her last straw was early this year, when she saw a paraprofessional grab the wrist of a female student who’d walked out of the room. The next thing the teacher saw was the girl on the ground with four men holding her arms and legs and “someone else in her face telling her she needed to calm down,” she said.

“This is the first job I’ve had to leave midyear,” the teacher said. “I worry about those kids every day.”

A Westminster Police Department report from January, which Chalkbeat obtained in a public records request, describes an incident consistent with the teacher’s account.

While several staff members told the police that the restraint followed the regular protocol, one paraprofessional said his colleague had grabbed the girl from behind “almost like a tackle.” He described that approach as “a bit off.”

He said that while he and the others were holding the girl on the ground, she said “over and over” that the men were hurting her. He said the colleague who’d tackled her was “pushing down with more pressure than what they were trained to do.”

The police investigated the incident as misdemeanor child abuse but concluded there wasn’t probable cause to charge anyone with a crime, the report says.

According to the police report, the girl had been sent to the room for sleeping in class.

The ACES is facing scrutiny in Colorado

The paper trail of sanctions against The ACES in Colorado starts in January. After school districts raised concerns about The ACES unnecessarily restraining students with “unnecessary force,” the state education department ordered the corrective action plan.

The plan limited the use of restraint to when a student displays a weapon or demonstrates “a serious, probable, imminent threat of bodily harm.” It said The ACES can’t use restraint as punishment, can’t put “excess pressure” on a student’s chest or back, and must release a student within 15 minutes unless it’s unsafe.

The plan also required The ACES to submit documentation of any restraints to the department every day. A log obtained in a public records request shows The ACES reported more than 460 instances of “physical management” — which includes but isn’t limited to physical restraint of students — between January 27 and May 8. The ACES said only 25% of those instances were restraints. The school served 85 students during that time period, The ACES said.

The ACES was also required to send weekly documentation of the time students spent in the behavior intervention room. But The ACES told the state in late March that it had closed the room, according to an education department spokesperson.

In a statement, the ACES said it was complying with the corrective action plan but was “still awaiting specific details” about the concerns that led to it and an opportunity to respond to them.

“Our actions have shown measurable positive impact in reducing behavioral interventions and supporting increased academic engagement as we create the best possible learning environment for our students and staff,” the statement said.

In February, a parent complained to the state that The ACES improperly restrained their 12-year-old son. In late April, a Colorado Department of Education complaints officer agreed.

According to the written decision, the boy was using “inappropriate and aggressive language” toward a paraprofessional, who told him to face the wall. The boy said, “Make me.” The paraprofessional grabbed the boy by the wrist and held his arm behind his back, a move that was described in his daily report as a “standing therapeutic hold.”

But the state found that the hold was improper. The 12-year-old verbally challenging the paraprofessional wasn’t an emergency, and the boy didn’t pose any danger, the complaints officer wrote. It also wasn’t clear that the less restrictive method that the paraprofessional tried first — making the boy face the wall — had failed. In its written decision, the department reminded The ACES that restraint can’t be used as a punishment.

Following that incident, the family pulled their son out of The ACES, the decision says. The paraprofessional resigned after being told he would be fired, it says.

As a consequence for violating the rules, the state ordered all staff at The ACES to review the 13-page decision and the state rules by June 5. In a mid-May statement, The ACES said the consequence “was minimal and has been completed.”

In late April, the state education department sent The ACES another letter. It said that in the course of implementing the corrective action plan, the department received additional information about The ACES’ restraint practices, “staffing sufficiency,” and more. The “volume and nature” of the information showed “that a broader review is warranted,” Paul Foster, assistant commissioner for exceptional student services, wrote in the letter.

“Ultimately — in the event of continued non-compliance — we could withdraw state funding,” a department spokesperson said. The department is aiming to complete the review in 90 days.

The ACES said in a statement that it welcomes the opportunity to work with the state “to review past actions and develop strategies for further improvement.”

“Over the past several months, we have implemented numerous enhancements related to training, documentation, oversight, and incident review, and we remain committed to continuous improvement,” the school said.

In May, a spokesperson for the Douglas County School District said it had relocated all of its students out of The ACES “due to their restraint practices.”

A spokesperson for the Jeffco Public Schools, which owns the former elementary school building where The ACES is housed, said in mid-May it was “conducting a student-by-student review of all placements at the facility.” The district said it is not placing any new students at The ACES until the school has fully satisfied the state’s corrective action plan.

Neither Douglas County nor Jeffco school officials responded to questions about the size of their student enrollment at The ACES.

A spokesperson for Denver Public Schools said in mid-May the district plans to keep using The ACES because it has no concerns. Denver said it has 16 students placed there.

Former state Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, who sponsored the 2023 bill aimed at fixing the facility school shortage, said she doesn’t think more legislation is needed. She said it’s up to the state to enforce the rules in place and perhaps “button up” the facility school approval process.

“These are honestly our most vulnerable students,” said Zenzinger, who is now a Jefferson County commissioner. “That means they deserve a higher standard.”

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Why the Philadelphia school district will phase out a special education program

2026-05-19T15:54:34+00:00

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The Philadelphia school district plans to wind down a special education program that separates some students with additional learning needs into their own classrooms.

The program, called Intensive Learning Support or ILS, is meant to boost students who are significantly academically behind their peers. Classes are generally small, with fewer than 20 students, and include special education interventions along with general curriculum instruction. The district declined to share how many students were in the program this school year.

But the district plans to end the program at the end of this school year in an effort to educate more special education students alongside their peers, said Nathalie Nérée, the district’s chief of special education and diverse learners. Many ILS students will be placed into general education classrooms, which can have more than 30 students, and will get additional services throughout the school day, she said.

“We look at student data, we look at their growth. For the growth of students in intensive learning support, it was minimal to none,” said Nérée. The district looks at students’ standardized test scores and progress on their Individualized Education Program goals to monitor growth.

The move, Nérée said, is part of her effort to end Philly’s practice of educating a large share of special education students separately from their peers. Including all students in mainstream classrooms is backed by a body of research that has found students with disabilities benefit socially and cognitively when they learn in a general education environment. But some experts contest those findings, and several Philly teachers said they feared the decision would leave students without necessary support and stretch teachers impossibly thin.

The change does not impact what services and how many hours of support students in ILS classes are supposed to receive. Rather, it would largely reorganize when and how students receive those interventions. Officials want special education teachers to “push in” support to general education classrooms and “pull out” students to receive additional services. The district would mostly reassign ILS teachers to learning support positions to provide these services.

The program supports students who are several grades behind in some academic skills, like literacy. But in some schools, ILS has “become a bit of a dumping ground” for students whose needs are not well understood, said one ILS teacher who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized by the district to speak publicly.

The teacher said she believed some of her students could thrive in a general education classroom too, so long as they got the additional support they needed. But she feared the district does not have enough resources or staff to guarantee that.

“There are certain kids who are just going to get lost, who do need more support,” she said.

Philly wants more students with disabilities in general education

Nérée said her commitment is to work with every school and family to ensure kids get the special education services they need while accessing high-quality curriculum. But she also said she worries about how much the district has historically relied on separating kids with disabilities and additional learning needs from their peers to educate them.

Federal law requires that students with disabilities learn alongside their general education peers, in what’s called the “least restrictive environment,” as much as possible.

But in Philadelphia last school year, fewer than 40% of the district’s 23,000 special education students spent the vast majority of their school time in general education classrooms, according to state data. That’s a far smaller proportion than the state average of 60%. It means Philly’s special education students spend more time secluded from their peers than in most other districts.

Since Nérée joined the district in 2023, she said she has been working to undo a system that frequently separates special education students.

Assigning students to ILS classes was meant to give students extra help to reach grade level academic skills, “not a forever sentence of being in a segregated classroom,” said Nérée. “Unfortunately, there are places where that’s what it resulted in.”

The wind down of the ILS program doesn’t put an end to all separate special education classrooms. There will still be other kinds, including autistic support, life skills, and emotional support classes. Some ILS students could attend these classes if their evaluation team determines it would be the best fit, Nérée said.

Margie Wakelin, senior attorney in the Philadelphia office of the Education Law Center, said she supports Nérée’s focus on including more students with disabilities in general education classes. But she said the district needs to provide more resources, like staff training and support teachers, for that effort to be successful.

“It’s not just an easy, ‘Oh, we’ll close out a program, and then these kids will be included,’’’ said Wakelin. “Time and time and time again, we’ve learned that inclusion works, but it takes thoughtfulness, it takes resources, it takes support for these kids to be successful.”

Views differ on best approach to special education

The change is part of a national conversation — still hotly debated — about how best to educate students with disabilities. Many experts and advocates have long urged schools to include special needs students alongside their general education peers, and studies have supported that strategy.

But other experts question that approach. Douglas Fuchs, a fellow at the American Institutes for Research and a research professor at Vanderbilt University, said there is no conclusive evidence that students with disabilities do better in general education classrooms. Fuchs’s review of research into inclusion, published last year, found the method of how schools teach those students can make a difference.

Research shows that intensive, systematic, and consistent instruction can help boost the achievement of students with disabilities. But that kind of instruction is often difficult to provide in crowded general education classrooms, he said.

Moving special needs students from an intensive environment like ILS to larger general education classes is “precisely the wrong strategy,” he said.

That’s the concern some Philly teachers have as well.

One ILS teacher said leaders at her school have told her to recommend all her students to general education classrooms for next year. But she disagrees with that directive. Some of her students, who are middle-school-aged, are still working on writing their names and addresses.

“My kids could never be successful in those rooms,” she said.

5 new public schools opening this fall in the Bronx and Queens

2026-05-05T14:14:39+00:00

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Five new schools are expected to open this fall in the Bronx and Queens: Two will exclusively serve students with significant disabilities, three will have an arts focus, and all promise to incorporate project-based learning.

The new schools aim to ease overcrowding in neighborhoods that have historically been bursting at the seams, city officials said. They also are geared to expand access to seats in District 75, a network of public schools for students with significant disabilities, so students don’t have to travel as far to school.

“Our new schools reflect a bold commitment to expanding access to high-quality, rigorous learning experiences for every student, in every neighborhood,” schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said in a statement on Thursday.

Several of the new schools have been in the works for a while, but the move to open new campuses comes at a time when the nation’s largest school system is getting smaller, and the city is increasingly eyeing school mergers as it grapples with enrollment losses. There were roughly 793,000 K-12 students, according to preliminary data for this school year. That’s down about 15% from the 2019-20 school year, when the city served about 912,815 students.

The city opened seven new schools this year and nine new schools the year before. The city recently nixed plans to open New Generation Technology High School, a proposed selective school with an AI focus after community members pushed back on its admissions process and raised concerns about AI use in the classroom.

Here’s a look at the schools expected to open in September:

Academy of Cultural Excellence

Long Island City, Queens

The school, which will serve prekindergarten to fifth grade, aims to foster “confident, curious, and compassionate learners,” according to its website. It will embrace project-based learning and the arts, city officials said. Starting in third grade, students will “co-design an individualized learning pathway, allowing them to pursue areas of interest while maintaining strong academic foundations,” said a blurb on MySchools.

The school will not be zoned, according to MySchools. But students from the nearby P.S./I.S. 78, which had a waitlist last year for students in its zone, will get priority.

The school is in District 30, which has long been overcrowded and is one of the few districts where enrollment has been growing. The district is also home to the largest number of new apartments constructed in the past year — more than 2,470 — according to 2026 data from the New York City School Construction Authority. Yet, city officials expect enrollment to decline in the district, along with most others, over the next decade.

Bronx School of Arts & Exploration

Highbridge/South Crotona, Bronx

This District 75 school, for students in grades K-8, will have an arts focus, integrating core academics with visual and performing arts. It will also employ project-based learning and performance-based assessments, school officials said.

The Bronx School of Hip-Hop

Claremont, Bronx

Students at this 9-12 school will study hip-hop — emceeing, DJing, and graffiti — in the borough that birthed the art form. The school will also teach entrepreneurship and civic engagement through music while creating pathways to college, internships, and careers for students, school officials previously said.

“It’s about keeping the Bronx at the center of a culture we gave to the world,” Carl Manalo, the high school superintendent for Districts 7, 9, and 12, said when the city approved the school in December.

Each classroom will operate like a studio, according to the school’s MySchools page, with units culminating in showcases for students’ original work.

Admissions are based on what’s known as “Ed. Opt,” where a certain number of students performing at “high, medium, and low” academic levels are accepted.

Queens Academy for Innovative Learning

Astoria, Queens

Students from grades 6-12 at this District 75 schools will focus on STEM and work-based learning to help prepare them for jobs after high school.

West Q Elementary (P.S. 437)

Woodside, Queens

This new elementary school in Queens’ District 24 will seek to blend math and literacy instruction with more hands-on projects. According to its MySchools page, each grade in the K-5 school will take on a “signature project that connects classroom learning to real-world experiences.” District 24 has roughly 1,300 open seats across its middle and elementary schools, but roughly a third of its 83 school buildings were listed as overcrowded last year, according to city data. The district is also projected to lose among the most students of any district in the next decade, according to the city’s predictions.

West Q will not be zoned, but will give priority to students who live in the district, according to its MySchools page.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Something felt off about Newark Public Schools’ special education numbers, so officials asked Rutgers for help

2026-04-30T19:30:19+00:00

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Kristen Victorino remembers the moment Newark officials laid out a problem to her in 2023: an unprecedented surge in referrals for students with disabilities.

The referrals felt “never-ending,” administrators in Newark Public Schools’ Office of Special Education told Victorino, an associate professor of speech-language pathology at Rutgers School of Health Professions.

In a city where more than a third of residents are born outside of the United States, Newark educators feared students were being mislabeled as having speech or language disabilities when, in reality, they were still learning English, Victorino said.

She and her team started to look at the district’s data with the help of funding from the Rutgers Equity Alliance for Community Health. Her team found that during the 2022-23 school year, Newark Public Schools conducted more than 1,200 initial special education evaluations, a rate district leaders felt “was a real surge at that time” due to an influx of new students in the district, many who didn’t speak English, Victorino said.

Rutgers also found barriers affecting accurate evaluations of students who came from homes where English wasn’t the primary language, such as an overreliance on speech-language test scores when testing may not have happened in a student’s primary language, time constraints for evaluations, and communication gaps.

Victorino’s work with Newark led to a needs assessment that detailed problem areas and created training sessions with district employees and contractors. They also implemented a “train the trainer model” where four district speech language pathologists from different parts of the city receive extra training from Rutgers and serve as peer leaders. Rutgers’ goal is to make the evaluation process more accurate for students who don’t speak English but their work is just starting.

They will know if they were successful by comparing future evaluations to prior ones and looking at the percentage of bilingual students identified for speech-language services over time.

Newark’s public schools are also culturally diverse, Victorino said, and if evaluators are not trained to distinguish the linguistic differences between English and other languages, such as Spanish, evaluations can get complicated.

“So many of these kids are bilingual or in some way culturally and linguistically diverse, and they just didn’t feel like it’s possible that they all have disabilities,” Victorino added. “They said, ‘what can we be doing differently?’”

That surge in evaluations came as the district was still recovering from the pandemic, and experienced a rise in English language learners that began before 2020, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. Typically, initial evaluations for special education services are conducted by a team of school leaders, including administrators, special education teachers, psychologists, and specialists who may determine speech, language, motor, and functional skills.

Multiple studies show that bilingual students and English learners are often misidentified as having language or speech disorders. That presents a challenge for a district like Newark, New Jersey’s largest school system, which is home to more than 1,200 English language learners who speak Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, French, or Haitian Creole.

Paul Brubaker, Newark Public Schools communications director, did not respond to questions about the district’s rate of special education evaluations or how many students were potentially misidentified for speech and language services.

Most of the initial evaluations for speech and language are conducted by contractors hired outside of the district, while others are done by the district’s Child Study Team members, Victorino said. Data about initial special education evaluations is not publicly available at the state or district level.

Victorino’s team held focus groups with district employees and contracted evaluators and found underlying issues. She said there were miscommunications around “what the expectations for evaluation should be, what the district wants to see, versus what the evaluators think they’re supposed to do.”

Arlene Hernandez, a bilingual speech language pathologist contracted by the district who participated in Rutgers focus groups and training, said she has seen how easy it is to get evaluations wrong. Across the country, there is a shortage of bilingual speech-language pathologists.

“We want to do good for our kids in our community and it’s so important that we are looking at language differences,” Hernandez said. “It’s so important that we are looking at language differences and being culturally competent when it comes to determining whether a child presents with a language disorder.”

Victorino’s team found that while there was district documentation to show a student spoke a language other than English, evaluators were not thoroughly interviewing families or noting how much they were using the language at home, making it harder to determine whether students were being tested in their primary language. They also found that standardized speech tests used to measure a student’s communication skills against their peers could be leading to inaccurate results.

Hernandez agreed that it’s important to test children in their primary language and explained how those tests could mislead evaluators. Show a child from Puerto Rico or Ecuador a picture of apple pie and ask them to identify it, she said, and they may not know the answer.

“They don’t know apple pie, but they know flan,” Hernandez said. “So, because somebody has never seen it, does that mean they have a disorder?”

A student’s sentence structure could also lead to inaccurate results, Hernandez added. A native Spanish speaker may say “I have bag brown” – applying the grammatical rules of Spanish to English – instead of “I have a brown bag.”

“Not knowing these types of differences makes it so that many times children are being referred for language services or for special education services, when in reality, what they really need is more support in learning English,” Hernandez said.

The goal is not to overburden the system with students who may not require special education services at all, Victorino added.

“Then the kids who do need it will be better able to access the services available to them.”

Clarification May 1, 2026: The story was updated to reflect that the Rutgers research did not prove that standardized speech tests used to measure Newark students’ communication skills against their peers lead to inaccurate results.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Parents say Detroit schools fail to complete special ed evaluations on time. Here is what the data shows.

2026-04-28T10:00:01+00:00

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Many students in the Detroit school district are not receiving special education evaluations within the time frame required by state and federal law, according to data shared last week with the school board.

Of the 1,680 evaluation referrals the Detroit Public Schools Community District received from the start of the school year through March, 72 were not completed on time and 728 are still in process, the data shows.

The numbers, which were given to board members during a study session, underscore what advocates and parents have said for years: that some students in DPSCD and other districts across the state are missing out on crucial services due to delays in the process.

Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said the district has improved its number of on-time evaluations, but it needs to continue to establish a “no-excuse culture” around evaluation times.

“The standard is 100% ,” he said of the requirements of the law.

District officials pointed to some circumstances beyond their control to explain the numbers. Lohren Nzoma, assistant superintendent of the Division of Exceptional Student Education, said some of the delays are due to conflicting parent schedules, difficulty getting in touch with families, and students moving schools or homes frequently.

LaTrice McClendon, the board’s chair, asked district administrators for a breakdown of how many students with pending evaluations are moving frequently and how many cases are delayed because parents can’t be reached.

“How many are in school, and also, how long have they been in process?” she said, asking if students are waiting for “six months, a year, two years” to receive an individualized education program, or IEP, which maps out the educational needs, goals, programs, and services schools will provide students with disabilities.

District administrators did not have the information available at the meeting, but told board members they would follow up to provide it. If evaluations are not completed on time due to situations out of the district’s control, Vitti said those reasons need to be better documented at the school-level.

An initial evaluation is a comprehensive assessment conducted by a multidisciplinary team to determine whether a child is eligible for an IEP.

Initial evaluations may be requested by parents, school staff, or public agencies when a child displays signs of having a disability. If a district requests the evaluation, a parent must provide consent for it to move forward, according to the Michigan Department of Education. Districts must complete evaluations within 30 school days.

The law allows the timeline to extend beyond 30 days when parents agree in writing before the initial deadline.

As the number of students diagnosed with disabilities has increased in DPSCD and across the state, districts have struggled to hire enough staff to keep up with demand for evaluations. National staffing shortages and inadequate state funding for special education compound the problem, Vitti said.

“The fact is, in the state of Michigan, we are not appropriately funding [special education],” he said.

The district estimates that its special education costs this school year will total more than $214 million. Local, state, and federal grants will bring in around $179 million for special education. The district will have to use more than $34.9 million from its general funds to fill the gap.

Vitti attributed some of the district’s improvements to hiring more school psychologists and speech language pathologists earlier this school year.

Corletta Vaughn, vice chair of the board, said she hears from parents that the district does not follow up about pending evaluations for long periods of time.

“People are saying that, and what’s going to happen is we’re going to do better at communicating with our families,” Nzoma said.

Here is a breakdown of the district’s data on evaluations:

Administrators said they expect about 65% of the 728 pending initial evaluations to be done on time, while some others will get extensions.
Of the 811 complete initial evaluations this year, 637 were done on time and 102 were given permissible extensions.
Around 1,095 students who have already been identified as needing an IEP were not reevaluated on time this school year through March, up 16% from the same time in 2024.
There was a 48% decrease in the number of late annual IEP evaluations through March this year compared to the same time in 2024. Still, 249 were not completed on time.
Nearly 18% of the complaints parents filed against the district with the state stem from delayed responses to requests for initial evaluations. Another 7% of the complaints are from parents who say their children’s reevaluations were not done on time.

Changes to DPSCD’s special education system

This school year, the district revamped special education with centralized hubs at neighborhood schools. The change increased the number of self-contained classrooms from 174 to 185. Students with disabilities receive instruction and services in self-contained classrooms while they attend general education schools.

According to the district, the change streamlined administrative processes and led to stronger compliance in evaluations.

The district has reduced vacancies for special education staff from more than 100 in 2018 to as few as four at the start of the 2025-26 school year, according to DPSCD.

Recruitment and retention efforts, such as a $15,000 incentive to keep special education staff in the district, as well as programs for current staff to earn new certifications, have driven the change, Vitti said.

The main area the district still needs to improve, said Vitti, is customer service.

“We have to treat all parents better, but we have to be particularly more empathetic with our [special education] parents,” he said. “They are struggling more than the general ed students. They have more questions, they have more issues, they have more concerns.”

Hannah Dellinger covers Detroit schools for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

New study finds special education changes students’ academic trajectories for the better

2026-03-30T11:04:55+00:00

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act turned 50 last year. Many advocates and politicians heralded the anniversary. At the same time, some observers have been wondering how well the law has succeeded in helping students.

A study released Monday sheds new light on this question, offering among the most comprehensive and rigorous answers to date. The findings were strikingly positive. Across three states, access to special education services changed students’ academic trajectories for the better.

The gains were “immediate, quite large, and sustained,” says Marcus Winters, lead author of the paper and a professor at Boston University.

The results indicate that special education is working to a meaningful extent for many students who are gaining access to additional services. What the study doesn’t answer, however, is whether special education can work even better, considering the significant costs involved.

To continue reading, click here.

Authorizer of Colorado’s ‘first public Christian school’ settles with family for $20,000

2026-03-09T23:24:19+00:00

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The authorizer of Riverstone Academy, a controversial “public Christian school” in southern Colorado, has agreed to pay the parents of a student $20,000 to settle a special education complaint filed by the family last fall.

Many details of the family’s complaint and the settlement are unclear because privacy laws shield key documents and information from the public.

The highly redacted settlement agreement shows that the $20,000 payout is meant to cover “compensatory services” for the student at the center of the complaint. In general, compensatory services are makeup special education services that school systems must pay for, sometimes in response to a complaint or lawsuit.

Riverstone’s authorizer, Education reEnvisioned Board of Cooperative Educational Services, or ERBOCES, will pay the family in three installments over the next 10 months, according to a copy of the settlement agreement obtained by Chalkbeat through a public records request. ERBOCES is one of 21 publicly funded education co-ops in Colorado.

These co-ops are meant to support school districts. This one started Colorado’s ‘first public Christian school.’

The $20,000 settlement is the latest bump in the tumultuous life of Riverstone, which was launched last summer at the behest of a conservative law firm in order to spark a lawsuit on the question of public funding for religious schools, according to emails obtained by Chalkbeat.

Riverstone opened quietly in August with about 30 kindergarten through fifth grade students. By late January, Pueblo County officials forced school officials to close Riverstone’s building — a former office in an industrial area — because of ongoing health and safety violations.

The school is now operating out of a temporary location that school officials won’t reveal.

In February, Riverstone and ERBOCES sued the state, alleging religious discrimination over the possibility that the state could withhold public funding from the school following an audit underway now.

As part of the $20,000 settlement, ERBOCES will be required to provide training to Riverstone, the agreement says. Information about the type of training is redacted.

The settlement also specifies that ERBOCES denies the family’s allegations and that the parents agree not to sue ERBOCES over the claims made in the settlement.

Finally, the agreement stipulates that ERBOCES and the family can’t publicly disclose the settlement terms. In response to inquiries, “Parties agree that they will limit any verbal or written response to the following: ‘This matter has been settled by agreement, and no further comment can be made,’” the agreement states.

The agreement was signed on ERBOCES’ behalf by Suzanne Romero, who is listed on the group’s website as director of special education and full-time programs. The signing date was redacted.

Minutes from the Jan. 15 meeting of the five-member Riverstone Academy board shed some light on the decision to settle the family’s complaint.

Under a heading titled “Mediation Update,” the partially redacted minutes indicate that without a settlement, there could be “continued litigation.” It also said Riverstone’s lawyer recommended settling based on “Public relations impact” and “Cost, risk and likelihood of success.”

In response to a public records request from Chalkbeat, Colorado Department of Education officials said they could not provide any complaint or the results of any investigation because special education complaints and findings are confidential under state law.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

NJ working group says special education program goals must be measurable, parents need more time to prepare

2026-03-05T21:30:59+00:00

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New Jersey’s parents of students with disabilities could soon have more resources and a stronger voice in shaping their child’s special education program following recommendations drafted by a state-mandated working group.

The 27-member group made up of educators, advocates, and parents outlined 17 recommendations aimed at making individualized education programs, or IEPs, more consistent, accessible, and effective for New Jersey students. An IEP is a legally required plan that details services a child with a disability should be receiving in school.

The report calls for significant improvements in how schools develop IEPs and emphasizes the need for transparency, accountability, measurable goals, and parent involvement in the process. Some of the recommendations include creating one statewide IEP system, providing parents with draft IEPs at least five working days before a meeting, and requiring the state to develop a consistent level of performance structure, which forms the foundation of an IEP.

The working group, established by a law signed under former Gov. Phil Murphy last summer, released its final report in January and created the recommendations by looking at gaps in current school IEP practices across New Jersey.

Introduced as a bill by Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz, the law also mandated that schools provide parents with a written statement of items to be discussed at an IEP meeting, no later than two business days before it takes place.

The working group submitted its 17 recommendations to the state’s education department and now are awaiting a response and legislative action, said Peg Kinsell, policy director at SPAN Parent Advocacy Network, who was part of the state working group.

Kinsell said “education, empowerment, changes to the system, and monitoring” are all part of the improvements the group recommended to ensure parents get a seat at the table and consistency is set across school districts.

“It just is the responsibility of the schools, and ultimately the state, to empower families to be the active participants in this IEP process on all sides of the equation from the beginning,” Kinsell added.

The new reports come as state and local leaders look for ways to bolster the state’s special education system, which has experienced an increase in the number of children needing services. In New Jersey, autism rates among 8-year-olds without intellectual disabilities spiked by 500% from 2000 to 2016 and overall cases among children with intellectual disabilities tripled during the same period, according to a 2023 report from researchers at Rutgers University.

In Newark, researchers found that as of 2020, 1 in 20 children had been diagnosed with autism, compared with 1 in 167 in 2000. Newark Public Schools has also experienced an increase in students with disabilities; last school year, nearly 7,000 students with disabilities enrolled in the district.

According to the report, the group looked at five priorities: present levels of academic achievement and functional performance, goals and objectives, implementation of IEPs, monitoring of student progress, and IEP team collaboration and consultation.

Kinsell, who has more than two decades of experience working on special education advocacy, said the state should take a closer look at how school districts are implementing IEPs.

The working group’s recommendations called to strengthen accountability by adding a “special education service implementation” category to the state’s evaluation system for school districts known as the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum, or NJQSAC.

The group also recommended standardizing documents and professional development so all IEP team members, including parents, understand what implementation of services looks like.

“We have to stop thinking special education has its own laws, its own rules, its own process, they’re still part of the educational system,” Kinsell added. “Why don’t we have really explicit progress monitoring of special education? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Several recommendations also focus specifically on parent involvement, a recurring concern raised throughout the working group sessions.

Under IDEA, the federal law that ensures students with disabilities receive special education services, an IEP is meant to be drafted collaboratively with parents. Kinsell says parents have reported receiving the document at the meeting itself, leaving little to no time for review, prepare questions, or advocate effectively for their child.

The group also recommends expanding parent training resources and translating materials to ensure families who don’t speak English can participate in the process.

Kinsell hopes the new report will “keep the conversation going” about the need to bolster New Jersey’s special education program.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Project 2025 author and top Trump official: Special education protections and funding will remain

2026-01-14T23:07:59+00:00

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The future of special education remains up in the air, but the Trump administration is feeling pressure to assuage the concerns of parents of students with disabilities that efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education could put their children at risk.

That was one of the key takeaways from Chalkbeat’s conversation with Lindsey Burke, a Department of Education official and author of the education chapter of the conservative blueprint Project 2025.

Burke, though, said that some of Project 2025’s most controversial ideas, including deep budget cuts to schools, aren’t currently on the table. She also said there’s “no reason to anticipate” funding freezes similar to the temporary withholding of $7 billion that threw school districts into chaos last summer.

But the Education Department is just one “decision point” on federal spending, and the department remains committed to ending grants it deems wasteful or not aligned with their priorities, Burke said. In her confirmation hearing, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon indicated the department would not cut funding to schools, but is currently seeking cuts to a number of programs and has already cancelled $2 billion in funds, according to Burke.

A year in, the Trump administration has surprised many observers with its far-reaching efforts to close the Department of Education, often a conservative hope but rarely a presidential priority. Late last year, the administration moved a number of education programs to the Labor Department. These efforts face ongoing legal challenges and sharp criticism from congressional Democrats.

The administration has also invited state leaders to seek waivers from federal requirements. It recently approved a waiver in Iowa, though the changes were relatively modest. At the same time, Trump’s Education Department has aggressively used its civil rights arm to target left-leaning education policies related to race and gender.

Burke, the department’s deputy chief of staff for policy and programs, acknowledged that the administration’s efforts to move education functions to the Labor Department might seem like a “blunt instrument.” Ensuring that education supports the development of a strong workforce is an important federal role, she said, but it’s not the only purpose of education.

“Education really is about forming human souls,” Burke said in response to an audience question, “and about really preparing individuals, preparing students to inherit the blessings and liberties of a free society.”

Here are some of the most interesting things we heard in our conversation with Burke.

The administration wants parents of students with disabilities not to worry

The administration has no plans to cut federal funding for special education and may even increase spending, Burke said.

“Fully funding IDEA has been of interest to many people on both sides of the aisle over the decades,” Burke said.

Burke said she didn’t want to preempt budget negotiations, but the administration plans to fund IDEA at “the current levels that are out there now, and potentially additional support moving forward.” She strongly disavowed the idea of cuts: “There is no world in which anybody’s talking about any reductions in support for IDEA.”

The federal government provides about $15 billion a year to help districts cover special education costs. Under the 50-year-old Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, school districts are required to educate all students, regardless of disability, but the federal government has never lived up to its obligation to pay 40% of the cost. Trump’s most recent budget proposal called for flat funding for IDEA.

Money is just one concern for advocates for students with disabilities, who also oppose any plan to move oversight out of the Education Department. The administration’s reorganization push has not affected special education yet — though most of the staff who work on special education were fired during the government shutdown only to be brought back later in response to a lawsuit.

“We are still evaluating the future of things like special education programs,” Burke said. “We do not have an answer yet.”

Regardless of what happens, current protections for students will remain in place, she said.

Burke tacks away from some controversial Project 2025 ideas

Burke said there are no current plans to convert federal special education money into vouchers or to do away with Title I funding that supports schools serving low-income communities. Both those ideas appear in Project 2025, a flashpoint for critics of the administration.

“I’ve written on many ed policy areas over the years, and that’s not something that we are currently contemplating here at the agency,” she said of converting IDEA dollars into education savings accounts. “And of course, anything like that is something that would have to go through Congress.”

And asked whether, in her ideal world, Title I would be phased out, Burke said “no.”

That money currently provides about $18 billion in Title I money that funds extended school days, teacher training, reading tutoring and more.

“Speaking on behalf of the department, what our priority is right now is making sure that these grants are serving families well,” she said.

Nor, Burke said, has the administration taken any steps to prevent children who are undocumented immigrants from attending public school at no cost to their parents. Back in 2024, Burke was the co-author of a separate Heritage Foundation memo that proposed that states charge immigrant parents tuition — a step that would set up a challenge to the landmark Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court decision.

Burke is still hoping to persuade Congress to fully dismantle the department

Congress created the Education Department and Congress would need to approve its elimination. Burke acknowledged as much, and said the hope is that the administration can provide “proof of concept” by moving key functions to other agencies.

“Congress does have to codify this,” she said. “And so we’re hoping they look at what has transpired so far and see that it’s been effective.”

Yet Burke did not point to any concrete engagement with Congress and demurred when asked to name any Democrats who supported the effort. Some bipartisan support would be needed to overcome a Senate filibuster.

The administration has leveraged robust interpretations of executive authority to go around Congress. Litigation about the department remains pending, but the U.S. Supreme Court allowed initial cutbacks at the Education Department to move forward.

It’s unclear if department officials will follow recommendations to re-envision its research arm

Last year, the department temporarily brought on Thomas B. Fordham Institute Senior Vice President for research Amber Northern to help reimagine the department’s research arm, known as the Institute for Education Sciences. IES was decimated by early cuts from DOGE.

Northern, who has returned to her prior role at Fordham, recently delivered the recommendations to department officials, Burke indicated.

Burke said there have not been any decisions made on the future of IES. She also would not say what the recommendations were or whether Northern’s report would be publicly released. Burke did praise Northern’s work and the value of IES generally. It’s “the gem in the crown” of the Department, Burke said. Northern declined to comment.

Watch the full event here or in the recording below.

National editor Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Rutgers receives new federal grant to train special education leaders amid rising autism rates

2025-11-13T11:00:01+00:00

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As the number of children diagnosed with autism rises in New Jersey, Rutgers University is launching a new federally funded program to prepare the next generation of special education administrators.

Backed by a five-year $3.75 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the new program called Preparation of Administrators in Special Education, or PASE, will provide full scholarships and stipends for certified special education teachers to earn a doctoral degree and move into leadership roles overseeing special education programs in schools. The program is currently accepting applications, with the first group of students scheduled to begin in January 2026.

Proposed federal cuts to special education funding, staff reductions, and changes in oversight that could worsen existing challenges, particularly in low-income districts like Newark, deepen the need for strong special education leaders, said Dake Zhang, the PASE program coordinator, who also has a son with severe autism.

What’s more, President Donald Trump’s administration has attempted to terminate teacher-training grants this year and laid off federal employees overseeing special education enforcement as part of a broader plan to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.

Zhang, who is also a professor of special education at Rutgers Graduate School of Education, hopes PASE will help fill leadership roles with “people who have a strong special education background and real classroom experience.”

“Many of these [administrative] positions are filled with people who are not really special education educators, who are not certified in teaching special education, or have not had adequate experiences working with students with disabilities. That’s a concern,” Zhang added.

The new program comes as autism rates in the United States hit a record high this year, with 1 in 31 children identified with autism, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released in April. In New Jersey, the rate is slightly higher, with 1 in 29 children being diagnosed with autism, the report found.

Rutgers researchers also found that as of 2020, 1 in 20 Newark children had been diagnosed with autism, compared with 1 in 167 in 2000. That increase has been felt by Newark Public Schools, where more than 7,000 students receive special education services, and where the district is faced with a shortage of qualified special education staff and administrators. Those shortages are on par with national trends that show nearly all states reported special education teacher shortages and high turnover rates during the 2023-24 school year.

The PASE program is a partnership between Rutgers University, the University of South Carolina, and Northern Arizona University. Rutgers PASE students will participate in shared courses, internships, and virtual seminars with their peers at the South Carolina and Arizona schools. University staff will recruit students from a pool of certified special education teachers with at least three years of full-time experience working with students with disabilities.

Students will earn a doctorate in education in roughly four and a half years through hybrid coursework taught by Rutgers education experts, research projects, and a dissertation focused on improving special education administration. The students will also participate in summer residences at each university, including visits to schools serving students with disabilities in South Carolina and Arizona.

The program has received federal funding for its first year, and pending its progress, will receive funding for the following years.

Zhang said she is hopeful the funding will continue. She recalled instances where special education teachers had trouble understanding her son’s needs and “didn’t really understand what it meant to have a student with a severe disability.”

“As an administrator, one thing they should understand is the teaching load and the challenges of special education teachers. Nationwide [special education teachers] have a very high attrition rate, and that’s because of the workload, a lot of burnout, and inadequate support,” Zhang added.

Zhang said she has already received applications from educators in Newark and Camden and hopes the program will strengthen leadership pipelines in the state’s highest need districts. Rutgers faculty are also looking to partner with Newark Public Schools and local organizations that support students with disabilities to serve as mentors or guest speakers for the program.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

NYC paraprofessionals are fighting for a $10,000 raise. City Council is listening.

2025-11-12T23:56:53+00:00

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The fight for better pay for New York City’s paraprofessionals, the classroom aides who work alongside students with disabilities, will take a key step on Thursday that could make raises a reality before the end of the year.

Legislation supported by the New York City teachers union that would give paraprofessionals an immediate $10,000 annual raise is set to get a hearing in the Civil Service and Labor committee Thursday. The committee will then call a separate vote on the bill. If it passes, the bill will proceed to a vote from the full City Council.

Introduced by Manhattan council member Keith Powers, the bill is co-sponsored by 47 of the council’s 51 members, making it likely to pass its next hurdles.

The raises would bring some immediate economic relief to thousands of paraprofessionals, whose starting annual salary of $32,000 forces many to work second and third jobs to stay afloat and makes it difficult to recruit new candidates, according to paraprofessionals and United Federation of Teachers officials. There were roughly 1,400 vacant paraprofessional positions last year, according to Education Department figures, leaving students with disabilities unable to access critical services and support.

Raises would also add a major new line item to the city’s education budget — costing an estimated $260 million a year, lawmakers said in January.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who ran a campaign centered on affordability and won the endorsement of the teachers union in the general election, has expressed his support for the legislation.

“When it comes to paraprofessionals, we have so many vacant positions because these positions simply do not pay enough,” he said at a mayoral debate in June. “I support legislation in the council … which would create a recurring annual bonus so we can actually fill those positions.”

The bill was originally scheduled for a hearing next month, making it unlikely to pass before the end of the calendar year and forcing the process to start over, union officials said. But the hearing was recently moved up. “We’ve got to get these paraprofessionals paid, so we are trying to act with urgency here,” said Powers.

Using legislation to circumvent collective bargaining

The effort is notable for using the legislative process to achieve a raise for city employees, rather than the collective bargaining municipal unions conduct with the city government when contracts are renewed. A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams said in January that any pay raises should be worked out through collective bargaining and noted that paraprofessionals received a contract in 2023 that runs until 2027.

Another Adams spokesperson said officials will share their views on the bill during Thursday’s hearing and didn’t immediately say whether Adams would veto it. Adams, who leaves office Jan. 1, recently vetoed several pieces of legislation passed by the council.

Powers said he’s confident that the bill has enough support to override a mayoral veto if one comes.

Teachers union President Michael Mulgrew and other union leaders have been sounding the alarm over the past year about a paraprofessional shortage.

Some union members critical of Mulgrew — including paraprofessionals — believe the legislation was an effort to shore up support in a closely contested union election earlier this year. Union leaders should have won the raises through collective bargaining, those critics say.

“I’m not against paraprofessionals getting more money, it’s just the method,” said Marie Wausnock, a Staten Island paraprofessional who cofounded a union caucus slate called Fix Para Pay that is largely opposed to Mulgrew’s Unity caucus.

“I find it incredible a union president is taking this ask outside of collective bargaining, which is against every rule in the unionist book,” Wausnock said.

She said the pay bump would make an immediate economic difference for her and many other paraprofessionals. But she noted it won’t count toward pensions, and she worries that city lawmakers will change their mind about supporting such a large annual expense.

“It’s not a fix,” she said.

Teachers union officials say this approach was necessary because the “pattern bargaining” system that ensures municipal employees with different job titles get the same annual percent raises meant that wages for paras continued to fall further behind those of higher-paid employees like principals.

From 2005 to 2025, the starting salary for paraprofessionals increased by about $12,000, while wages for top principals rose by $86,000, according to a union analysis.

Melissa Arnold Lyon, a professor at the University at Albany studying education and labor politics, said the move fits into a larger pattern of education labor unions across the country using legislatures to win raises.

She added that public sector unions in New York might feel additional pressure to look outside of the collective bargaining process because of the state’s Taylor Law, which prohibits strikes by public sector unions, limiting their leverage in bargaining.

“It is quite difficult to reframe the base salary in New York state in particular, because of that tradition and the legal structure,” she said.

A difficult job becomes even harder

Tonia Calvo, a veteran paraprofessional who has worked in city schools for nearly two decades, said the job, while always challenging, has felt increasingly unsustainable in the wake of the pandemic, as student needs intensified and the cost of living soared.

“One woman that I work with was … trying to avoid being evicted, one was talking about paying off her car just so that she can come to work,” she said. She often meets paraprofessionals who have taken on second jobs at places like Target and ShopRite “because their salary is not enough to afford to live in this city.”

Calvo worries it’s becoming increasingly difficult to recruit new candidates unless they have other financial support.

The annual pay bump would start at around $10,800 for 2025, and would rise to $12,000 by 2030, according to the union. For Calvo, the money would go toward helping pay off her children’s student loans.

For many of her colleagues, it would allow them to stop working nights, to add a couple of “goodies” to their grocery shopping, and attend training sessions to get better at their work, she said.

“I think they’re scared to hope for more,” she said, “because they’re so used to getting less.”

Correction: Nov. 12, 2025: A previous version of this story said the council will vote on the bill during Thursday’s hearing. The vote has not yet been scheduled.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

IEPs, cheating, and math: MagicSchool’s founder on the potential and perils of AI

2025-11-06T22:30:28+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Adeel Khan was a former principal looking for his next act. It was late 2022 and ChatGPT had just been released. As he began to tinker with it, Khan had a revelation: Artificial intelligence could make teachers’ jobs dramatically easier. He decided to launch a company, MagicSchool, to help teachers harness the technology.

Today, MagicSchool is one of the most popular AI tools used by teachers. It offers a user-friendly interface where teachers can create worksheets, give students feedback on their writing, and create classroom presentations. The tool is powered by ChatGPT and Claude, another major AI tool.

MagicSchool has raised $60 million from investors and has a staff of 160. The company also has 20,000 schools that pay for the premium product. A basic version is free.

Khan says that 3.5 million U.S. educators have signed up to use MagicSchool, though he acknowledges that’s an overestimate of its true user base. In October, about 700,000 teachers in the U.S. actively used MagicSchool, he said. (There are about 4 million teachers in the country.)

I wanted to speak to Khan because his company is at the leading edge of the AI-inspired shifts in American education. I was curious whether he shared concerns about students, and even teachers, offloading their thinking to the technology. His answer was yes, somewhat to my surprise.

We also discussed whether it’s appropriate to use AI to write special education plans and AI’s struggles in math. These struggles were apparent when I tested out MagicSchool.

To continue reading, click here.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit-based mother-daughter nonprofit aids underserved youth and people with disabilities

2025-11-06T18:03:12+00:00

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Six years ago, Christina Jordan was focused on becoming a tennis star.

At West Virginia University, the Detroit native played on the college team and majored in biochemistry. But, as Jordan entered her senior year, her interest in human behavior took precedence over studying living organisms.

The decision to switch her major to psychology was personal – Jordan’s twin brothers, Christopher and Christian, have intellectual disabilities and she wanted to find a way to assist them with life’s challenges, she told BridgeDetroit.

“I’m definitely inspired by my family, and I have a purpose that I’m trying to carry out,” Christina Jordan said.

After graduating from WVU in 2020, Jordan found that purpose by teaming up with her mother, Anisha Jordan, to establish Safeway Community Services, a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving youth in underserved communities and individuals with disabilities. In the past three years, Safeway has served around 1,000 people through its autism awareness training, special education support, and community events, Christina Jordan said, including around 700 people in Detroit.

The organization also offers an independent living program for adults with disabilities.

“My mom and I created [Safeway] to help them [Christopher and Christian], and now we have them semi-independently living on their own,” Christina Jordan, 27, said. “They have support services, they are able to go to school and things like that. Once we figured out that the system that we created works, we wanted to be able to share that with other people.”

One of Safeway’s signature initiatives is a free youth summer sports camp, where kids can learn how to play football, tennis, and track and field, as well as cheer and dance. The camp has taken place at West Bloomfield High School and Metropolitan Racquet Club in past years. While the program was not offered in 2025, Christina Jordan said she hopes to bring it back next year.

Safeway has programming for a broad range of age groups, Christina Jordan said. About 80% of the children served come from Detroit Public Schools Community District, with others coming from nearby cities like Redford and Southfield.

“For the autism awareness program, those are typically all ages because we’re spreading awareness to not only the kids, but to the caregivers,” she said. “Our programs range from youth as small as three and it goes all the way up until 35.”

Another Safeway program is designed for people with or without disabilities who were formerly enrolled in college and wish to return.

“We’re working on bridging the gap and helping individuals go back to college,” added Anisha Jordan, a special education teacher. “We partner with Talladega University in Alabama, and we’re looking to expand that and get more colleges on board.

“We want to provide extended services to these individuals, whether it’s into homes, education, transportation.”

The majority of the nonprofit’s programming and events are self-funded by the Jordans. However, the organization has started to receive interest from donors this year, Christina Jordan said.

Safeway does not currently have a physical location open to the public, the organization meets the community in schools, libraries, and online, Christina Jordan said. She hopes to eventually open an office space in downtown Detroit.

On the Jordans’ agenda for next year is a plan to expand Safeway’s teen mentorship program, Safe Track. Along with the existing program in Detroit, Safe Track will be offered in Houston, Pittsburgh, and Charleston, West Virginia.

Houston has been home for Christina Jordan for the last three years and she has ties to Charlestown and Pittsburgh from her college years. In August, Safeway held a back-to-school drive in South Charleston and a financial literacy workshop for Pittsburgh Public Schools in September.

“I just noticed that those kids are eager to learn, and being able to spread and share the support that we have with other people is super important,” Christina Jordan said. “I want to be able to expand that across the U.S.”

Creating a safe space

Anisha Jordan began her teaching career more than 20 years ago at DPSCD, working with students at the Drew Transition Center and the now-closed Cooley High School. She’s now with the Redford Union School District.

The Jordans came up with the name Safeway because they want to provide a safe space for the people they serve, she said.

“That’s how I’ve always built my environments,” Anisha Jordan said. “It’s about safety first, whether they’re at home or in the schools. When working with people with disabilities, you gotta have the right people around you.”

The Jordans mostly work with people with cognitive disabilities like autism, as well as people with physical disabilities. People can sign up for the organization’s programs by calling or sending a message through the website. Donations to Safeway can be made via its Zeffy page.

Since the mother and daughter can’t handle everything on their own, they hire contract staffers and interns to facilitate programs and events, Christina Jordan said.

Keeping the faith

As an athlete, Christina Jordan knew she had to incorporate sports into Safeway’s programming.

One of the biggest events the nonprofit has hosted so far is its inaugural celebrity softball game in June at The Corner Ballpark in Corktown. The all-star local roster included R&B artist Ronnie “Detroit Zeus” Irons, Minnesota Vikings player Tavierre Thomas, former Detroit Lions player Joique Bell, and rapper Vae Vanilla.

The organization awarded its first $1,000 scholarship during the event to Lincoln Neely, a Plymouth Canton graduate who was part of the Safe Track program.

Neely, 18, is now studying computer science at Michigan State University. He said Safeway provided him with so much more than the funds. Christina Jordan worked with Neely to help him figure out where he wanted to apply to college, helped him with his essays, and explained the financial aid process. She also helped him with time management, which was essential since Neely was a high school swimmer and had trouble balancing practices with classes. As an athlete herself, Christina was able to help him prioritize.

“I faced some challenges adapting to AP classes in high school. I was going to drop them. Christina and the Safeway program helped me stick with it,” he said. “It felt good to know I had people behind me who wanted to see me be successful. Whenever I had a low point, I could go to her for help.”

Neely says he aspires to work for a company like Microsoft or Google to help create or adapt technology to make it easier for everyone to use.

Program lead Gia Thomas said it’s important that Safeway donors are able to see the impact of their contributions, whether it’s helping get someone like Neely into a good college or assisting other kids with confidence through sports.

“People will really support you when it’s a good cause,” Thomas said. “And a lot of people, when they’re donating their time and money, they sometimes don’t know where the money’s going. We make sure you see what we’re doing and that’s really important for our events.”

Christina Jordan is already seeing how Safeway is affecting her brothers.

Christopher Jordan is enrolled at Lawrence Technological University in its business management program and Christian is showing an interest in going to the college, she said.

“Seeing how much he’s [Christopher] grown, it really makes me super proud,” Christina Jordan said. “And my other brother, he’s making strides every single day.”

The Jordans said they are excited to see what comes next for Safeway.

“Just to see how far we have come is exciting and inspiring and it motivates us because now we know that we can do this. We only want to keep pushing forward,” Christina Jordan said. “Initially, our goal was to just serve the community in Detroit, but we said over the last year, we noticed that there’s a need in the US and all over the world, so we want to be able to grow as much as possible and serve as many people as possible.”

Meanwhile, Anisha Jordan is enjoying serving others with her daughter by her side.

“Being able to have Christina on my team really helps me,” she said. “I’m happy to be able to teach her to expand herself into the community and be able to help others.”

Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit. You can reach her at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.

Students with disabilities have unique rights under federal law. What if they weren’t alone?

2025-10-27T09:01:00+00:00

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Imagine two elementary students: One struggles to read because she has dyslexia. The other struggles to read because she received poor reading instruction.

The first student is entitled to specialized instruction — after an expensive evaluation process. The second student is entitled to nothing.

In a paper released Tuesday by the Center for Reinventing Public Education, education researchers Ashley Jochim and Alexander Kurz argue for rethinking the special education system and creating a legal entitlement to an adequate education for all students.

Jochim, a principal at CRPE, said she was motivated by professional and personal experience. Working on early literacy initiatives in Oakland, she saw teachers overwhelmed trying to address the disparate needs students brought to the classroom. At the same time, she saw her own daughter, who was diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia, make rapid improvements after switching from a progressive private school to a public school where she received more direct instruction.

“I started to wonder: How many kids are diagnosed with disabilities just because we fail to operationalize good instruction in the classroom?” Jochim said.

CRPE also digitized decades worth of data to chart the rise and fall of certain conditions as eligibility criteria changed. A new data dashboard also released Tuesday shows how widely special education identification varies by state as well.

When the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act passed in 1976, 8% of students were identified as students with disabilities, compared with 15% now. Diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder; learning disabilities such as dyslexia; and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, a condition included under “other health impairment” since 1999, have contributed significantly to that increase.

Jochim said parents fight for diagnoses so their child can get an adequate education. She questions whether so much energy and money would be spent on identification if schools had a legal obligation to provide an adequate education to all students.

Large-scale studies found positive outcomes associated with special education services, including greater academic growth. But CRPE points to test score gaps between special education students and their peers that have widened over time.

The paper comes as the Trump administration is considering moving special education oversight to the Department of Health and Human Services, and after hundreds of staff who worked in civil rights enforcement and special education were laid off from the Education Department.

Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, an advocacy group, called the report’s recommendations flawed and the report itself “politically ill-timed.”

Marshall said addressing broader educational problems should not come “at the expense of the rights of students who need and benefit from the lifeline that IDEA provides.”

Chalkbeat spoke with Jochim about these and related issues. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What were the trends that stood out to you in disability identification and what are the policy implications?

There’s this notion in special ed that identification rates represent some true reflection of the number of kids with disabilities, but it’s really not.

A policy change changes the number of kids identified, but it’s not changing the number of kids who need help in the classroom.

We know from national data that there’s a lot of kids struggling in school right now. The vast majority of those kids are not identified for special ed. And the question is: How are we making determinations about who gets help and how should they get help?

We have a huge achievement gap in this country, and it’s really hard to disentangle. What a learning disability diagnosis does is it asks professional staff to make a judgment about the cause of low achievement. In the case of learning disabilities, we say that the cause is based on an innate difference in the child’s brain. We’re trying to exclude all the kids whose low achievement stems from some other, presumably environmental cause.

And there are costs to this. It’s perpetuated siloes at every level of the system, because it’s a totally different set of rules of the game, totally different set of expectations.

Are you suggesting that too many kids are being identified with disabilities? Are you suggesting that we have a problem with overidentification?

I struggle with that word. There is a group of children who are struggling in school. Some subset of those kids are going to get identified, but there’s a whole bunch of them that look very similar, but they don’t get any help. What does it mean to overidentify? The point is helping kids who need help.

I would like to see us move towards a system which is designed to be responsive to students’ needs. Then we don’t have this problem of trying to understand if we’re over- or under- identifying.

What are the features of a system that helps every kid who needs help?

A lot of what we talk about is very consistent with MTSS [Multi-tiered Systems of Support, a framework schools use to identify struggling students and provide escalating interventions]. But we don’t have the resources to back up an MTSS system in practice.

If I could wave a magic wand and change one thing, it would be to root effective instructional practices into teacher preparation programs so that every teacher walks into their classroom knowing how to manage behavior effectively and knowing how to provide really high quality Tier One reading and math instruction.

To be clear, Tier One is not enough. I firmly believe that kids are going to need different amounts of instruction to reach the same end point, because they start at different points. But it would have a profound impact on the system as a whole.

We have seen some states move to universal screening and universal access to literacy tutoring for kids that are deemed at-risk based on the results of one of these screeners. So that’s an example of how this could work.

You call for the creation of a new needs-based entitlement. What could that look like? And what do you think that would do for students?

There’s a lot of programs that target funding and resources to kids who are educationally disadvantaged in some way. Special education is the only one of those that is structured as an entitlement. Schools are obligated to provide you what you need to succeed at school if you are eligible, and money is not a factor that they can consider in this. If they fail to do so, you go to the courts to seek remedies.

This does not exist for any other group of students in America. A needs-based entitlement would help to solve that problem. It would give families real power.

This is not the way to fix everything wrong in education. But if a parent could sue a district for adopting a math curriculum that is misaligned with the science of good math instruction, I’m betting that more of them would spend time getting up to speed on that science and choosing more wisely.

The Education Department has laid off most of the staff that oversee special education. Many advocates are worried about the loss of civil rights protections. Is this a good time to be questioning the underpinning of the whole system?

I am sympathetic to the concerns of disability advocates, and I want to just acknowledge the grief and the fear that exists in this moment. There’s so much happening, and there’s so much uncertainty that I think there is an impulse to preserve and protect what already exists because it feels threatened.

What I have concluded is that we have a situation in which schools can comply with the law and still fail students.

This is the moment to define the future of special education. When we simply defend what already exists, even though what exists is failing so many kids, that’s what fuels the undercurrent of the politics of resentment, the politics of slash and burn. So we really see it as an antidote to this particular political moment.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee should fully fund special education pre-K, districts say

2025-10-14T11:00:00+00:00

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Tennessee school districts have been footing the bill for special education pre-kindergarten classes, and now they want lawmakers to allocate money for it in the state’s school funding model.

Some districts are pulling hundreds of thousands of dollars from their K-12 budgets to provide classrooms for students as young as 3 with disabilities while receiving limited federal funding and no recurring state dollars. More than 9,900 pre-K students in Tennessee require special education services per a February 2025 state analysis.

Federal disabilities law requires schools provide services to these students, who often need expensive therapies and extra teachers. But the state’s Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act formula adopted in 2022 doesn’t factor them in and only provides per-student funding once they enter kindergarten.

The Germantown Municipal School District is spending over $800,000 yearly to run special education preschool. It only receives around $23,000 in state grant funding.

“Each preschool classroom requires a highly specialized team: a dually certified teacher, two paraprofessionals, therapists, and sometimes a nurse,” said Germantown Superintendent Jason Manuel. “The total cost per classroom can range from $143,000 to more than $200,000 annually, depending on the student needs and staffing.”

Last month, the Lakeland School System’s board of education unanimously approved a resolution urging lawmakers to amend the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act formula to include special education pre-K students.

The resolution renews a statewide Tennessee School Boards Association lobbying push to address the funding gap after a bill to amend the TISA formula stalled in the General Assembly in early 2025.

“If the federal government and state government is going to require this, then I think it’s essential that we address this,” said Rep. Mark White, a Shelby County Republican who sponsored the 2025 legislation.

Next year, White plans to push again for pre-K funding, though he acknowledges the estimated costs of fully funding the program have stalled progress on the issue.

Financial analysts at the legislature estimated the previous bill would cost the state more than $159 million annually.

But local educators think the estimate was skewed and overestimated how many children would be included in the program.

“We are asking whatever the figure is, give us 20% of it, give us 40% of it. It needs to be recurring dollars, or it doesn’t make sense,” White said, noting districts need to be able to rely on recurring funds rather than less stable grant funding.

Last year the Germantown district served 56 pre-school students with disabilities ranging from development delays to hearing impairments who required services such as physical and speech therapy.

And because of certain federal and state laws mandating class size and educating special education students alongside more general education peers, Germantown enrolled 65 other students in the program and spread students across eight classrooms.

Lakeland schools this year staffed four classrooms for 34 special education pre-K students aged 3-5 and served 25 general education students in the same classrooms.

Costs run more than $617,000 annually, which Lakeland schools must pull from other programs funded through TISA.

“Over the past several years, Germantown and Lakeland have worked together to raise awareness of this funding gap,” Manuel said. “Our school boards and leadership teams have met with legislators and even the governor’s finance team to advocate for a fix. Everyone agrees it’s needed, but it hasn’t yet been included in the governor’s budget.”

District leaders in west Tennessee say they’ve encountered “fundamental” misunderstandings of how special education pre-K programs work and are funded, even by state officials responsible for education oversight.

“Another reason this issue has been overlooked is confusion at the state level between voluntary pre-K programs and special education preschool programs,” Manuel said. “Voluntary pre-K serves at-risk students based on income, while special education preschool serves students ages 3-5 with developmental delays or disabilities — it’s not optional; it’s required by law.”

Voluntary pre-K receives some $85 million in state allocated funding, but Lakeland and Germantown are among the few districts in Tennessee that do not have voluntary pre-K programs. Still, even districts receiving voluntary pre-K funding aren’t being funded for separate special education students and classrooms.

Lakeland leaders last month expressed frustration at trying to bring attention to the issue at the state level, where it first stalled in 2024 over misunderstandings about what funding was available. Lakeland board member and legislative liaison Michelle Childs also criticized the focus on private school choice at last year’s special session over fully funding special education pre-K classes.

“We’ve explained it pretty well,” Childs said. “They just made the choice that they wanted to fund private school vouchers over special needs kids.”

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Education Department layoffs hit offices that oversee special education and civil rights enforcement

2025-10-13T21:08:33+00:00

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A new round of layoffs at the Education Department is depleting an agency that was hit hard in the Trump administration’s previous mass firings, threatening new disruption to the nation’s students and schools in areas from special education to civil rights enforcement and after-school programs.

The Trump administration started laying off 466 Education Department staffers on Friday amid mass firings across the government meant to pressure Democratic lawmakers over the federal shutdown. The layoffs would cut the agency’s workforce by nearly a fifth and leave it reduced by more than half its size when President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20.

The cuts play into Trump’s broader plan to shut down the Education Department and parcel its operations to other agencies. Over the summer, the department started handing off its adult education and workforce programs to the Department of Labor, and it previously said it was negotiating an agreement to pass its $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio to the Treasury Department.

Department officials have not released details on the layoffs and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. AFGE Local 252, a union that represents more than 2,700 department workers, said information from employees indicates cuts will decimate several offices within the agency.

All workers except a small number of top officials are being fired at the office that implements the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal law that ensures millions of students with disabilities get support from their schools, the union said. Unknown numbers are being fired at the Office for Civil Rights, which investigates complaints of discrimination at the nation’s schools and universities.

The layoffs would eliminate or heavily deplete teams that oversee the flow of grant funding to schools across the nation, the union said. It hits the office that oversees Title I funding for the country’s low-income schools along with the team that manages 21st Century Community Learning Centers, the primary federal funding source for after-school and summer learning programs.

It will also hit an office that oversees TRIO, a set of programs that help low-income students pursue college, and another that oversees federal funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

In a statement, union president Rachel Gittleman said the new reductions, on top of previous layoffs, will “double down on the harm to K-12 students, students with disabilities, first generation college students, low-income students, teachers and local education boards.”

The Education Department had about 4,100 employees when Trump took office. After the new layoffs, it would be down to fewer than 2,000. Earlier layoffs in March had roughly halved the department, but some employees were hired back after officials decided they had cut too deep.

The new layoffs drew condemnation from a range of education organizations.

The deep cuts “make it impossible to do what’s laid out in federal law,” said Katy Neas, CEO of The Arc of the United States, a disability rights advocacy group. “If you have no people, you can’t monitor states.”

Neas, who served as deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services during the Biden administration, said that federal employees play an especially valuable role providing consistency and expertise when there is turnover in state and district leadership. Most people want to do right by students with disabilities, she said, but some don’t know what the law requires or allow limited resources to get in the way.

The cuts are more damaging when coupled with cuts to the Office for Civil Rights, she said. Even before the latest round of layoffs, local Arc chapters reported that parents have become more reluctant to file complaints because they believe no one will listen or investigate. More schools are delaying evaluations or steering parents toward plans that provide fewer services, Neas said.

“The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act still stands, and everything kids are entitled to still stands,” Neas said. “It will just be harder to get them.”

Although states design their own competitions to distribute federal funding for 21st Century Community Learning Centers, the small team of federal officials provided guidance and support “that is absolutely essential,” said Jodi Grant, executive director of the Afterschool Alliance.

“Firing that team is shocking, devastating, utterly without any basis, and it threatens to cause lasting harm,” Grant said in a statement.

The government’s latest layoffs are being challenged in court by the American Federation of Government Employees and other national labor unions. Their suit, filed in San Francisco, said the government’s budgeting and personnel offices overstepped their authority by ordering agencies to carry out layoffs in response to the shutdown.

In a court filing, the Trump administration said the executive branch has wide discretion to reduce the federal workforce. It said the unions could not prove they were harmed by the layoffs because employees would not actually be separated for another 30 to 60 days after receiving notice.

Chalkbeat National Editor Erica Meltzer contributed reporting.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Illinois wants more students with disabilities to know about state savings account

2025-09-23T18:59:33+00:00

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Illinois officials want more families to know about a government-supported savings account for people with disabilities. State lawmakers approved a new law this spring requiring schools to inform students with 504 plans and children receiving Early Intervention services about the Illinois Achieving a Better Life Experience, or ABLE, account.

For parents of children with disabilities like Alysia Townsend, a mother of five living in the suburbs of Chicago, getting that information through a school or during Early Intervention services would help save time and effort.

After Townsend’s youngest son, now 9, was diagnosed with Down Syndrome while she was pregnant and spent time in the neonatal intensive care unit when he was born, she started to worry about how to pay for future medical expenses.

She found out about ABLE accounts by listening to podcasts targeted to parents who have children with disabilities. The accounts allow families of children with disabilities to save or invest money for present and future expenses like housing, education, transportation, and assistive technology such as wheelchairs or hearing aids without being taxed. In 2017, she opened a state ABLE account and has been saving money since.

Illinois has required school districts to tell students with an Individualized Education Program, or IEP, about ABLE accounts since the 2023-24 school year, but a new law now requires schools to also tell students with 504 plans about ABLE accounts and requires state officials who run Early Intervention for young children to inform those families as well. Gov. JB Pritzker signed the law in August.

“The reason this is important for our school-based population is that our families need to start saving early,” said JJ Hanley, deputy chief officer of financial products at the Illinois State Treasurer’s office, in an interview with Chalkbeat. “They need to have a vehicle in which they can save that will protect their children’s benefits when their children become adults.”

ABLE accounts were created under a 2014 law passed during the Obama administration, which allows states to support families in opening a tax-exempt savings account for people with disabilities. ABLE accounts are similar to 529 college savings plans, the latter of which allow families to save money and withdraw it later for college-related expenses without being taxed.

There are two requirements to be eligible for an ABLE account: Someone can sign up for an account if the onset of their disability happened before the age of 26 and they are receiving Supplemental Security Income or Social Security Disability Insurance benefits. Due to a change in federal law, the age limit will increase to 46 in 2026.

Saving money in an ABLE account does not affect a child’s ability to access federal benefits such as Supplemental Security Income, Social Security Disability Insurance, or Medicaid once they become adults. Families can save up to $100,000 without losing a child losing some of their federal public benefits. However if an account goes over $100,000, Supplemental Security Income payments will be suspended until the account is below the $100,000 threshold.

There are 49 ABLE account plans nationwide, with 46 states and the District of Columbia offering accounts, according to the ABLE National Resource Center. However, each state has some different benefits. For example, both Illinois and New York started their ABLE accounts in 2017. An Illinois taxpayer can donate up to $10,000, or $20,000 for a couple, to someone’s ABLE account and receive a state income tax deduction, but New York does not offer a tax deduction.

Under the new Illinois law, school districts must inform students with a 504 plan, a document that outlines accommodations for students with disabilities, about ABLE accounts during the 2026-27 school year. Families with children between birth and 3 who are receiving Early Intervention services will get information on ABLE accounts during the creation and review meetings regarding a child’s Individual Family Services Plan, which outlines the child’s needs, starting Jan. 1, 2026.

According to the law, the Office of the State Treasurer will create materials to give to the Illinois State Board of Education to distribute to local school districts. The office will also create materials to distribute to the lead agency in charge of Early Intervention services. Currently, the state Department for Human Services provides Early Intervention services but the program will transition to the state’s recent Department of Early Childhood by July 1, 2026.

Townsend, the mother of five living in the Chicago suburbs, said her son’s Individualized Education Program allows him to get therapy in his public school, so she and her husband are using the account to save for his adulthood.

“I didn’t need to immediately focus on spending ABLE money around certain needs, because I already had those needs met,” she said. “What I was seeing is that as he gets older he needs more things and different things.”

Correction: 9/24/2025:This story has been updated to explain that there are 49 ABLE accounts nationwide with 46 states and the District of Columbia offering accounts. The initial story said 49 states have ABLE account plans. It has also been updated to clarify that state officials who run Early Intervention, not schools, are responsible for informing families of young children in that program.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago school board members question special education staffing changes

2025-09-18T23:37:02+00:00

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Chicago Board of Education members are calling for more transparency from the district on cuts and changes being made to special education staffing positions.

“Our parents are saying that their children are not receiving their services,” said elected board member Jitu Brown in an interview with Chalkbeat. “So these cuts have hit the classroom, and it’s not acceptable to bake that into what education is going to look like this entire school year.”

Karen Zaccor, an appointed board member and former Chicago Public Schools teacher, told Chalkbeat in an interview that board members have heard concerns from parents and teachers about the impact of cuts to special education classrooms in previous board meetings.

She has also visited schools in her district where she’s heard from principals that schools are short on special education classroom assistants, also known as SECAs, and special education teachers.

Over the summer, the district’s Office for Students with Disabilities cut staffing and made changes within the department. In the second week of school, about 200 students with disabilities had yet to be placed in a classroom. CPS officials said Thursday that 285 are awaiting placements, including students who qualified since the start of the school year.

“You have schools where children don’t have a special education instructor after a month into the school year. You’ve seen the loss in the combination of special ed teachers and SECAs,” Brown said.

Chicago Public Schools said in a statement to Chalkbeat Thursday that 96% of students with disabilities who have Individualized Education Programs are receiving required minutes under law and that it is “working in earnest to ensure that all students receive their required services.”

“We got to figure out a better process,” said appointed member Michilla Blaise. “I’m sure they had grand reasons as to why they do things the way they do, but it’s not working, so we have to do something else.”

Several board members held a press conference downtown Thursday morning to request more information from CPS regarding special education staffing at schools. Earlier this week, WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times reported that the district cut 250 special education teacher positions along with almost 700 special education classroom assistants, but some of those positions were added back after the start of school on Aug. 18.

The report also found that principals tried to appeal special education staffing allocations over the summer, but 75% were turned down.

Zaccor wants the district to provide members with a report on some of the staffing concerns raised by parents, teachers, and school administrators at the next school board meeting on Sept. 25.

Josh Long, chief of the Office for Students with Disabilities, said that this year, the district used data from May 5 to help assess how many teacher and special education classroom assistant positions to allocate. Using an enrollment count from May helps because the number of students with disabilities tends to increase during the year, he said.

And, in a departure from the past, CPS did not use enrollment projections to allocate special education positions for the fall, Long said. Many principals appealed, but Long said they were rejected because the district waited until the fifth day of school this year to add staff.

Long said that students who are projected to show up on the first day of school, or who principals believe will show up, often do not make it. “That opens the opportunity for us to get that wrong, and by getting that wrong, that means that we are further perpetuating a system of inequity by overallocating in some places,” he said.

Long reiterated Thursday that the changes to special education are not related to the district’s budget deficit.

Placements happen on a rolling basis based on evaluations done by teams of specialists at schools, he said. This year, 110 students in the first 10 days of school were determined to need to be placed “in the most restrictive setting in CPS to receive their education,” Long said.

Correction: Sept. 19, 2025: This story has been updated to show that Chicago Public Schools sent a statement instead of a press release.

NYC autism school embraces VR to teach social skills and boost learning

2025-09-11T21:36:13+00:00

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In a sunny classroom at the New York City Autism Charter School in the South Bronx, young children eagerly waited their turn to step into a cartoon virtual world.

A girl in a lavender and pink Disney sweatshirt strapped on the virtual reality headset, resembling futuristic ski goggles. Through the VR program, she will be learning to raise her hand and take turns.

Heidi Brueckmann, her teacher and a clinical supervisor at the school, sat opposite the student and views and operates the virtual reality program, called Floreo, through a tablet. Her screen displayed what the child saw, along with prompts to help her coach the student through the lesson.

Virtual reality, increasingly, is becoming an educational tool for autistic people. The tech is backed by research suggesting that virtual reality can help children and adolescents with autism. A review study published in May in the Journal of Internet Medical Research analyzed 14 previous studies on VR’s role in autism therapy and found multiple benefits, especially with social skills such as understanding social cues, interpreting facial expressions, engaging in conversation, and forming or maintaining relationships.

The student’s goggles placed her inside a colorful VR classroom populated by a virtual teacher and animated classmates. A virtual whiteboard displayed weather-related drawings and words. Brueckmann prompted the virtual teacher to ask questions. When the virtual teacher asked what a thermometer measures, Brueckmann’s student called out the answer. Brueckmann tapped a button, prompting the virtual teacher to remind the girl to raise her hand. Then, with the press of another button, Brueckmann prompted the virtual teacher to ask the question again.

One of the benefits of the VR setup, Brueckman said, is that it enables her to work individually with a student while teaching them to interact with other kids. In real-world group settings, it can be hard to coach kids through scenarios when they are surrounded by, and potentially interacting with, other students who are struggling with similar social skills.

“If I have two kiddos who both have some deficits in their social skills,” Brueckmann said, “it can get a little muddy.”

Teacher Heidi Brueckmann uses the same VR program to help students practice impulse control.

Benefits of virtual reality as a teaching tool

In the past, VR equipment was heavy, expensive, uncomfortable, tethered to a computer, and located in research and academic environments. Now, lighter-weight, moderately priced, stand-alone virtual reality goggles have made the tech much more accessible in various settings. Medical schools use VR to train surgeons. VR is also used to train emergency responders and to distract patients with chronic pain. A growing number of educators, like those at the New York City Autism Charter School, are embracing the technology to help their neurodiverse students.

Virtual reality scenarios can help autistic people build confidence as they practice real-world tasks. For example, crossing-the-street simulations teach safety awareness and decision-making in traffic, while virtual shopping environments offer opportunities to practice making purchases, handling money, and interacting with cashiers. Other scenarios focus on navigating public transportation, helping users learn to read signs, board buses or trains, and ask for assistance when needed — all in a controlled, low-stress setting.

Before virtual reality emerged, teaching social skills involved things like watching videos about how to start a conversation, said Maggie Mosher, an assistant research professor at the University of Kansas who studies artificial intelligence and extended reality in education.

Watching videos is usually too passive to help children get it, and “direct instruction feels so monotonous,” she added. And a commonly used teaching method, applied behavior analysis, also known as ABA, has come under fire in recent years for pushing children with autism to drop behaviors they find soothing, such as flapping or stimming, no matter the emotional cost.

Virtual reality, by contrast, is immersive and immediate, and it’s fun, like a video game, Brueckmann said. Her students look forward to their turn.

“We use it as reinforcement for completing work,” she said. The students remember and request specific virtual reality activities. When they finish other tasks, they might get to explore an ocean simulation or observe a virtual pride of lions — activities that spark curiosity and engagement.

And VR encounters are low-stakes because the other people involved aren’t real. No one is going to get teased or end up feeling embarrassed.

“They don’t feel afraid to ask questions, to tell you things that they maybe wouldn’t say out loud if they didn’t know the answer,” Mosher said. “And you really know how they would react to certain situations.”

Designing VR teaching modules with, and for, neurodiverse learners

Floreo, the VR program used at New York City Autism Charter School, teaches skills such as crossing streets safely, recognizing bullying, and even how to go trick-or-treating. Its creator, Vijay Ravindran, got the idea after watching his autistic son engage with early examples of virtual reality-type technology.

“One day, after spending some time exploring a dinosaur simulation and Google Street View in virtual reality, my son began acting out what he had just seen,” Ravindran said in an email. “For many autistic youth, pretend play and social skill development don’t come easily—but in that moment, I saw VR spark something powerful.”

More than 100 schools and therapy offices in the U.S. currently use Floreo, which is one of a handful of virtual reality-based programs with autism-related applications. Others include SocialWiseVR, a program that helps adolescents navigate attending parties and workplace situations, such as accepting feedback. Another program, Blue Room, focuses on helping children manage phobias.

Some creators of VR apps for autistic people recognize the risk of repeating the coercive teaching methods of ABA that characterized previous teaching tools for autism. To avoid this, Nigel Newbutt, an assistant professor of advanced learning technologies at the University of Florida, includes autistic co-researchers in his work.

“I don’t like the idea of using this technology to fix autistic people and make them conform to neurotypical norms,” he said.

Instead, he believes virtual reality should be designed through a “disability lens, where environments are being created more inclusively, to adapt to and receive and enable autistic people.”

Newbutt’s team worked with an autistic young man to develop a VR program about the social norms of eating out in a restaurant. His input shaped the storyboard, interactions, and key steps — insights the team wouldn’t have had without his involvement.

However, widespread implementation of these VR tools remains a challenge, says Noah Glaser, assistant professor at the University of Missouri’s School of Information Science & Learning Technologies. The cost of the equipment can be a barrier, as well as varying levels of comfort with technology among families and teachers. Many insurers do not cover virtual reality therapies — a headset can cost hundreds of dollars. And using these tools effectively requires some technical support to get up and running, says Glaser.

Some schools have overcome these obstacles through partnerships and government funding. At the New York City Autism Charter School, where most of the 34 children are from low-income households, Floreo is paid for with a grant from the Disability Opportunity Fund, and the company provided the technical expertise and training needed for a smooth rollout at no cost. And the platform qualifies for reimbursement under Medicaid waiver programs in six states, including New York. Floreo is also approved for reimbursement through the New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities as assistive software.

When the young student in the Bronx finished her weather lesson, she passed the goggles to one of her classmates, in a lemon-colored party dress, who entered a world designed to teach turn-taking in conversation. The program is called “Chit Chat with Ayanna” and featured a friendly-looking virtual child in a wheelchair who sits in a park waiting to be greeted.

Next up for the VR tool was a little boy with short-cropped hair in a long-sleeved black and grey shirt, who was practicing making friends and asking them to sit with him in a classroom. In this simulation, a virtual boy walked in the door, and the prompt was “try waving him over.”

Brueckmann has seen her students make real-life progress using virtual reality. One child who initially avoided her peers began sitting closer to them after practicing social scenarios in VR.

“Even if she still prefers her own table,” Brueckmann noted, “she’s now waving to other kids from across the room.”

This story was produced in partnership with Healthbeat and the Health & Science Reporting Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

IPS taps company to run standalone special education program, starting year fully staffed

2025-08-29T14:46:23+00:00

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Indianapolis Public Schools is starting off a new school year fully staffed in its standalone special education program for the first time after contracting with a national behavioral health company.

The district’s ROOTS program, which IPS is rebranding this year as the Margaret McFarland Learning Academy, serves students with the most intensive needs.

The roughly $2 million agreement for the 2025-26 year with ChanceLight allows the district to lean on the company for one of its hardest-to-fill recruitment efforts: staff for special education settings.

The K-12 program is located in the old Margaret McFarland school on the south side of the district, along with Positive Supports Academy, a program for students in grades 7-12 who need additional behavioral support.

McFarland Learning Academy has 30 students so far this year.

Unified Student Supports Officer Cortnei Flucas said this is the first year the program has started the school year fully staffed.

“You can imagine when you are serving the most intensive students, finding people that have the right skill set, the willingness, the level of care and compassion — but also having an ability to meet their pay requirements — can be tough,” Flucas said. “These are challenges that we have faced.”

A high staff-to-student ratio is necessary at the academy, which has five classrooms with one teacher and two instructional assistants each. The program also has behavior specialists assigned to each classroom, as well as two social workers and a psychiatrist to provide oversight for students with medication.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

About 200 students with disabilities in Chicago don’t have classroom placements as second week of school begins

2025-08-26T21:49:38+00:00

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About 200 students with disabilities are still waiting for Chicago Public Schools to place them into a classroom that fits their needs, as schools head into the second week of class.

Although CPS added nearly 100 new cluster programs in the past two years with classes exclusively for students with disabilities, families were notified in an Aug. 15 letter that there are “limited seats available.”

District officials said the delay is not impacting all special education programs, just students slated for placements in cluster programs.

Cluster classrooms are only for students with disabilities and serve up to 10 students in early childhood education programs and 13 students from kindergarten up until a student ages out of the school district at 22, according to district officials.

After the latest expansion, CPS now operates about 775 cluster programs. The district said it added 69 programs in 2024 and another 32 programs in 2025. CPS also restructured its special education department over the summer.

“This is a common occurrence at the start of each school year, as some families may opt out of services or express preferences for different placements,” a spokesperson for the district said of the delays in a statement to Chalkbeat.

If a student with an Individualized Education Program does not receive a placement within 10 days of the first day of school or the date their IEP is finalized, parents should receive a letter from their case manager or the Office for Students with Disabilities. The letter informs parents which services in the student’s IEP haven’t started, the actions the school is taking to support the student, and how parents can request compensatory services — additional services to make up for lost services written into an IEP.

Miriam Bhimani, a special education advocate and parent, said this isn’t a new problem for the district.

“It seems to continue a trend where CPS is not serving students with disabilities and is excluding them from the public institution,” said Bhimani. “If you don’t have a school placement, you’re not going to school.”

Barb Cohen, a policy analyst at the advocacy organization Legal Council for Health Justice, said a larger question is whether students are being appropriately placed in cluster programs.

“However, that doesn’t change the fact that their IEP teams decided cluster was the right placement and the district needs to follow the law,” Cohen said. “The law says you need to follow the IEP team’s recommendations.”

CPS serves about 54,000 students with disabilities, who make up about 16% of the student population. Around 8,300 students were recommended for cluster programs for the 2025-26 school year, according to district officials.

In the statement to Chalkbeat, a CPS spokesperson said the delay in placing students is primarily due to difficulty in predicting how many students need a seat in a cluster program.

“Although CPS uses data and historical trends to inform decisions, the actual number of students requiring services fluctuates throughout the year, making it difficult to predict with certainty,” the statement said.

The district also pointed to budget challenges and said it has been “cautious not to overestimate or underfund resources” for cluster programs. District officials say they are trying to strike a balance between staffing, program costs, and providing students with services.

Lack of transportation could be another reason students have not received a placement, district officials said. Schools officials have to consider commuting times when assigning students who have transportation in their Individualized Education Programs to a cluster program, according to district officials.

In 2021, students with Individualized Education Programs who were guaranteed transportation experienced long bus rides or did not receive service at all, issues the district attributed to a bus driver shortage at the time.

The district was placed under a corrective action plan by the Illinois State Board of Education in 2022 after it found that students with disabilities were on buses for more than 90 minutes. The state ended that oversight in 2024.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Students with disabilities can more quickly be removed from class under a new Tennessee rule

2025-08-19T14:48:28+00:00

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Tennessee schools can now more quickly remove some students with disabilities from their classrooms.

The state Board of Education on Friday approved an amended state rule allowing schools to temporarily remove students to an environment such as a special education classroom or even into an alternative school before a formal behavioral assessment is completed or even started.

A 2022 state rule required Tennessee schools to perform an FBA, a comprehensive assessment required by the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, when a student is engaging in dangerous or “highly disruptive” behavior.

But Tennessee education officials told the board earlier this year that educators interpreted the 2022 rule to mean a student could not be removed until the assessment was completed, which could mean a lengthy waiting period for districts with limited resources.

Board Vice-Chair Darrell Cobbins said he fielded multiple emails and calls from concerned parents and advocates on the issue. He had questions about how the policy would be used, but said he was satisfied that it provides protections from “one individual” making a swift decision to remove a student.

Instead, a student’s Individualized Education Program team would have to make the decision to move a student to a more restrictive environment.

“This should not be a first resort, and there’s a process in place both for the decision being made but also parent empowerment,” Cobbins said. “If they feel like it has not been done in a way that was conducive for that child, there’s a route for that to be addressed.”

Earlier this summer, disability advocates advised caution when implementing the rule change and expressed concern that it could be used too frequently, but acknowledged there are circumstances where removal is needed for everyone’s safety.

Allison Oliver, an Austin Peay State University assistant professor with a specialty in special education, said she thinks more emphasis should be on teacher training and staffing support when supporting students with disabilities.

Before entering higher education, Oliver worked nearly two decades in K-12 special education, including as a behavioral specialist responsible for writing the functional behavior assessments at a 32-school district in Mississippi.

Oliver said she is concerned about using exclusion, whether it’s moving a child to a special education classroom or into an alternative school setting, as a response to challenging behavior, though she acknowledged removals are necessary at times.

“One of the largest barriers I saw as a behavior specialist were teachers who were just not prepared for the type of behaviors being presented in class, and some of the ways trauma is being presented in classrooms,” Oliver said. “You have teachers in all capacities, and one might deem certain behavior as severe while others would deem it as at-risk. Behaviors can be disproportionately dealt with across the region.”

Under federal and state disability protections, students must be educated in the “least restrictive environment” deemed appropriate under their individualized education program.

The goal is to educate all students in a general classroom with their peers, but a more restrictive environment might mean a student receives special education programming throughout the day, is placed in a separate classroom, or attends a specialized homeschool or residential program.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires a functional behavioral assessment if an IEP team thinks a student should be moved to a more restrictive environment, but how and when states actually implement the assessments varies.

In May, state board member Jordan Mollenhour raised concerns about the timeline to perform formal behavioral assessments. Some states require districts to complete the assessments in a certain time period.

TDOE General Counsel Taylor Jenkins said there is not a definitive time limit for completing the assessments, but the department guidance has “typically” been that 45 to 60 days is appropriate.

The August 15 rule change did not impose any new time limits for assessments.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Child care centers often reject kids with disabilities. These states are trying to change that.

2025-08-04T10:02:00+00:00

This story about children with disabilities was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, and is republished with permission.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — When Selina Likely became director of the Edwards Creative Learning Center six years ago, she knew there was one longstanding practice that she wanted to change. For as long as she had taught at the thriving child care center, it had turned away many children with disabilities such as autism and Down syndrome. The practice was even encoded in the center’s handbook as policy.

Likely, the parent of a child with a disability, wanted to stop telling families no, but she knew that to do that she and her staff would need more support. “I said, ‘Let’s start getting training and see what we can do.’”

Not too long after, her effort received a big boost from a state-funded initiative in Ohio to strengthen child care teachers’ knowledge and confidence in working with young kids with disabilities and developmental delays. That program, Ohio PROMISE, offers free online training for child care workers in everything from the benefits of kids of all abilities learning and playing together to the kinds of classroom materials most helpful to have on hand. It also offers as-needed mentorship and support from trained coaches across the state.

Related: Young children have unique needs, and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.

Child care providers across the country — including large, established centers and tiny home-based programs — struggle to meet the needs of children with disabilities, according to a 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. More than a quarter of parents of children with disabilities said they had a lot of difficulty finding appropriate care for their kids. And even those who do find a spot regularly encounter challenges, like having their children excluded from extracurricular activities such as field trips and even academic instruction.

“It’s really hard to find child care for this population, we heard that loud and clear,” said Elizabeth Curda, a director on the GAO’s Education, Workforce, and Income Security team and a coauthor of the report. Even the most well-resourced centers report that they struggle to meet the needs of children with disabilities, according to Curda.

There’s a lot of desire at the grassroots level to change that. Ohio PROMISE and a few other recent initiatives provide models for how to expand the capacity — and the will — of child care centers to serve the more than 2 million U.S. children age 5 or below who have a disability or developmental delay.

In Vermont, for instance, officials hope to soon unveil a free, on-demand training program aimed at helping child care teachers have more inclusive classrooms. And officials in Ohio’s Summit County, home to Akron, report growing interest from other counties in creating programs based on Summit’s more than decade-old model that provides in-person training for child care operators in inclusion of children with disabilities.

“We’re helping to create child care centers that feel they can handle whatever comes their way, especially when it comes to significant behavior concerns,” said Yolanda Mahoney, the early childhood center support supervisor for Summit County’s disabilities board.

Cards on the walls at Edwards Creative Learning Center display the signs for different letters so students — whether nonverbal or not — can all learn sign language.

The federal government until recently encouraged the creation of such models. In 2023, the federal Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services issued a joint statement urging states to take steps to support inclusion in early childhood settings, including strengthening training and accountability.

Also, a year-old provision of the Child Care and Development Fund, the primary federal funding source for child care, requires that states increase the availability of child care for children with disabilities as a prerequisite for receiving funds. (However, 43 states have received waivers allowing them to delay implementation of that provision.)

Under the current president, federal momentum on the issue has largely stalled. While the administration of President Donald Trump hasn’t directly attacked inclusion in the context of special education, the president has criticized the term more broadly — especially when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion. That can create uncertainty and a chilling effect on advocates of inclusion efforts of all kinds.

Funding for some inclusion efforts is also in jeopardy. States rely on Medicaid, which faces nearly $1 trillion in cuts over the next decade, to pay for early intervention programs for children birth to age 3 with developmental delays and disabilities. Trump has also proposed eliminating Preschool Development Grants, which states such as Vermont and Illinois have used to expand support of young children with disabilities.

That means over the next few years, progress on inclusion in child care settings could hinge largely on state and local investment. It helps that there’s a “real desire” among providers to enroll more children with disabilities, said Kristen Jones, an assistant director on the GAO’s Education, Workforce, and Income Security team, who also worked on the report. “But there’s also a concern that currently they can’t do that in a safe way” because of a lack of training and resources.

Parents of disabled kids struggle to find child care

The idea for Ohio PROMISE came after an appeal in 2022 from Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. He reported that families were coming to him saying they couldn’t find child care for their kids with disabilities.

“He said, ‘Come to me with ideas to solve that problem,’” recalled Wendy Grove, a senior adviser in the Ohio Department of Children and Youth who spearheaded development of the program.

Grove and her colleagues had already been working on a related effort. In 2020, Ohio won a federal grant that included help exploring how well — or not — children with disabilities were being included in child care and early education settings. DeWine liked the idea Grove’s team presented of morphing that work into a state-led effort to strengthen training and support for child care teachers. They also proposed more direct support to families, including the extension of child care vouchers to families with incomes above the poverty level, with a higher reimbursement rate for children with disabilities.

The training, which debuted about two years ago, is provided in three levels. Jada Cutchall, a preschool teacher at Imaginative Beginnings, an early learning center just outside of Toledo, recently completed the third tier, which for her included customized coaching. Cutchall’s coach helped her create communication tools for a largely nonverbal student, she said, including a board with pictures children can point to if, for example, they want to go to the bathroom or try a different playground activity.

As a result, Cutchall said, she has watched kids with disabilities, including those with speech impairments and autism, engage much more directly with their classmates. “They have the courage to ask their peers to play with them — or at least not distance themselves as much as they usually would,” she said. All of the children in the classroom have benefited, she added, noting that kids without disabilities have taken an interest in learning sign language, strengthening their own communication skills, and fostering empathy.

Child care programs where one teacher and one administrator have completed some of the training earn a special designation from the state, which may eventually be tied to the opportunity to get extra funding to serve children with disabilities. In Ohio PROMISE’s first year, 1,001 child care centers — about 10% of the total number in Ohio — earned that designation, according to Grove.

The effort costs a little over $1 million in state dollars each year, with most of that paying for several regional support personnel who work directly with centers as mentors and advisers. Over the last two years, Ohio has seen a 38% increase in the number of children in publicly funded centers who qualify for the higher voucher reimbursement rate for children with disabilities, which can be double the size of the standard voucher.

Grove hopes that ultimately the effort plays a role in narrowing a critical and stubborn gap in the state: about 27% of children without disabilities show readiness on state standards for kindergarten; only 14% of children with disabilities do. Since so few disabilities exhibited at that age are related to intellectual or cognitive functioning, “we shouldn’t see that gap,” said Grove. “There’s no real reason.”

One goal of the new efforts is to reduce the number of young children with disabilities who are expelled from or pushed out of care. Those children are frequently asked to leave for behaviors related to their disability, the GAO report found.

Several years ago, a child care center in Columbus expelled Meagan Severance’s 18-month-old son for biting a staff member. The boy has several special needs, including some related to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Severance brought him to Edwards Creative Learning Center, where not too long after Selina Likely shifted into the role of director. The boy also bit a staff member there — not uncommon behavior for toddlers, especially those with sensory sensitivities and communication challenges.

Likely was determined to work with the child, not expel him. “They put in time and effort,” said Severance. “The response wasn’t, ‘He bit someone, he’s gone.’”

For the last six years, Selina Likely has overseen the Edwards Creative Learning Center, where she’s steadily enrolled more children with disabilities and developmental delays.

Likely empathized. Decades earlier, her own daughter had been expelled from a child care center in her hometown of Mansfield, Ohio, for biting.

“I was so angry and mad at the time — how are you going to kick out a 1-year-old?” she said. The center director didn’t think at all about how to help her child, Likely recalled, instead asking Likely what might be happening at home to make the child want to bite. She said she got no notice or grace period to find a new placement. “That left me in a disheartened place,” she said. “I was like, ‘I still have to go to work.’”

Just 17 years old at the time, she was inspired by the injustice of the situation to quit her job in a factory and apply to be an assistant in a child care program. She’s been in the industry ever since, gradually trying to make more space for children like her daughter, who was later diagnosed with autism.

As director, Likely displays the nameplate “chaos coordinator” on her desk. And she’s taken the stance that the center should at least try to work with every kid. She and some of her teachers have completed the first two tiers of the Ohio PROMISE training, as well as some related sessions available from the state. Likely estimates that about 10% of the children in her center have a diagnosed disability or developmental delay.

Liasun Meadows, whose son has Down syndrome, chose Edwards several years ago for her then 1-year-old over another program better known for its work with children with disabilities. She has not been disappointed.

Parents of kids with disabilities watch their children like a hawk, she said. “There are certain things you notice that you don’t expect others to notice, but they do at Edwards. They’ve been growing and learning alongside him.”

Severance, whose son is now 8, works at the center these days, leading the 3-year-old room, which includes two children who are largely nonverbal. She’s made the classroom more inclusive, adding fidget toys for children with sensory issues, rearranging the classroom to create calming areas, providing communication books to nonverbal children so they can more easily express needs and wants, and teaching everyone some sign language.

“For a while there was segregation in the classroom” between the kids with disabilities and those without, Severance said. But that’s lessened with the changes. “Inclusion has been good for the kids who are verbal — and nonverbal,” she said.

Demand for grants far exceeds availability

As in Ohio, state officials in Vermont turned to online training to help ensure young children with disabilities aren’t denied quality care. The state should soon debut the first parts of a new training program, focusing on outreach to child care administrators and support for neurodivergent children. The state wanted to focus on center leaders first because “directors that are comfortable with inclusion lead programs that are comfortable with inclusion,” said Dawn Rouse, the director of statewide systems in Vermont’s Child Development Division.

Vermont also pumped millions of dollars into a separate program, known as the Special Accommodations Grant, that supports young children with disabilities. Since 2009 the state has set aside $300,000 a year that child care centers can tap to provide services for individual children with disabilities. It might help buy specialized equipment for a child with cerebral palsy, for instance, or be used to hire a full- or part-time aide.

The $300,000 has been maxed out every year, Rouse said. And after the pandemic, the need — and the number of applications — surged.

As a result, the state allocated some federal American Rescue Plan and Preschool Development Grant dollars to increase spending on the program by about sevenfold — to between $2 million and $2.5 million annually — an amount Rouse still describes as a “Band-Aid.”

Without access to the grants, “we see a lot of children being asked to leave programs,” Rouse said. “That’s not good for any child, but for children with specialized developmental needs it’s particularly bad.”

One tool for supporting and calming children with sensory issues is keeping a healthy supply of fidget toys on hand.

Over time, Likely hopes, her Ohio center can play a small role in reducing that instability, although the center hasn’t yet been able to work with all such children it wants to. Likely recalls one toddler with a severe disability who climbed up anything he could. There wasn’t enough money to pay for what the child really needed: a full-time aide. “It’s hard when you know you’ve tried but still have to say no,” she said. “That breaks my heart more than anything.”

On one June morning, the center’s teachers acknowledged and celebrated several milestones in its work on inclusion, big and small. One child in the 3-year-old classroom with fine and gross motor challenges was drinking independently from a bottle. The preschool classroom held its first graduation ceremony, translated partly into sign language. All of the kids, no matter their challenges, were set to go on field trips to Dairy Queen and the zoo.

Likely dreams of someday running a center where about half of the children have a disability or delay. It may be years off, she said, but as with the milestones she sees scores of children at the center reach every day, “There’s a way — if there’s a will.”

Sarah Carr is a fellow at New America, focused on reporting on early childhood issues.

Contact contributing editor Sarah Carr at carr@hechingerreport.org.

Chicago Public Schools restructures special education department

2025-07-30T22:06:27+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is restructuring its department for students with disabilities and planning to reassign 65 central office positions, according to an internal email obtained by Chalkbeat.

The changes, outlined in an email from Joshua Long, the chief of the Office for Students with Disabilities, also include the elimination of the Department of Procedures and Standards and the Department of Instructional Support, which focused on complying with federal and local policies and instructional support for schools, and the creation of a new department called Academic Access. Among the roles being phased out during the restructure, two — district representative and special education administrator — will be replaced with a special education coordinator to work directly with schools.

A CPS spokesperson said in a statement that there will be “no net loss of full-time positions” as roles are redefined. Employees impacted by the restructuring were able to reapply for the new role; out of those who applied, about 85% were hired, the spokesperson said. The district is still reviewing applicants.

“This shift is not motivated by budgetary concerns or cost-cutting,” the spokesperson said in the statement. “Instead, it is a strategic, values-driven decision grounded in research, best practices, and a belief in the limitless potential of every student.”

Last school year, CPS served nearly 54,000 students with disabilities, who made up 16.4% of the district’s student body. Their share of the population has grown by about three percentage points in the past decade.

The latest departmental changes, coupled with other staffing changes related to special education, including reductions and reassignments impacting special education classroom assistants who work directly with students, are raising some red flags for special education advocates. Of particular concern is the timing of the changes, which come less than three weeks before the start of school on Aug. 18.

Frank Lally, education policy analyst at Access Living, an advocacy organization for people with disabilities based in Chicago, questioned whether the new positions would be fully staffed by the start of the school year.

“I worry that that will create chaos, let’s say, when it comes to school assignments and making sure that students have their accommodations set for the coming school year,” Lally said.

CPS is also currently revising the guidelines schools are supposed to use to develop students’ Individualized Education Programs, legal documents outlining academic supports and educational goals tailored to the needs of each student with disabilities. CPS is also planning to add 120 new case managers who oversee special education services at schools and 100 more clinicians, such as speech pathologists and occupational therapists, in accordance with the new Chicago Teachers Union contract.

Some advocates think the department restructuring is not necessarily a bad thing. Mary Fahey Hughes, a former Chicago Board of Education member and longtime advocate for people with disabilities, said she likes the idea of combining staff roles and placing central office staffers in schools. Fahey Hughes said there’s a “deep need” for more support in classrooms that serve students with disabilities.

“These are professionals with deep Special Education knowledge, but parents rarely see them at work unless there is some sort of problem,” she said in a text message to Chalkbeat.

Barbara Cohen, senior policy analyst with the nonprofit Legal Council for Health Justice, said two of the roles that the district is phasing out never made much sense to her. Cohen said some staff who worked directly with families were not equipped to support families and turnover has been an issue.

“Some [staffers] facilitated effective relationships between families and schools, but some seem to be unfamiliar with the requirements of state and federal law,” said Cohen. “My question, though, is how the restructuring will improve the situation.”

District shifts away from compliance-first philosophy

Chicago’s overhaul comes at a time when the federal government has fired staff at the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which is responsible for investigating special education complaints. Under the Trump administration, the Office for Civil Rights dismissed over 3,400 cases between March and the end of June, according to a report by Politico.

In the internal email obtained by Chalkbeat, Long, the chief of the Office for Students with Disabilities, noted that the changes represent a shift in philosophy for his office.

“For more than two decades, our office has operated under the belief that compliance must come first — and that strong instruction and student growth will follow,” Long wrote. “We respectfully — and confidently — offer a different view. We believe that when students receive strong, inclusive instruction, their learning will grow — and compliance will follow.”

Some special education advocates worry that the district’s internal restructuring could signal to schools that instruction, rather than compliance, is the top priority.

Matt Cohen, a lawyer at Matt Cohen & Associates and special education advocate, said working on academic support for students is a good priority but worries it could send a message that compliance isn’t a priority.

“I think you’re giving permission to schools to not focus on compliance at all,” said Cohen. “In the context of everything that’s happening at the federal level, I think what they’re saying is we’re not going to worry about these rules so much.”

The last time CPS overhauled its special education department in the 2016-17 school year amid budget challenges, an investigation by WBEZ found services for students were being wrongly delayed or denied. The investigation prompted special state oversight that lasted from 2018 until 2021.

A spokesperson for the Illinois State Board of Education said staffers from the agency have been in several meetings with Chicago Public Schools about the restructuring and staffing changes. In a statement, the spokesperson said ISBE will “continue to provide oversight and guidance to ensure compliance and safeguard services for students with disabilities.”

Christine Palmieri, a long-time special education advocate and works with Matt Cohen & Associates, hopes that compliance, procedures and standards, and policies are “still highly met” by the district.

Palmieri hopes the district will fill all the new positions, quickly train employees in the new role, continue to work with the state’s monitor to have ongoing training, and ensure these new roles are accessible to families.

District officials said the district is providing training before the start of the 2025-26 school year and will continue to train staff on an “ongoing basis.”

Reema Amin contributed to this report.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

New NJ law requires public schools to provide parents with more information about IEP meetings

2025-07-25T09:30:00+00:00

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Gov. Phil Murphy signed a new law this week that requires New Jersey public schools to provide parents of students with disabilities with more information about a child’s annual special education program meeting ahead of time.

The new law mandates that schools provide parents with a written statement of items to be discussed at an annual individualized education program, also known as an IEP, meeting no later than two business days before it takes place.

The information should include the student’s current academic levels and functional performance, a list of the names of any required IEP team members who will miss the meeting, along with their input on any services or programs they oversee for the student, and an invitation for parents to provide feedback about the proposed services.

Typically, during those meetings, parents and school staff discuss a student’s IEP, a legally binding plan that outlines the services a student with a disability needs in school.

Previously, the law only required parents to receive details about a meeting’s purpose, time, location, and participants. More information, including reports or documents, was usually provided to parents at least 10 calendar days before an IEP meeting only if the meeting was to determine a student’s eligibility for special education. Parents were also informed in advance if a school team member would miss the meeting and provided that person’s written input.

The law is an update to what New Jersey’s public schools are required to provide parents ahead of an IEP meeting and also establishes an IEP working group in the state’s education department to review the process. The new mandate takes effect in the upcoming school year.

Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz, who represents Essex County, introduced the legislation last year in an attempt to give families more time and information to prepare ahead of an IEP meeting, Ruiz told Chalkbeat on Thursday.

“The goal here was to at least have a document before a guardian so that they can go through and start making notes before the meeting,” Ruiz said. “Those 504s and IEPs are hugely voluminous. If English is your second language, it becomes even more difficult.”

A 504 is a plan for students with disabilities who don’t require specialized instruction or services typically included in IEPs but still require accommodations to learn. The new law does not apply to 504 plans.

Under existing state law, parents are given written notice of an IEP meeting “early enough to ensure that they will have an opportunity to attend.”

Peg Kinsell, policy director at the SPAN Parent Advocacy Network, a group that supports families of children with disabilities in New Jersey, calls the new law a “first step” in helping parents navigate the IEP process, but added that two business days isn’t enough time for parents to prepare for an IEP meeting.

“Getting a statement that says what the current levels of academic and functional performances is nice, but it’s one section of the IEP,” Kinsell added.

Elizabeth Athos, senior educational equity attorney at Education Law Center, a nonprofit that works to protect the rights of public school students, agrees that the new law can help address some of the knowledge gaps that may exist between schools and parents of students with disabilities, but notes that more can be done to make the IEP process run smoothly for parents who may not understand their child’s needs.

“Because of limitations on the information provided,” parents may not “have had a chance to digest and understand” their student’s disability, needs, or IEP, preventing parents “meaningful participation” during those meetings, said Athos.

The new law comes as the number of children needing special education services in New Jersey has grown since 2000. Researchers at Rutgers University found that in New Jersey, autism rates among 8-year-olds without intellectual disabilities spiked by 500% from 2000 to 2016, and overall cases among children with intellectual disabilities tripled during the same period. In Newark, home to New Jersey’s largest school district, researchers found that as of 2020, 1 in 20 Newark children had been diagnosed with autism, compared with 1 in 167 in 2000.

Newark Public Schools has seen an increase in the number of students with disabilities. Last school year, nearly 7,000 students with disabilities enrolled in the district, highlighting a growing need to support students who require a range of special education services. In recent years, the district has faced challenges in supporting them.

At the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, several parents of children with disabilities told Chalkbeat Newark that on the first day of school, they were told their child did not have a school placement. Other parents said they were told their child was enrolled at a different school. The district that year had also opened the new Branch Brook Elementary School, formerly known as ECC-North, and welcomed 48 pre-K to second grade students with disabilities in the school’s first year.

In 2022, the state education department found the district had problems with reporting in education plans, notifying parents of meetings, and missing meetings with parents and students with disabilities as part of responsibilities mandated under the Individuals with Disabilities Act, or IDEA. The state ordered the district to take corrective action by November 2022. And in 2019, the state education department also cited the district for failing to meet key mandates related to education plans for students with disabilities.

Kinsell, of the SPAN Parent Advocacy Network, also hopes that the state’s new IEP working group, set to be organized in the coming months, will find new solutions to improve the process in schools. The working group’s recommendations will cover areas including comparing IEP practices in different states and districts, reviewing research, identifying legal limitations, and suggesting improvements.

The group, which will be made up of school leaders, teachers, child study team members, parents, and those with experience representing students with disabilities, must create a report with recommendations no later than four months after the group convenes, according to the new law.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Federal judge blocks Trump’s Education Dept. shutdown, orders reinstatement of laid off staff

2025-05-22T19:01:36+00:00

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A federal judge on Thursday issued a preliminary injunction blocking President Donald Trump’s executive order to shut down the U.S. Department of Education and said the agency must reinstate the employees who were fired as part of mass layoffs.

After U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced the agency’s plans in March to slash its workforce by roughly half, she called it a first step in getting rid of the agency. Trump followed days later with his executive order aiming to eliminate the department, a move he has long wanted.

But only Congress can actually eliminate the department, and the administration’s attempt at getting around that influenced U.S. District Judge Myong Joun’s Thursday ruling.

The Trump administration argued that they implemented agency layoffs to improve “efficiency” and “accountability,” the Massachusetts judge wrote, but then said: “The record abundantly reveals that [the administration’s] true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department without an authorizing statute.”

Joun added: “A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all. This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the Department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the Department becomes a shell of itself.”

Within hours of the Joun’s ruling, the Trump administration filed an appeal.

“This ruling is not in the best interest of American students or families,” Madi Biedermann, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications, wrote in a statement.

Calls for the injunction came from lawsuits filed by the Somerville and Easthampton schools districts in Massachusetts along with the American Federation of Teachers, other education groups, and 21 Democratic attorneys general.

They argued that the gutting of the department rendered the agency incapable of performing many of its core functions required by Congress.

For example, all of the attorneys from the agency’s general counsel office who handle grants for K-12 schools and grants under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, had been fired. The dismantling of the Office for Civil Rights made it difficult to enforce civil rights protections. The department’s Financial Student Aid programs, which provide financial assistance to almost 12.9 million students across approximately 6,100 postsecondary educational institutions, were also hampered.

Trump’s executive order instructed McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities” to the “maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”

At the same time, the order said McMahon should ensure “the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”

Trump said he would move the agency’s student loan portfolio to the Small Business Administration, and the Department of Health and Human Services would replace the Education Department’s role in “handling special needs.”

Before the layoffs, the Education Department was the smallest of the 15 cabinet-level departments in terms of staffing, according to the judge, with around 4,100 employees. And the plaintiffs said the agency was strained meeting its obligations even then.

The ruling was not based on the employees’ job rights, but rather how the agency was able to fulfill its obligations.

“It’s not about whether employees have a right to a job,” said Derek Black, a University of South Carolina law professor. “It’s about whether the department can fulfill its statutory obligations to the states and to students.”

The case made by former department employees, educational institutions, unions, and educators, Joun wrote, paints “stark picture of the irreparable harm that will result from financial uncertainty and delay, impeded access to vital knowledge on which students and educators rely, and loss of essential services for America’s most vulnerable student populations.”

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten heralded the judge’s ruling, calling it “a first step to reverse this war on knowledge and the undermining of broad-based opportunity.”

But Biedermann, from the Education Department, said the ruling was unfair to the Trump administration.

“Once again, a far-left Judge has dramatically overstepped his authority, based on a complaint from biased plaintiffs, and issued an injunction against the obviously lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional for the American people,” she said in a statement.

Chalkbeat national editor Erica Meltzer contributed reporting.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Advocates fight to ensure students in Michigan get the special education services they need

2025-05-13T13:04:49+00:00

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Sharon Kelso tries to do everything she can to help Detroit families navigate the often confusing and complicated world of special education.

The advocate is frequently on the phone, listening to parents complain that their child has yet to receive an individualized education program, or IEP, a plan that spells out what services and accommodations students with disabilities should receive, as required by federal law. Sometimes, families want her guidance for talking to teachers and school administrators.

She also gets calls from parents whose child has an IEP, but they need help.

“A lot of times I call the schools, have the parent come in, give their complaints, sit and look at the IEPs and work through them and try to help them as much as I can,” she said. “But I’m only one person.”

Kelso’s work highlights an issue that education advocates, school employees, and board members say has persisted for years in the Detroit Public Schools Community District and across the state: delays in conducting or complying with evaluations for special education services.

An IEP is a document for students with disabilities ages 3 through 25 that maps out educational needs and goals, as well as any programs and services a student’s school district will provide to help them, according to the Michigan Department of Education.

An initial IEP must be completed by a school and a notice provided to the parent within 30 school days after they provide consent for their child’s evaluation, according to the Michigan Department of Education’s Special Education Office. The timeline may be extended beyond those 30 days. DPSCD Superintendent Nikolai Vitti told BridgeDetroit that the process for Detroit’s district takes an average of 26 days.

James Stacy is among the Detroit parents seeking support. Stacy said he’s struggling to help his 13-year-old son, who is a sixth grader at Marquette Elementary-Middle School. Stacy enrolled his son at the east side school in 2023 and said he has run into issues ever since, particularly with school staff not complying with his son’s IEP and his son getting suspended.

Stacy said his son was a good student at his former school in the Berkley School District, where he received extra support in reading and math. But this school year, he is repeating the sixth grade and may not pass again because he does not have the support he needs for his learning disability, Stacy said.

Beyond the struggles with his schoolwork, Stacy’s son has been suspended three times this school year for behavioral incidents.

Stacy is now working with Kelso to arrange a formal review that addresses whether the behavior is caused by a disability and whether suspensions or an expulsion would be appropriate.

Stacy said he may pursue legal action against DPSCD if things do not improve for his son.

“I want to fight them (the district) holding him back because he didn’t have the support in place for him to succeed, and it’s done a number on him,” he said. “I hate to see my son hurting like this; he’s depressed. If I have to get a lawyer to bring a lot of things to light, that’s the next step for me.”

The district did not respond to questions about Stacy’s son or his IEP.

It’s a statewide issue, advocates say

Detroit school board member Sherry Gay-Dagnogo said delays with IEPs are mainly tied to staffing shortages. Students with disabilities make up nearly 14% of the population in DPSCD, and like many school districts across the nation, the Detroit district struggles to hire qualified special education staff.

DPSCD’s special education department is called the Exceptional Student Education Department. Staffing shortages came up during a January board meeting where Vitti reported that the district had 15 psychologist vacancies. In a recent email to BridgeDetroit, Vitti said the district has 31 full-time psychologists, 35 contracted psychologists, and 17 vacancies.

While the district approved a teacher contract last year that provides an annual $15,000 bonus to new and current employees who support students with IEPs, Vitti said that it’s difficult to hire enough psychologists. The superintendent added that he has a plan to adjust the IEP process, but said details won’t be announced until sometime this spring.

“We’ve seen a bit of an increase in hiring by going up to $15,000, but I don’t know if a $15,000 bonus is even enough because the average psychologist can demand a very high wage, not only in the K-12 sector, but even more so the private sector,” Vitti said at the January meeting. “We have worked with universities to try to create pathways and internship opportunities, but the reality is that the IEP process requires a psychologist that’s mandated by federal and state law, and there’s no way around them.”

Heather Eckner, the director of statewide education for the Autism Alliance of Michigan, said IEP delays are a problem in school districts statewide and nationwide. The advocacy organization has a navigator program, which fields thousands of calls yearly from individuals with autism, parents and educators. Education issues are among those people call in about the most, Eckner said.

“A lot of times, it is questions and concerns in the education system around (the IEP) process and the steps in the process and the delays with it,” she said.

In addition, the Autism Alliance released its Special Education Experience Survey Report last October, which showed that the state’s special education system isn’t meeting the needs of students and families. Some of the top findings revealed that the workforce shortage is affecting students and that schools are not identifying disabilities early enough.

Eckner said she empathizes with school districts that are experiencing staffing shortages in special education, but she’s also seeing schools avoiding the IEP process by using “delay tactics.”

“For a lot of families, they report back to us that it almost feels like the evaluation plan was set up to not find the child eligible, like they don’t do as comprehensive of an evaluation as they could or should,” she said.

The evaluation delays persist amid President Donald Trump’s recent executive order aimed at shutting down the Department of Education, continuing a campaign promise to return education oversight to the states. Trump said that the Department of Health and Human Services would handle services for the 7.5 million students with disabilities in the nation. But many legal experts and advocates for children with disabilities say the president does not have the authority to shift oversight to another agency.

While Trump promised to preserve federal Pell grants for college students, funding for students with disabilities and Title I funding for high-poverty schools, the firing of roughly 1,400 DOE employees could ultimately harm vulnerable children. This includes students with disabilities, children in poverty, children experiencing homelessness, and English language learners, state superintendent Michael Rice, who is retiring later this year, told Bridge Michigan.

Special education advocate Marcie Lipsitt agrees that DOE cuts will impact students with disabilities, including the closing in March of the department’s seven regional Office for Civil Rights locations. The closings included the Cleveland office, which investigated violations of gender, race, and disability-based discrimination in Ohio and Michigan.

Lipsitt has been an advocate for families across the country for 21 years and even longer for her family and friends, she said.

“I’ve had complaints sitting; parents haven’t heard from an attorney in months,” she said. “I’ve had mediations that were canceled with hours’ notice that have not been rescheduled. It’s (the federal changes) going to gut public education.”

Here’s what the IEP process looks like

When it comes to an IEP request in DPSCD, a parent or district staff member may request an initial evaluation when a student is suspected of having a disability, according to district documents. When the request is made verbally, the school will support the parent in documenting it. Requests are then submitted to the school principal.

Within 10 school days of the request being submitted, the district’s school-based evaluation team must complete a review of the student’s educational record and other relevant information. When the review is completed, the team will evaluate if the request can move forward or if it will be denied. If it is denied, the parent will be notified in writing and receive an explanation.

When a request moves forward, the team will conduct a Review of Existing Evaluation Data, or REED, and the parent is invited to participate. The REED is used to determine which evaluations are needed to diagnose the student with the correct disability.

Evaluations can include examining a student’s health, hearing, vision, and communication skills. The evaluation team has 30 school days to complete the evaluation and create the IEP. The plan is reviewed at least once a year but can be adjusted when necessary.

Kelso said in her more than 30 years of being an education advocate in metro Detroit, she has seen kids receive the wrong IEPs, accommodations deviating from what was originally discussed, or accommodations not being implemented at all.

“Some teachers’ reasons for why they don’t do them is because they feel it gives special ed kids an advantage over the other kids,” Kelso said. “You’re trying to make them as equal as you can to the other kids to succeed.”

Lipsitt is also seeing Michigan districts not following IEPs, as well as children not receiving certain services like speech and occupational therapy.

One of the parents Lipsitt is helping includes Sheri King, who filed an Office of Civil Rights, or OCR complaint against DPSCD in September 2024. She said school staff repeatedly messed up the accommodations for her son, who’s a seventh grader at Mackenzie Elementary-Middle School.

Sheri King and her son, George, a 7th grader in the Detroit Public Schools Community District, on April 5, 2025 in Detroit, Michigan. Due to epileptic seizures he started having in elementary school, he has memory loss that affects his learning. King has filed complaints against the district with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Credit: Sylvia Jarrus for Chalkbeat

King’s son, George Finley Jr., started having epileptic seizures a couple of years ago and experienced memory loss. Seizures can impact short and long-term memory, attention, and multi-tasking as well as create language problems. Finley began receiving an IEP around the third grade and has had issues with schools complying with his plan, she said. King has made multiple complaints to DPSCD with Lipsett’s assistance over the years.

King and Lipsitt reached out to an attorney at OCR’s Cleveland office, and the attorney arranged a mediation between King and DPSCD last year. During the meeting, the district said they would provide outside tutoring aid for reading, Lipsitt said. However, King said that never happened, so her son is now seeing a tutor in Farmington.

Since the Cleveland office has shut down, Lipsett will have to refile the complaint with the OCR.

“The school’s not trying to do nothing,” King said. “They’re hoping that I forget. I keep asking them over and over, ‘When are you guys going to call these people so I can set up my son’s tutoring? When are you guys going to do this?’ If I didn’t have Marcie, I don’t know where I would be because she helps me out a lot.”

DPSCD officials said in response to King’s case that they “respect the challenges that all parents with students” with IEPs have.

The district said it will continue to “problem solve through the challenges they are facing to ensure their children succeed in school with the limited resources the District receives to educate each child with an IEP.”

Seeking solutions in Detroit

Gay-Dagnogo, the school board member, said some possible solutions the district should consider include seeking outside resources from the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute at Wayne State University, which collaborates with families, children, and community partners to promote the healthy development and well-being of individuals. She also mentioned Michigan Rehabilitation Services, which develops customized workforce solutions for businesses and people with disabilities, and Wayne RESA, an agency that offers a wide range of services like special education to the school districts and public school academies in Wayne County.

“I’m not suggesting that these are all easy fixes or even possible, but I just think we have to explore ways that we might be able to share some level of services,” Gay-Dagnogo added.

Monique Bryant, another Detroit school board member, said the district should provide training for parents and guardians on navigating the assessment process so that they will have a clearer understanding of how the ESE department works. She added that there should be clearer communication between the district and parents on the timeline for an IEP.

“We need to better articulate what the expectations are, knowing that we have a shortage and then working with parents to navigate so that their students still receive the best possible classroom and educational experience that we can offer them,” Bryant said.

Another possible solution is making the special education space more equitable when it comes to parents advocating for their children, Eckner said. Many parents, like King and Stacy, face barriers within the school system because they are unaware of their rights or don’t have the “privilege, access, or money to really invest time into advocacy,” she said.

In order to help parents, the Autism Alliance started a statewide grassroots coalition in 2021 made up of family advocates and attorneys who represent families in special education. The group has almost 400 members, Eckner said.

“We’re trying to channel this collective advocacy movement to try to remove some of these barriers so that it doesn’t matter what your ZIP code is or what your household income is,” she said, “because that shouldn’t dictate whether or not a child gets access to the right kind of education support and services.”

Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit. You can reach her at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.

Changes to federal Education Department could harm NJ students with disabilities, advocates warn

2025-04-28T10:00:00+00:00

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Thousands of students with disabilities in New Jersey could face significant setbacks as proposed federal cuts to special education funding, staff reductions, and changes in oversight could worsen existing challenges, particularly in low-income districts like Newark, advocates say.

As the Trump administration moves forward with changes at the federal Education Department, school districts like Newark that serve a larger population of vulnerable students face even greater risks since they rely on federal and state funding to provide special education services.

“I think that families are scared. I was going to say nervous, but honestly, I think it’s more than just being nervous. They’re afraid, and rightfully so based on what’s happening,” said Carolyn Hayer, executive director for the SPAN Parent Advocacy Network.

Hayer and Nina Peckman, an attorney at Advocates for Children of New Jersey, spoke about the potential impacts of shifting special education oversight, federal funding cuts, and staffing reductions at a virtual panel last week hosted by the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University and moderated by Chalkbeat Newark’s Jessie Gomez.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on March 20 directing the closure of the U.S. Department of Education – a move that could significantly impact special education funding and programs. The next day, he announced the transfer and oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, though he offered no specifics about the plan.

The federal Education Department has been the sole agency providing resources, funding, and staff to ensure students with disabilities receive a fair education in public schools. The department also issues federal guidance on policies to help ensure students’ rights and existing special education laws, including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a law that predates the federal Education Department and ensures students receive a free, appropriate public education tailored to their individual needs.

Hayer recalled what it was like before the creation of the federal Education Department and how children with disabilities were often excluded from public schools. One of her biggest concerns is “if we go backwards to that, what will that mean for our children?”

“Primarily, it will make it much more difficult for families to ensure that their children have access to the services that they need and are entitled to,” Hayer added.

School districts that rely on federal funding are at greater risk

Approximately 7.5 million students with disabilities across the country rely on special education services. In New Jersey, roughly 240,000 students receive special education support in schools under IDEA. Gov. Phil Murphy’s proposed budget for 2026 anticipates $420 million in extraordinary special education aid, according to the state’s school board association.

That money is allocated to schools to fund therapists, transportation, aides, and other support services for students with disabilities, and if cut, would be “terrible for children and families,” especially from low-income backgrounds, Peckman said during last week’s virtual conversation.

“We can see the increased numbers of parents calling for assistance, increased numbers of children not having the right services, the right placements, delays in evaluations, delays in classifications. The lack of access to school-based services because they’re just, you know, nonexistent,” Peckman said.

School districts, such as Newark, that rely on federal Title I funding that supports schools in low-income areas, and special education aid, will be hit hardest by funding cuts, Hayer said. But she says parents need to have a seat at the table so districts can understand where the needs lie.

“I think that is the critical part that we’re not having, not involving [parents] in those conversations and then making decisions without the input of family. So finding ways to engage families, I think, is very, very important,” Hayer said.

Of its 40,000 students, Newark Public Schools enrolled roughly 7,000 students with disabilities this school year, but families this school year have reported delays in receiving services, class assignments, and classroom aides for their students. The district’s students with disabilities receive therapy, in-classroom, and other support services, but face greater learning challenges as they have been among the hardest hit by the fallout from the pandemic, with some requiring makeup services from learning disruptions.

Parents may also be unaware that they can submit complaints to the state when disputes arise over school services for students with disabilities, Peckman said. But families are experiencing delays in special education hearings that may be exacerbated by a reduction in federal staffing and more responsibilities to state education departments, Peckman added.

“Families should continue advocating for services,” Hayer said but added that schools need to help families understand their rights and “intentionally engage families in decision-making as resources become constrained.”

In addition, Hayer said, schools are seeing “a tremendous turnover in school staffing,” specifically in special education teachers and paraprofessionals who help students go to the bathroom, eat, and complete assignments, among other duties during the school day.

“Teachers are stressed, maxed-out. But a lot of it is just that they’re burned out, emotionally, financially, and kind of at their wits’ end,” Hayer said.

Senators question plans to shift special education oversight

Earlier this month, 23 Democratic senators, including New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, sent a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon demanding answers to a series of questions about students with disabilities, including whether the IDEA would be implemented and overseen as required by federal law and how layoffs at the department will affect kids and schools. The letter to McMahon also stressed that the Education Department is “the best positioned” to do the job of enforcing special education law.

“Transferring these authorities to the Department of Health and Human Services will not only overburden an agency already confronting massive workforce cuts orchestrated by this administration, but it will also stretch HHS beyond its expertise as medical, rather than educational, professionals,” the letter to McMahon read.

The letter also highlighted a backlog of 12,000 investigations at the federal Office for Civil Rights, with about half of those cases involving students with disabilities. The Trump administration reduced staffing across 12 regional divisions of the Office for Civil Rights last month.

“While all disabled students are harmed when supports are taken away and barriers left unchecked, disabled students of color are harmed disproportionately relative to disabled white students and nondisabled students of color,” the letter read.

At the virtual panel, Peckman and Hayer agreed that the federal Education Department’s role in special education enforcement is needed, and the transfer of those services could widen the gaps in academic recovery and chronic absenteeism rates among special education students.

“I think one of the most important things that the U.S. Department of Education has done, and why the potential to fully eliminate it is so scary, is they’re responsible for oversight and guidance,” Hayer added.

They also added that the Trump administration’s cuts to research, specifically the Institute for Educational Sciences, which analyzes data around student performance, would also hit students with disabilities the hardest, since it would be hard to determine how federal changes will impact academic performance.

Despite the changing federal landscape, the advocates emphasized that federal and state special education laws have not changed and parents should continue to “advocate and push schools” to get special education services.

“We have to keep in mind that nothing has changed specifically within the law,” Hayer said, “but we do know that as dollars and resources get pulled, services will change.”

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado lawmakers reject attempt to ban seclusion in schools

2025-04-17T00:43:20+00:00

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Colorado lawmakers rejected a bill Wednesday that initially set out to ban seclusion in schools, which is the practice of shutting a student in a room alone.

Lawmakers said seclusion is a complicated topic and that even after extensive amendments, the bill didn’t strike the right balance between educators who said seclusion is a necessary practice and parents who told vivid stories of its misuse.

The sole sponsor of House Bill 1178, Democratic state Rep. Regina English, had compared seclusion to incarceration and said it was “reminiscent of the slave pens of our past.”

But after pushback from educators who described seclusion as a “last resort,” an “important tool,” and a “safe and caring option” that can prevent staff from having to physically restrain students, English introduced an amendment that was an attempt at compromise.

Instead of banning seclusion, the amendment sought to cement current seclusion rules in state law. Those rules say seclusion should not be used as a form of discipline and require school staff to monitor students placed in seclusion through a window or by video camera.

Even with the amendment, the House Education Committee killed the bill in a 2-11 vote.

“There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done going forward,” said Rep. Tammy Story, a Conifer Democrat.

Seclusion is defined in Colorado law as placing a student in a room and blocking them in. It’s only supposed to be used in emergency situations, but it’s impossible to know if that’s the case. A loophole in state law that legislators and advocates say was unintentional has meant that there is almost no public data about seclusion.

What little data there is shows that seclusion happens most often to elementary-aged children with disabilities that affect their ability to regulate their emotions.

The initial version of House Bill 1178 would have required the state to collect data on seclusion and banned it. A different bill, House Bill 1284, would close the data reporting loophole without a ban. House Bill 1284 has passed the House and is now in the Senate.

English repeatedly said her initial bill to ban seclusion would not have prohibited educators from inviting students to use a de-escalation room. The difference, she said, is that students go to a de-escalation room voluntarily and are not shut inside alone.

“We have a moral and legal duty to ensure our schools are places of learning, not prisons,” English, a Colorado Springs Democrat, said at a bill hearing last month.

But several lawmakers who are new to the House Education Committee this year — and who previously worked in special education — said that wasn’t realistic.

“A kindergartener who’s standing naked on top of a kindergarten table … and he’s yelling ‘I’m going to blow the f-ing school up you mf-ers’ on and on, he’s not in the frame of mind for me to invite him to the de-escalation,” Rep. Lori Garcia Sander, an Eaton Republican who previously worked as a teacher and school administrator, said at last month’s hearing.

Rep. Jacque Phillips, a Thornton Democrat and former teacher who now works as an attorney representing students with disabilities, said seclusion is sometimes the best option to protect students and preserve their dignity in times of crisis.

“When they take their clothes off, I do want them to be secluded,” Phillips said. “When they masturbate, I do want them to be secluded. When they spread feces with their hand, I definitely want them to be secluded. I had a student who punched his own nose and broke his own nose and there was a lot of blood. I did want that student to be secluded.”

House Bill 1178 was English’s second attempt to ban seclusion. She sponsored a similar bill last year but asked her fellow lawmakers to postpone it indefinitely because of pushback.

Last year, several mothers whose children had been secluded testified in favor of a ban. They described how their kids soiled themselves inside seclusion rooms because they were so scared. They said their children had nightmares and PTSD from being shut in rooms with innocuous sounding names like “the opportunity room” and “the relaxation room.”

This year, most of the testimony came from special education staff in Harrison School District 2 in El Paso County, where English was formerly a school board member.

Amanda Richardson, a special education coordinator for Harrison 2, described a fifth grade student who would throw chairs and punch adults. Richardson said attempts to physically restrain the student resulted in injuries to staff and a concussion for the student.

“While seclusion is a last resort to help a student de-escalate, it is an important tool,” said Emily Gonzalez, a school counselor in Harrison 2.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

A big change for kids with disabilities is underway, Trump says. Critics say it’s against the law.

2025-03-24T14:52:06+00:00

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President Donald Trump made a brief announcement Friday morning of a policy that could upend how the nation serves its 7.5 million students with disabilities.

Offering virtually no details, Trump said he’d decided that the Department of Health and Human Services would handle students’ “special needs” instead of the Education Department.

“Rather complex,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “I think that will work out very well.”

But many legal experts and advocates for children with disabilities say the president does not have the authority to move funding or oversight of special education to another agency. That would require an act of Congress, they say.

Many educators, parents, and disability rights advocates worry that the president will try to move forward anyway, and that this plan could end up stripping children with disabilities of legally required educational support and services — and sideline them in an agency that doesn’t have the expertise, staff, or training to properly serve them.

“There was a recognition that the education of students with disabilities should occur alongside non-disabled students,” when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, was signed into law in 1975, said Robyn Linscott, the director of education and family policy at The Arc, which advocates for children with disabilities.

“To be able to say that students with disabilities are this monolith and we can just pluck them out of the general population of students and plop them into a different agency,” Linscott said, “is just bonkers.”

What the law says about Education Department’s role

IDEA predates the creation of the federal Education Department by four years, and was enacted when education fell under what was then known as the Health, Education, and Welfare Department.

IDEA would remain on the books even if the Education Department ceased to exist. But advocates said enforcement of the law is bound up in the infrastructure of the Education Department, as the two evolved together. Students with disabilities are part of nearly every other education law, from school accountability to higher education access.

In the hours since Trump’s announcement, neither the Education Department nor the Health and Human Services Department has offered any concrete details, including exactly what responsibilities would move to HHS and when.

In response to a list of questions, an Education Department spokesperson referred Chalkbeat to a short video clip of a Friday afternoon interview with Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in which she said that “some” of the programs that fall under IDEA would be given to Health and Human Services. She did not specify which ones, and the Education Department did not respond to follow-up questions.

Emily Hilliard, the deputy press secretary at HHS, responded to a list of questions by pointing Chalkbeat to a social media post by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in which he said his agency “is fully prepared to take on the responsibility of supporting individuals with special needs” and that his agency would “make the care of our most vulnerable citizens our highest national priority.”

Multiple laws say the Education Department is responsible for overseeing and funding the education of children with disabilities.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act established the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services within the Education Department and said that it must include an Office of Special Education Programs, “which shall be the principal agency in the Department for administering and carrying out” IDEA, along with “other programs and activities concerning the education of children with disabilities.”

The law that created the Department of Education said the department must include an Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.

IDEA also says the education secretary is responsible for administering IDEA grants. The most recent budget laws give control of IDEA funds to the Department of Education and say those funds can’t just be transferred to another agency.

“If they’re trying to just completely eliminate ED’s responsibility to oversee IDEA and the things that are required in statute, they can’t do that,” said Blair Wriston, the senior manager of government affairs for EdTrust, a nonprofit that advocates for students’ civil rights. “That’s illegal. It would require an act of Congress.”

McMahon has said she would work with Congress to shrink the Education Department.

It’s unclear what part of HHS would oversee special education. Some disability rights advocates say it could be the Administration for Community Living, which supports adults with disabilities, or the Administration for Children and Families, which includes the federal preschool program Head Start and child welfare.

Would special education become an afterthought at HHS?

Many advocates for students with disabilities, some of whom spoke to Chalkbeat before Trump’s comments Friday, have significant concerns about moving special education to HHS.

The department is a massive agency whose responsibilities include approving new drugs, responding to emerging diseases, and administering Medicare and Medicaid. Advocates fear that special education would be an afterthought at the agency and that employees there lack the necessary expertise to interact with state education agencies and school districts about the services kids are legally entitled to receive.

Several education advocates expressed concern that Kennedy would oversee services for children with disabilities. Senators were not able to press Kennedy during his confirmation hearing about his knowledge and approach to educating children with disabilities, as they were McMahon.

“RFK Jr. has repeatedly cast doubt on the legitimacy of autism as a real diagnosis,” Keri Rodrigues, the president of the National Parents Union, said in a statement. “Putting someone with this perspective in charge of children’s services — especially for children with disabilities — is a betrayal of families who have fought for decades to secure educational rights and protections for their kids.”

Denise Marshall, the CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, said that her members oppose moving special education to Health and Human Services.

“That department does not have the expertise or the knowledge, not only about what the law requires but about best practices, about what works, and about ensuring that students with disabilities learn to read and write and do math and graduate at higher percentages,” she said.

Education Department staffers understand how IDEA money is supposed to be spent and have experience providing guidance and support to states on how to use their funds legally and effectively, said Lindsay Kubatzky, the director of policy and advocacy for the nonprofit National Center for Learning Disabilities.

A large share of cases filed with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights — more than half in many years — involve students with disabilities.

Nicole Fuller, a policy manager who works with Kubatzky, said the special education and civil rights offices work closely together to make sure schools have the resources and knowledge to appropriately serve students with disabilities. She doesn’t trust that states would do the same.

Texas, for example, maintained an unofficial cap on identifying students with disabilities. The result was that many students missed out on services they were legally entitled to and struggled in school.

State education officials denied there was ever a cap, but the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights under the first Trump administration found widespread violations and ordered the state to rectify the situation.

“It did really take that oversight and insistence for Texas to do the right thing,” Fuller said.

Advocates also fear it represents a return to viewing disabilities as medical problems that need to be fixed.

“It feels like moving your public school district from the leadership of a superintendent to the leadership of your local hospital CEO,” said Jennifer Coco, the interim executive director at the Center for Learner Equity, a nonprofit that advocates for students with disabilities. “It fundamentally misunderstands disability.”

Public schools have not always lived up to the “bold, significant” promise in IDEA that every child should get a free and appropriate education, Coco and other advocates acknowledge.

“I don’t think that’s grounds to throw out the promise or to throw out the systems that make sure that promise is fulfilled,” Coco said.

This story has been updated to reflect a change in Jennifer Coco’s title. Nicole Fuller is based in Washington, D.C., not Texas.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Education Department layoffs gut its civil rights office, leaving discrimination cases in limbo

2025-03-13T17:51:24+00:00

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Education Department’s civil rights branch is losing nearly half its staff in the Trump administration’s layoffs, effectively gutting an office that already faced a backlog of thousands of complaints from students and families across the nation.

Among a total of more than 1,300 layoffs announced Tuesday were roughly 240 in the department’s Office for Civil Rights, according to a list obtained and verified by The Associated Press. Seven of the civil rights agency’s 12 regional offices were entirely laid off, including busy hubs in New York, Chicago, and Dallas. Despite assurances that the department’s work will continue unaffected, huge numbers of cases appear to be in limbo.

The Trump administration has not said how it will proceed with thousands of cases being handled by staff it’s eliminating. The cases involve families trying to get school services for students with disabilities, allegations of bias related to race and religion, and complaints over sexual violence at schools and college campuses.

Some staffers who remain said there’s no way to pick up all of their fired colleagues’ cases. Many were already struggling to keep pace with their own caseloads. With fewer than 300 workers, families likely will be waiting on resolution for years, they said.

“I fear they won’t get their calls answered, their complaints won’t move,” said Michael Pillera, a senior civil rights attorney for the Office for Civil Rights. “I truly don’t understand how a handful of offices could handle the entire country.”

Department officials insisted the cuts will not affect civil rights investigations. The reductions were “strategic decisions,” spokesperson Madison Biedermann.

“OCR will be able to deliver the work,” Biedermann said. “It will have to look different, and we know that.”

The layoffs are part of a dramatic downsizing directed by President Donald Trump as he moves to reduce the footprint of the federal government. Along with the Office of Civil Rights, the top divisions to lose hundreds of staffers in the layoffs included Federal Student Aid, which manages the federal student loan portfolio, and the Institute of Education Sciences, which oversees assessments of whether the education system is working and research into best teaching practices.

Trump has pushed for a full shutdown of the Education Department, calling it a “con job” and saying its power should be turned over to states. On Wednesday he told reporters many agency employees “don’t work at all.” Responding to the layoffs, he said his administration is “keeping the best ones.”

After the cuts, the Office for Civil Rights will only have workers in Washington and five regional offices, which traditionally take the lead on investigating complaints and mediating resolutions with schools and colleges. Buildings are being closed and staff laid off in Dallas, Chicago, New York, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

Many lawyers at the New York City office were juggling 80 or more cases, said one staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for reprisals. The branch often mediated cases with New York City schools, the nation’s largest district, and its lawyers were handling a high-profile antisemitism investigation at Columbia University — a priority for Trump.

The staffer described several pending cases involving students with disabilities who are wrongly being kept out of school because of behavioral issues. With limited oversight from the office, they said, school districts will be less likely to comply with legal requirements.

Pillera, who had said before the cuts that he was leaving the department, said it’s unclear how complaints will be investigated in areas that no longer have offices.

“We have to physically go to schools,” Pillera said. “We have to look at the playground to see if it’s accessible for kids with disabilities. We have to measure doorways and bathrooms to see if everything is accessible for kids with disabilities.”

Layoffs follow Trump-mandated freeze on civil rights cases

Even before the layoffs, the civil rights office had been losing staff even as complaints rose to record levels. The workforce had fallen below 600 staffers before Trump took office, and they faced nearly 23,000 complaints filed last year, more than ever.

Trump officials ordered a freeze on most cases when they arrived at the department, adding to the backlog. When Education Secretary Linda McMahon lifted the freeze last week, there were more than 20,000 pending cases.

Historically, most of the office’s work deals with disability rights cases, but it has fielded growing numbers of complaints alleging discrimination based on sex or race. It has also played a prominent role in investigating complaints of antisemitism and Islamophobia amid the Israel-Hamas war and a wave of campus demonstrations that spread across the country last year.

Craig Trainor, Trump’s appointee to oversee the office, directed staff to focus on antisemitism cases as a top priority last week. In a memo, he accused former President Joe Biden of failing to hold colleges accountable and promised tougher action against violators.

At her confirmation hearing, McMahon said the goal is not to defund key programs but to make them operate more efficiently. She vowed to uphold the agency’s civil rights work but said it might fit better being moved to the Justice Department.

The civil rights office was not the only division to lose attorneys key to the Education Department’s portfolio. Tuesday’s layoffs have nearly eliminated all staff working in the department’s Office of the General Counsel, say two people familiar with the situation, who didn’t want to speak publicly for fear of reprisals.

Attorneys in the division advised the department on the legality of its actions, helped enforce how states and schools spent federal money meant for disadvantaged K-12 students, and watched for conflicts of interest among internal staff and appointees, among other things.

Of the approximately 100 staff members working before Trump took office, only around two dozen remain. The majority of those still employed advise the department on higher education, including financial aid programs.

An email the Education Department sent to all staff after the layoffs said there will need to be significant changes to how they work.

“What we choose to prioritize, and in turn, not prioritize, will be critical in this transition,” the message said.

AP Education Writer Bianca Vázquez Toness contributed reporting.

Lawmakers ordered schools to report data on seclusion. For the most part, it hasn’t happened.

2025-03-10T22:08:51+00:00

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No one knows how many Colorado students are shut inside rooms, alone, at school.

But Riley Ellis-Beach knows that it happened to her son.

He was a small kindergartener, barely 30 pounds, with big emotions and a diagnosis of autism. When asked to do a task he didn’t want to do, he’d spit, growl, or cuss at school staff, according to a school behavior log. Sometimes he’d bite or hit. The staff began taking him to the “opportunity room,” where he’d stay for as little as five minutes or as long as an hour and a half, the log shows.

“Not until I had to go in and pick him up did we realize it was an empty room with nothing in it,” Ellis-Beach said. One time, she said she showed up to school to find her son in the room with the door shut. His special education teacher was peeking at him through a window, she said.

“He looked like a wild animal that had been trapped in a cage,” Ellis-Beach said.

State lawmakers have tried in recent years to better monitor and oversee seclusion, which means shutting a student inside a room, and restraint, which means physically restraining a student. But a loophole that legislators and advocates say was unintentional has meant that there is almost no public data about seclusion, while restraint data is more readily available.

Only 10 of Colorado’s 179 school districts included a separate tally of how many of their students were secluded last school year in the annual reviews that districts are required to file with the Colorado Department of Education, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the reports. That’s despite a 2022 state law that was supposed to make data about seclusion available and “easily accessible.”

The lack of information makes it impossible to understand the scope of a controversial practice that some educators say is necessary to control dangerous student behavior but that many families say leaves their children with lasting trauma. Emily Harvey, co-legal director of Disability Law Colorado, called the use of seclusion “an unknown problem.”

“We have no idea how often it’s happening and who it’s happening to,” she said.

The data blackout also makes it hard for state lawmakers to know exactly what to do about seclusion. Two separate bills introduced last month in the state legislature aim to address the information gap. One of the bills goes even further and seeks to ban seclusion altogether.

“We know a seclusion room is an incarceration room,” said state Rep. Regina English, a Colorado Springs Democrat who is sponsoring the ban. “There is no way out for the student. There [are] locked windows and locked doors. That is, for me, inflicting intentional trauma.”

A change to solitary confinement law affects seclusion in schools

In 2017, Colorado lawmakers passed a bill that required school districts to complete annual reviews of their use of restraint and seclusion in an attempt to track it. School districts began complying in 2018, but a Chalkbeat investigation found that no state agency was collecting the annual reports. Essentially, the districts were policing themselves.

So in 2022, state lawmakers passed a bill that was supposed to make the data more transparent by requiring the Colorado Department of Education to collect the districts’ reviews.

But when the state education department went to write rules to put the 2022 bill into practice, it ran into what department spokesman Jeremy Meyer described in an email as “the complexity in our statutes regarding restraint and seclusion.”

Both the 2017 and 2022 bills required school districts to produce annual reviews of their use of restraint alone. That’s not because lawmakers didn’t want data on seclusion; they thought it would be included in the reports because Colorado law for years defined seclusion as a form of restraint.

What lawmakers working on the issue didn’t realize at the time was that in 2016, previous state lawmakers who were worried about restraint and seclusion in a different setting — youth jails — had created separate definitions of the two practices in Colorado law.

They did that so they could put more guardrails around the use of seclusion in youth jails, also known as solitary confinement, and collect more data about it. The 2016 bill followed concerning reports about the overuse of juvenile solitary confinement and the secrecy surrounding it.

That decision inadvertently led to the data collection problem that the education system is grappling with today, nine years later.

Because the state definition of restraint only refers to physical restraints and not seclusion, the disclosure rules developed by the Colorado Department of Education list just four data points that districts must include in their annual reviews: the number of physical restraints lasting more than one minute but less than five, the number of physical restraints lasting five minutes or more, and the number of students who experienced each. The rules say nothing about seclusion.

“It has created such a problem,” said Harvey of Disability Law Colorado. “A lot of people are asking, ‘How widespread is this problem?’ And I’m like, ‘Who knows?’”

Vast majority of Colorado school districts are silent on seclusion

Under the 2022 bill, the Colorado Department of Education began collecting annual reviews of school districts’ use of restraint in the summer of 2024.

Chalkbeat obtained all 179 reports through an open records request. While all the reports include data about the number of physical restraints performed on students, only 10 districts included separate information about seclusion: Cherry Creek, Aurora, Adams 12, Academy 20, Harrison, Cheyenne Mountain, Weld RE-1, Weld RE-4, Weld RE-5J, and Pikes Peak BOCES.

That means just 5% of Colorado districts reported seclusion data in their annual reviews.

Two of the 10 districts, Cheyenne Mountain and Weld RE-5J, reported zero seclusions in the 2023-24 school year. The data in the Weld RE-1 and Harrison 2 reports was redacted. The state allows the data to be suppressed if there are fewer than 16 incidents.

The other six districts reported a total of 907 instances of seclusion last school year.

The 2022 bill also required the state education department to “develop easily accessible, user-friendly profile reports for each school district” that would be posted on its website. The online reports were required to include a host of data ranging from chronic absenteeism rates to the number of students handcuffed to the number of students restrained or secluded.

The Colorado Department of Education did indeed launch the profile reports online. Meyer, the department spokesman, said the department collected restraint and seclusion data for the profile reports “but ultimately did not post it because we have concerns about its accuracy this year.” He pointed to “significant misunderstandings from districts in this first year of implementation.”

“We are working to ensure that districts are better trained on this data collection going forward so that we can present a more accurate picture in the future,” Meyer wrote in an email.

District says there’s a difference between seclusion and visits to the ‘opportunity room’

The Weld RE-4 district, where Ellis-Beach’s son attended, was one of the 10 that reported seclusion data for the 2023-24 school year. It reported a total of 39 instances of seclusion districtwide.

But the behavior log for Ellis-Beach’s son, a copy of which she provided to Chalkbeat, shows that the boy was sent to the opportunity room 63 times in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. He was just one student in a district of 8,700. Chalkbeat is not naming him to protect his privacy.

Advocates and parents are concerned that school districts are under-reporting their use of seclusion by claiming that sending a student to a calm-down room is not seclusion. Seclusion is defined in state law as the placement of a person in a room alone “from which egress is prevented,” which means blocking them in. It’s only supposed to be used in emergency situations.

Even if school staff aren’t holding the door shut, advocates and parents have said, students are often told they can’t leave the room or feel that it’s forbidden.

Several entries in Ellis-Beach’s son’s behavior log say he was not let out of the opportunity room until he was sitting quietly. “OR - until sitting quietly against the wall with hands in lap,” one entry says. The duration? “100 minutes.”

In an emailed statement, Weld RE-4 Communications and Public Relations Director Katie Smith said there are “key distinctions between seclusion events and Opportunity Room visits.”

Weld RE-4 uses seclusion “in limited circumstances in which all other options are exhausted and if students pose a danger / threat to themselves or others for injury or probable injury,” she said.

Visits to the opportunity room, on the other hand, are “utilized for students of all abilities for a variety of purposes beyond seclusion and outside of disciplinary processes, including emotional regulation, privacy, and refocus space,” Smith said.

“This space provides a level of dignity and respect for our students,” she said.

“With the exception of use for seclusion, the student is actively engaged with a staff member the entire visit,” she said of visits to the opportunity room.

The monitoring requirements are different for seclusion, Smith said. A student in seclusion is continuously monitored by at least two staff members, and parents are immediately notified, she said. Legal documentation is completed that identifies the other options that staff tried, she said.

Neither parental notification nor legal documentation is required for visits to the opportunity room, Smith said, adding “however, our practice is to engage and communicate openly with our parents.”

Ellis-Beach said her son’s school didn’t give her a copy of the behavior log noting his visits to the opportunity room until she asked for it.

Seclusion has faced increased scrutiny

What little data there is shows that seclusion happens most often to elementary-aged children with disabilities that affect their ability to regulate their emotions. The practice has long been contentious, but it has faced increased scrutiny in Colorado in recent years.

In Douglas County, the U.S. Department of Justice opened an investigation into a case where a second grader was repeatedly secluded in the “blue room” and the “reset room” at his school. Federal investigators came to Colorado in January to interview witnesses, according to advocates and attorneys familiar with the case.

The status of the investigation is unclear. The U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to a question about the status of the case.

The Douglas County school board voted in January to ban seclusion rooms, but not seclusion. Douglas County School District Public Information Officer Paula Hans acknowledged the change in a statement, saying the board “recently updated district policies to eliminate the use of seclusion rooms. Additionally, the use of seclusion and restraint are limited to emergency situations only, when needed to ensure the safety of our students and staff.”

A case in which Denver middle school students were secluded against school district policy made headlines in 2023 and led to an internal investigation by Denver Public Schools.

That case sparked Rep. English to sponsor a bill to ban seclusion last year. But the bill faced pushback from educators who said seclusion was a necessary “last resort.” English ended up asking fellow lawmakers to postpone her bill indefinitely, effectively defeating it.

English is bringing the bill back this year. The new version, HB25-1178, would ban seclusion but also require school districts to publicly report their use of it “even though seclusion is prohibited,” the bill says.

“I’m absolutely trying to ensure there is proper reporting when it comes to seclusion,” English said of her bill. But she added that she hopes the reporting is unnecessary: “What I will say is we won’t even have to worry about this reporting because I’m out to ban seclusion wholeheartedly.”

Parents ‘sifting through the damages’ after son was secluded

A separate bill, HB25-1248, wouldn’t go as far. It would move the existing laws about restraint and seclusion in public schools from the section of Colorado law that deals with youth detention facilities to the section that deals with education — a move that one supporter characterized as “a common sense next step in standardizing restraint and seclusion.”

The bill also seeks to close the loophole that resulted in seclusion use being left out of most districts’ annual reviews by ensuring that it also gets reported to the state education department alongside restraint usage. HB25-1248 passed the House Education Committee last month on an 11-2 vote and now moves to the House Appropriations Committee.

Rep. Katie Stewart, a Durango Democrat who is co-sponsoring the bill, said at last month’s hearing that while the bill consists mostly of technical cleanup, “it puts us in a better place to understand the data and when restraint and seclusion are being used so we can do better for our students.”

Ellis-Beach and her husband Anthony Beach hope that’s true.

The couple describe their son as bright, resourceful, and curious. He loves the video game Minecraft and playing with Legos. He’s a “connections kid,” Beach said: He bonds easily with adults who he deems safe and who can help him calm the near-constant fight-or-flight response that his type of autism triggers.

The boy entered kindergarten at Windsor Charter Academy in the Weld RE-4 district in the 2022-23 school year. The behavior log notes that staff soon started taking him to the opportunity room. The incidents often began with noncompliance, the log shows: Staff asked the boy to complete a math worksheet or put away his book and he refused.

His parents said school staff often missed their son’s cues. If he chews on his pencil or picks at his eyelashes, it means he needs a break or a different approach to completing a task, they said. Instead, what often happened was a power struggle that ended with a trip to the opportunity room, they said.

In the opportunity room, the boy would climb the walls, strip off his clothes, and try to hurt himself, according to his parents and the behavior log. One entry says he picked his nose so deeply that it started to bleed. “When asked he said if he bleed [sic] enough he could go home,” says the log.

Windsor Charter Academy Director of Communications Sara Sanders said the charter school contracts with the Weld RE-4 school district for its special education services. Sanders said the charter school “will let the school district respond on our behalf.”

Weld RE-4 spokesperson Smith said the district could not discuss specific student cases.

Smith said Weld RE-4 works to ensure all special education staff are trained on non-violent crisis intervention each year, which “goes above and beyond the state’s training requirement of every two years.” Members of the district’s administrative teams and general education and transportation department staff also participate in annual training, Smith said.

Ellis-Beach and her husband eventually pulled their son out of Windsor Charter Academy in the fall of his first grade year after his arm got caught in a door, an incident recorded on a separate communication log. Ellis-Beach left her job as a teacher to homeschool their son.

But they said the damage had been done.

“Our son still brings up the opportunity room and being in seclusion,” more than a year after leaving the school, Anthony Beach said. “We’re still kind of sifting through the damages to our son and trying to get him back on a path of wanting to learn again.”

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

A lawsuit over gender dysphoria could upend disability rights law, advocates say

2025-02-28T16:50:00+00:00

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A lawsuit over whether gender dysphoria should be considered a disability threatens to upend more than 50 years of disability rights law that allows students to get important accommodations at school.

The case has its origins in updates to federal rules made during the Biden administration.

Federal officials added language that gender dysmorphia may be a disability that deserves protection in federally funded health care settings, workplaces, and schools through a law known as Section 504.

Seventeen state attorneys general, including Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, sued in Texas v. Becerra. The attorneys general didn’t just argue that gender dysphoria shouldn’t be classified as a disability, they argued that all of Section 504 should be declared unconstitutional.

Though they walked back that argument in the most recent court filings, disability rights advocates remain deeply concerned the case could undo protections for students with disabilities. For example, the law allows students with ADHD to have extra time on tests and students with hearing impairments be able to record lessons so they can replay them.

The case comes as many advocates are worried that efforts to overhaul or dismantle the U.S. Department of Education could hurt students with disabilities.

Still, advocates say this most recent filing indicates that states are not backing away from the broader legal challenge to 504.

“This means that the Attorneys General will continue to advocate that the ‘integration regulation’ is unconstitutional. The integration regulation protects our right to participate in our community with supports instead of being segregated in institutions or separate classrooms, " said a statement from the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.

The case is currently on hold, with the next monthly status update due by April 21.

Section 504 protects ‘thousands’ of Indiana students

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act was landmark legislation in 1973 that codified the rights of individuals with disabilities to participate in federally funded programs.

In the school setting, it can secure accommodations for students whose disabilities don’t qualify under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which covers students with disabilities in 13 specific categories.

Section 504 may allow a diabetic student to check their blood sugar before taking a test, and to retake it if it’s low, said Joe Kwisz, president of the Indiana Council of Administrators of Special Education. It can provide protections for students with anxiety, depression, or temporary disabilities, such as requiring schools to offer an alternative to screen time for a student athlete recovering from a concussion.

“Not everything we do under 504 would be easily allowable without some kind of law enabling schools to make accommodations that students need,” he said.

The 2024 changes affect both the regulations of the law and the preamble, which can be more easily changed by a new presidential administration, according to Claudia Center, DREDF legal director.

It’s the preamble that says gender dysphoria “may constitute a disability under section 504 and that restrictions that prevent, limit, or interfere with otherwise qualified individuals’ access to care due to their gender dysphoria, gender dysphoria diagnosis, or perception of gender dysphoria may violate section 504.”

Whether an individual’s case of gender dysphoria could meet the criteria for a 504 depends largely on whether the diagnosis “substantially limits any major life activity” — a key component of the law for any disability to qualify under Section 504, said Janet Decker, an associate professor of education policy and law at Indiana University.

After an executive order on gender from President Donald Trump, advocates expect his administration to change the preamble and remove the reference to gender dysphoria.

But the 2024 changes to the law also include clarifications about its application in health care settings, including specifying that certain websites and apps must be accessible, and that patients can’t be offered care only in segregated or institutional settings.

Changing these rules would require the administration to go through another rule-making process, Center said.

Advocates hope that the attorneys general will agree to drop the case following the expected changes to the preamble.

“Once the hot topic is resolved, if section 504 rights are taken away from our students, that would be a tremendous disservice to our state and also the country,” Kwisz said. “If 504 was abolished, you’d have thousands of students in Indiana who would lose their services and protections as guaranteed by the law.”

What could happen in Texas v. Becerra

Some state AGs have indicated that they expect the lawsuit to wind down following Trump’s executive order. Rokita did not respond as to whether he would consider dropping the suit in expectation of the Trump administration making the change.

A Rokita spokesperson said in a statement: “As a father of a special needs child, Attorney General Rokita understands and is in full support of the ADA and Section 504. That is exactly why Indiana joined a multi-state lawsuit to stop the Biden Administration’s unlawful attempts to add “gender identity disorders” to the list of disabilities. And now thanks to President Trump, Section 504 will be restored to its original intent.”

It’s unlikely that the case will result in Section 504 being declared unconstitutional, said Decker, the IU law professor.

Decker pointed to parallels between this case and the legal fight over the Biden administration’s Title IX updates. Legal challenges over expanded protections for transgender students resulted in all the new regulations being tossed.

It’s an important case to watch in the context of the national push to downsize the federal government and dissolve the Department of Education, because of the potential to weaken the enforcement of protections guaranteed to people with disabilities.

“There are all kinds of inequities at the school level that are remedied through oversight at the federal level,” Decker said.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Kids’ disability rights cases stalled as Trump began to overhaul Education Department

2025-02-27T18:36:19+00:00

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WASHINGTON (AP) — It was obvious to Christine Smith Olsey that her son was not doing well at school, despite educators telling her to leave it to the experts. The second-grade student stumbled over words, and other kids teased him so much he started to call himself “an idiot.”

Though her son had been receiving speech and occupational therapy, Smith Olsey said his Denver charter school resisted her requests for additional academic support. She filed a complaint with the state and then, in September, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights.

In January, her son’s case came to a halt.

“I have to postpone meetings with you to discuss the case,” a department mediator wrote to her on Jan. 23, three days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. “I am sorry for the inconvenience. I will be in touch as I am able.”

As Trump began to reshape the Education Department, investigations and mediations around disability rights issues came to a standstill.

Standing up for children with disabilities has been a primary role of the department’s civil rights office, which enforces protections guaranteed under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Historically, most complaints to the department have involved disability discrimination — parents saying their disabled child is not receiving accommodations they need to learn, which schools must provide under federal law.

It’s not unusual for new presidential administrations to freeze cases while they adjust priorities, but exceptions typically are made for urgent situations, such as a child’s immediate learning situation. The freeze on pending cases and Trump’s calls to dismantle the department altogether left many parents worrying about the federal government’s commitment to disabled students’ rights.

In the first weeks of the Trump administration, the Education Department has launched investigations of complaints involving antisemitism and transgender athletes allowed to compete in women’s sports, delivering on Trump’s vow to use federal funding as leverage to assail perceived “wokeness” in schools.

It’s worrisome the administration has said so little about responding to complaints from families of students with disabilities, said Catherine Lhamon, who led the Office for Civil Rights under former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

“If it is not aggressively engaged in protecting those rights, the office is not doing its job,” Lhamon said in an interview.

Trump plan to ax the Education Department might affect kids with disabilities a lot — or a little

An Education Department spokesperson said the Office for Civil Rights ended the pause on its review of disability complaints in late February, after The Associated Press asked for comment on the findings of reporting for this story. The Trump administration lifted its pause on disability cases sooner than the Biden administration did in its first months in office, spokesperson Julie Hartman said.

The freeze had upended progress for families like Smith Olsey’s, whose children’s special education services may hinge on the outcomes of the department’s dispute resolution process.

“It’s a scary time right now to be a parent of special needs kiddos,” Smith Olsey said.

Her son has been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, dyslexia, and dyscalculia, a learning disorder caused by differences in parts of the brain involved with numbers and calculations. Since preschool, he has had an individualized education program for a developmental delay.

This month, the school agreed her son needs extra academic help, but she is seeking compensatory services to make up for time he went without adequate support. She also is seeking reimbursement for money she spent out of pocket on therapy, tutoring, and testing.

When families believe their child is not receiving adequate services for their disability, filing a complaint with the Education Department is one way of prompting districts to provide additional help. Parents may also file a complaint with state agencies or pursue litigation.

Education Department serves as referee of disability rights cases

Between 2021 and 2024, the department’s Office for Civil Rights received 27,620 complaints related to disability rights. The office is required to process all complaints it fields, but politics can play a role in setting priorities and choosing which cases to pursue.

Typically, more than half of the complaints to the department have involved disability discrimination, but last year accusations of sex discrimination surged to account for a majority of them, according to an annual report. Disability discrimination accounted for 37%, while discrimination over race or national origin accounted for 19%.

In recent years, the office has seen a significant decline in its staffing, even as the number of cases it must look into has increased.

Parents and advocates say they are concerned about the future of the department’s oversight role as Trump and his nominee for education secretary, Linda McMahon, outline a vision for a dramatically reduced footprint for the agency.

At her confirmation hearing, Democrats pressed McMahon on whether she would support the department’s enforcement role in disability rights. She suggested the Department of Health and Human Services could take over that work.

“There is a reason the Department of Education exists, and it is because educating kids with disabilities can be really hard,” Sen. Maggie Hassan, a New Hampshire Democrat., said during the hearing. “It takes national commitment to get it done.”

The freeze leaves families feeling outraged and adrift

In the fall, DarNisha Hardaway was relieved when an Education Department mediator found her son’s school needed to reevaluate him and provide tutoring. She had filed a complaint with the department after a series of suspensions that she said stemmed from her son being overwhelmed and not getting enough academic help. The 12-year-old has an intellectual disability, autism, and epilepsy.

The Education Department, Hardaway said, “made the school system do what they’re supposed to do.”

If the school district broke the mediation agreement, she was told to contact the Office for Civil Rights again. This month, after her son had an outburst in class, his suburban Detroit school told her he would need to learn online for the rest of the year — a ruling Hardaway saw as a violation of his disability accommodations. An Office for Civil Rights representative told her they could not respond with any substantive information.

Every day she waits, her son learns in front of a computer. “He can’t learn online, and DarNisha is not a teacher,” said Marcie Lipsitt, who is working with the family. “The OCR is just closed for business, and I’m outraged.”

Complaints about racial discrimination in schools are also pending.

Tylisa Guyton of Taylor, Michigan, filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights on Jan. 20 over her 16-year-old son’s repeated suspensions from a suburban Detroit school district, alleging a white administrator has been targeting him and a group of other Black children.

The teen has been out of school since Dec. 4 with the latest suspension, and she has heard nothing about when he might be allowed to return or be placed in an alternative school. Since missing so much school, she doubts he will be able to graduate on time.

“I just feel lost,” she said.

What would Trump’s education shakeup mean for a charter school started by a GOP senator’s wife?

2025-02-10T14:27:00+00:00

This story about Louisiana Key Academy was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Alcide Simmons said he has only one word to describe what it was like for his daughter, Brooke, as she struggled to spell and read: “torture.”

“Spell ‘duck,’ Brooke,” Simmons recalled. “And it would be, ‘P, C, K, something,’ no matter how many times.”

His wife, Leslie Johnson-Simmons, said she saw her creative, smart, and chatty daughter retreat into herself as she tried to learn to spell like other first graders in her class at a private school in Louisiana. “She began to clam up, and that wasn’t my child,” Johnson-Simmons said.

Screening revealed that Brooke had dyslexia — a common learning disability stemming from neurological differences that make it difficult to identify sounds and associate them with letters and words. When her private school told the Simmons family they would have to shell out up to $10,000 a year for once-a-week personalized reading instruction and other services, they decided to transfer their daughter to Louisiana Key Academy.

Now, Brooke, a fifth grader, is thriving at the charter school, her parents say, and each day receives 90 minutes of specialized reading instruction alongside a small group of other students.

Brooke Simmons (center) is a fifth grader at Louisiana Key Academy. Her parents say she has thrived at the school.

The school, which serves more than 700 students on three campuses in the state, was co-founded in 2013 by Laura Cassidy, a retired breast cancer surgeon whose husband is Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy — the new chair of the Senate committee whose role includes overseeing education. The Cassidys have a daughter with dyslexia and have long advocated for similar students and their families.

Nationwide, about 15% of students, or 7.5 million children, receive special education services. Most attend traditional public schools, but a growing number are enrolling at specialized charter schools like Louisiana Key Academy. The federal government plays a role in serving those students by issuing guidance, defending their right to a “free appropriate public education” and providing money. Louisiana Key Academy, for example, received $165,000 in special education funds in 2023, the most recent year for which data was available; including pandemic relief and school lunch money, federal funds made up 18% of the $11.6 million in revenue it reported that year.

President Donald Trump has vowed to shrink the federal government’s role in education. Already in his first weeks in office, he’s sent the education world into a tailspin by trying to impose a temporary freeze on federal grants and loans and signing an order to expand school choice, among other actions. He is also reportedly preparing an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, with the ultimate goal of eliminating it altogether. Families and advocates are watching to see how the new administration’s approach will alter the day-to-day reality for students who rely on special education services.

Laura Cassidy said in a December phone interview that she doesn’t believe Congress will make sweeping cuts to federal special education funding. “I don’t think that’s going to go away,” said Cassidy, but if it does, she hopes the state will make up the difference. Of the funding freeze, she wrote in an email, “Any disruption in funding would be a problem. But our state superintendent assures us all is OK.”

Laura Cassidy is the wife of Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and a co-founder of Louisiana Key Academy.

Cassidy said federal funds provide critical support to the school. But she added that she prefers state oversight over education and allowing parents to exercise school choice. “I think it’s easier if most of the control is in the state,” Cassidy said.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, in an interview with The Hechinger Report, said he was hopeful about Trump’s approach to education, given the nation’s dismal reading scores. “One of President Trump’s great gifts is that that guy will break an egg and he will look at things differently,” Cassidy said. “And so I think we need to kind of bring new, fresh eyes to this problem, and to say, ‘Sure, it’s status quo, but is status quo always the way to be if status quo is giving you failure, failure, failure?’”

Many students with dyslexia don’t get diagnosed early enough

Laura Cassidy said she and her husband’s experience advocating for their daughter fueled her passion for ensuring that students with a learning disability can access the instruction and support they need — no matter their family’s income.

“It can be very devastating for a family and a student to not be identified and get the education that they need, and it really impacts their whole life,” she said.

Cassidy said she and other parents who launched the school decided a public charter school would give them the flexibility and funding to provide that access. Unlike private schools, charter schools don’t charge tuition, but like private schools, they are exempt from some local and state laws — including rules concerning union contracts and teacher certification — that traditional public schools must abide by.

Lisa Card, lower school principal of Key Academy’s Baton Rouge campus, said parents come to the school exasperated, feeling like they’ve fought for years to help their children learn a fundamental skill. “They’re in tears,” she said. “They’re angry.”

Student artwork and phonics tips adorn the walls of Louisiana Key Academy’s Baton Rouge campus.

Most states, including Louisiana, now provide universal screening in early grades for dyslexia, but older students don’t typically qualify, according to Harvard Graduate School of Education professor Nadine Gaab. Parents and special education advocates say it remains complicated and costly to obtain a diagnosis and get needed support for children of any age. Louisiana Key Academy provides screenings and evaluations for free, through the Baton Rouge-based Dyslexia Resource Center.

Related: Almost all students with disabilities are capable of graduating on time. Here’s why they’re not.

On a typically balmy December afternoon, a dozen students in teacher Olivia LeDuff’s fourth grade structured language arts class at Louisiana Key Academy discussed the book “Hatchet,” which tells the story of a young boy surviving in the wilderness after a plane accident leaves him stranded.

LeDuff said “Hatchet” is above the students’ reading level — but that she played them an audio recording of the book to help work on their vocabulary. She said the bulk of the class is spent on what’s called phonological awareness: working with and manipulating words and sounds.

“We play lots of word games,” she said. “We do rhyming. We do adding and deleting phonemes. We teach them that a phoneme is a single speech sound so they know how to break it up.” For example, the word “cat” is broken down as “cuh-at.”

A large body of research, known as the science of reading, stresses that all students need instruction in phonics and other reading skills. A 2022 series by APM Reports found that for decades, schools have relied instead on curricula urging students to learn to read by relying on clues like context.

At Louisiana Key Academy, teachers approach nearly every subject with the needs of students with dyslexia in mind. That could mean, for example, a science instructor providing additional help with scientific vocabulary or a math teacher breaking down word problems. Nationwide, researchers are calling for teachers to embed reading instruction into content classes.

Students at Louisiana Key Academy receive daily small-group help with reading skills. Kathleen Flynn for The Hechinger Report

Of 80 teachers at Key Academy campuses, Laura Cassidy said 14 have undergone two-year intensive training to become certificated academic language therapists and two have completed one year of training. Another 28 are in training or waiting to take the exam. Three dozen other teachers have taken an online course on dyslexia and are receiving other professional development, according to Cassidy.

Related: Students with disabilities often left out of popular ‘dual-language’ programs

Cassidy says small class sizes, of roughly a dozen students per teacher at the Baton Rouge campus, allow teachers to provide more one-on-one help. The school spends $18,476 per student per year, according to the state’s report card, compared to a state average of $15,393.

“It’s an expensive model,” Cassidy said. “So obviously any funding we get, including that from special ed, is very important.”

Critics of school choice have long argued that charter schools divert public money from local school districts while spending more taxpayer dollars per student .

Cassidy praised Louisiana’s pro-school choice policies and embrace of specialized schools: “I’m hoping that’s where education goes, where it’s really tailored specifically to the needs” of students. In a Jan. 30 email, she wrote that she was not yet familiar with the details of Trump’s executive order expanding school choice released the previous day.

More students with disabilities attending specialized charter schools

Louisiana Key Academy is one of 176 specialized charter schools in 23 states that focus on students with disabilities, according to an October report by the Center for Learner Equity that relied on 2020-21 data, and the number of students with disabilities served by these schools has more than doubled since 2012.

With specialized charter schools on the rise, some researchers and groups, including the National Council on Disability and the Center for Learner Equity, have questioned whether they conflict with decades of law and precedent upholding the right of children with disabilities to learn in a general classroom alongside peers without disabilities when possible.

Under the 50-year-old law now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, students with disabilities should be educated in a general classroom “to the maximum extent appropriate.”

There is an exception under the law, for “when the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily.”

Related: A researcher said the research on special education was flawed. Readers weighed in

Research has found that inclusion in the classroom benefits students’ personal and social development.

“Inclusion matters, full stop,” said Jennifer Coco, senior director of strategy and impact at the Center for Learner Equity. “On a human level, we prioritize learning environments that include all types of kids, because it doesn’t feel good to be excluded.”

Some special education advocates also point out that a student’s needs can change over time and that segregating them in a specialized charter devoted to their disability might keep them from progressing or learning alongside their peers when they are ready.

Under federal law, there are no hard and fast rules around how long a student can stay in a separate setting.

In a 2018 report to the White House, the National Council on Disability said that specialized charter schools are not “automatically appropriate for all students with the same disability.” The report stressed: “While charter schools focusing specifically on students with disabilities offer a valuable opportunity for some students, these schools run counter to the legal presumption in favor of education in the general education classroom.”

The council urged parents and school personnel to regularly assess whether students at specialized charter schools still need to attend such a school.

Cassidy said she’s aware of such concerns — and that the school is focused on evaluating students to see whether their reading skills have improved enough to return to a general classroom.

She said that returning to a general education classroom is easier for students who enroll and get help earlier. A student in first grade, for example, may be ready to leave the school by fourth grade if they show progress in reading fluency. But “very few” students at Louisiana Key Academy enter in first grade, she said, with the majority arriving when they’re older and thus needing more prolonged help.

Louisiana Key Academy’s Baton Rouge campus serves students from kindergarten through 10th grade.

By some conventional measures, Louisiana Key Academy is not performing well: Its Baton Rouge campus scored an F for student performance on the Louisiana Department of Education’s report card system in the 2022-23 school year. Its 43.4 performance score was a slight improvement over the year prior, when it received a 39.8. The score looks at how students are mastering content for their grade level.

The report card says “urgent intervention is required” for students of color and economically disadvantaged students, who performed far worse than students at the vast majority of schools in Louisiana. Overall, about 70% of students at the campus are identified as Black, and nearly three-quarters as economically disadvantaged.

Still, the school has a B rating for student progress.

Cassidy said the student progress rating shows the school is making a difference. She said the low scores on student performance reflect how behind students are when they arrive at the school.

“We’re getting kids in the third and fourth grade when we would like them in the first grade,” Cassidy said. She added that schools like Louisiana Key Academy serve a crucial role in a system that’s failing some children right now. “We’re truly changing lives,” she said. “It’s just slower than I would like.”

Conservative proposals could change special education funding

Trump appears determined to shake up the education system. Like other Republicans before him, including former President Ronald Reagan and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, he has called for the closure of the Department of Education, whose agencies include the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. The department also funds more than 50 technical assistance centers that help states and districts serve students with disabilities and provides grants to state education departments, universities, and nonprofits for topics ranging from parent training to teacher professional development.

The conservative policy blueprint Project 2025, some of whose architects have joined the Trump administration, urges lawmakers to send federal special education funding directly to school districts in the form of “no-strings attached” block grants, instead of to states first. Project 2025’s authors also want lawmakers to move oversight over whether states are complying with special education law, including ensuring schools follow a child’s individualized education program, to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Trump’s January announcement freezing federal grants and loans (an order rescinded the next day after an outcry) was also outlined in Project 2025, as was his call to cut the Department of Education.

Sen. Cassidy, who took over the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this year, told The Hechinger Report that he doesn’t believe Congress has enough votes to abolish the Department of Education. “I don’t think a single Democrat would vote for it,” he said.

Still, Cassidy said he wants to look at other potential reforms.

Project 2025 proposes folding the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights into the Department of Justice — a move that critics say would jeopardize federal oversight over discrimination.

Cassidy noted that the DOJ prosecutes Medicaid and Medicare fraud with the cooperation of the Department of Health and Human Services. “We have to look at it,” he said of the Project 2025 proposal. But he added, “there’s a lot of precedent for this in other agencies.”

He has also spoken in support of Project 2025’s push to reform how schools like Louisiana Key Academy get their special education funding by providing them direct, no-strings attached block grants.

“My gosh, if you could block grant those dollars to the state for the primary and secondary education and give them more freedom to do what they’re supposed to do, that would be a good thing,” Cassidy told the television station KSLA.

Related: Parents of premature babies struggle to get help their children are entitled to

The federal government already doles out money in block grants for other spending categories, but critics have long noted that previous block grants have resulted in less funding for affected programs. For example, a sweeping 1981 bill consolidating 75 programs into nine new block grants ended up reducing overall funding by 12%, or $1 billion, according to a 2022 report by the Congressional Research Service.

It’s unclear what exactly a no-strings block grant would mean for schools, according to Tammy Kolbe, principal researcher of education systems and policy at the nonprofit American Institutes for Research. Kolbe has researched how the existing formula already doles out fewer special education dollars per child to states with the largest populations of children ages 3-21.

And advocates for special education, including Katy Neas, CEO of advocacy group The Arc of the United States, say they’re concerned that a no-strings attached block grant would weaken protections for students with disabilities.

“That’s a concern because we know that states and districts in too many places are struggling right now to meet their obligations to these students,” said Neas, whose nonprofit serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “And what we need is more intense focus on helping schools do the job that they want and need to do. And I don’t see how taking away the specific sort of guardrails of the federal law will help them do that.”

A class at Louisiana Key Academy’s Baton Rouge campus in December.

Students find new confidence at specialized school

Back at Louisiana Key Academy on an afternoon before Christmas break, Brooke Simmons grinned as she talked about an upcoming field trip to a science museum and Secret Santa with her classmates. “I have a lot of friends, and I like talking to them a lot,” she said.

Dressed in a uniform paired with a pink bow and glimmering necklace, Brooke said she appreciates the small breaks and lighthearted approach the school provides for quizzes, tests, and exams.

“At this school, they give us motivation,” Brooke said. “They’ll probably, like, throw in a little joke in the middle of it.”

Her parents say they’re overjoyed by her renewed confidence and proud of her love of reading and art.

Alcide Simmons said he doesn’t understand calls to shutter the Department of Education.

“We need that oversight,” he said. “Absolutely.”

Contact reporter Marina Villeneuve at 212-678-3430 or villeneuve@hechingerreport.org.

This story about Louisiana Key Academy was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

Three big issues that could determine if Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee gets his way on universal school vouchers

2025-01-10T23:23:48+00:00

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After the collapse of his statewide private school voucher proposal last year, Gov. Bill Lee is back with a similar plan to try to convince lawmakers that Tennessee students need another taxpayer-funded alternative to traditional public schools.

But while his new Education Freedom Act enjoys unified support among Republican leaders in both legislative chambers — a major difference from this time last year — it’s also generating many of the same concerns that contributed to the 2024 bill’s demise.

Complicating matters further are sagging tax collections that will make it harder to launch and sustain expensive new initiatives. Also, an existing smaller “pilot” voucher program remains under-enrolled in its third year, and the students in it are generally performing below their public school counterparts.

Lee, who is term-limited, has made the voucher policy one of his top objectives since taking office in 2019, and recently hinted that he may call a special legislative session to prioritize his proposal before lawmakers take up other business. The legislature would need to pass his bill in early 2025 to give his administration enough time to launch a universal program this summer, before the upcoming school year.

A recent poll conducted by Vanderbilt University shows Tennessee voters are mostly split over school vouchers.

Lee is trying to build public support, though, through statewide TV ads featuring him and paid for by the pro-voucher American Federation for Children, as well as radio ads paid for by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political network founded by the billionaire Koch brothers of Kansas.

Standing between the governor and the realization of his universal voucher program in Tennessee are three big issues:

Long-term funding uncertainty for public schools

State officials have estimated that about half of voucher recipients in the program’s first year would come from public schools, with the rest already enrolled in private schools or new students entering kindergarten.

To quell anxiety about the financial impact on public schools, Lee’s legislation includes a “hold harmless” provision that essentially would reimburse school districts for any funding they stand to lose when a student leaves to take a voucher and go to a private school.

Also, voucher money would not come out of the state’s existing funding formula for public schools, but rather from a separate line item in the budget that already has $144 million in untapped funds appropriated by the legislature last year.

But laws — and budgets — can change from year to year, and put those pledges at risk.

Flanked by the General Assembly's Republican leaders, Gov. Bill Lee speaks with reporters at the close of the 2024 legislative session on April 25.

Under the legislation, it’s unclear how Lee intends to pay for reimbursements to public schools for the first year, and in future years, especially since participation is expected to grow.

A future governor and legislature could take away the reimbursements, particularly if overall tax collections continue to decline under Lee’s 2024 initiative to reduce corporate and business taxes in Tennessee.

At the same time, the state would be obligated to fund the new statewide education program for the foreseeable future. With Lee’s plan to add 5,000 vouchers each year, the program could direct up to $862 million in taxpayer funding toward private education costs during the first five years, according to an analysis by Ed Trust of Tennessee.

And because of the bill’s loose restrictions on who could receive the new vouchers, a large number of the program’s recipients are expected to come from families who already send, or plan to send, their children to private schools.

In Arkansas, which approved universal vouchers in 2023 under Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, more than 80% of last year’s enrollees had not attended public schools the previous year.

Gov. Bill Lee calls for a statewide education voucher program in Tennessee during a press conference in Nashville on Nov. 28, 2023, as Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders offers her support.

In an effort to garner more support for the Education Freedom Act, Tennessee’s bill includes several financial benefits for public schools.

One would redirect 80% of sports wagering tax revenue now going to pay for college scholarships to instead help fund school building and maintenance projects across the state, especially for emergencies and for rural districts in counties designated as distressed or at risk.

But that’s only about $70 million annually and wouldn’t go far toward addressing the state’s $9.8 billion backlog of school facility needs. (Building a single elementary school can cost up to $60 million these days, while a new high school can cost significantly more.)

A second enticement would give every public school teacher a one-time $2,000 bonus. Many teachers who would be eligible to receive the money dismiss that proposal as a diversion tactic and believe the larger goal of Republican leaders is to eventually defund public schools.

Uneven standards for testing and accountability

The bill would require the new voucher recipients in grades 3-11 to take annual state or national standardized achievement tests to track the program’s effectiveness.

That’s a departure from the state’s existing Education Savings Account program that requires recipients to take the same state tests as their public school counterparts in math and English language arts, which provides an apples-to-apples comparison of educational outcomes.

The testing issue creates a quandary for Republicans.

Holding government accountable for how it spends taxpayer money is a conservative principle. But private schools are less likely to participate in a voucher program if they’re required to administer any state tests that are based on state-approved academic standards.

With Lee’s new proposal, supporters now say that national tests are good enough to gauge how students who take voucher money are doing.

In Tennessee, public school students in grades 3-11 are required to take annual state tests in math, English language arts, social studies, and science under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

Detractors say that sets uneven standards of accountability for different groups of students whose education is being funded with the same taxpayer money.

To some extent, the existing pilot voucher program already has a differing measuring stick. Participating private schools aren’t evaluated like public schools are under the state’s new A-F school grading system to help parents gauge their effectiveness. Moreover, in issuing grades to public schools, Lee’s administration has elevated the importance of academic proficiency based on state test results. But for private schools receiving public funding through education savings accounts, it has mostly touted surveys showing high parental satisfaction in the program.

Lee has repeatedly said his priority is to give parents more choices and control over their children’s education.

Which students would be included, and excluded?

Voucher supporters use the language of “school choice” to promote the policy.

But private schools get to choose the students they enroll, not the other way around — potentially reinforcing discriminatory practices and widening educational disparities between affluent students and historically underserved groups.

Lee’s proposal, for example, includes no guarantees of services and accommodations for students with disabilities.

Unlike with public schools, students who attend private schools are not protected by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees children with disabilities access to a free and appropriate education. Essentially, the federal law requires public schools to give those students specialized support and services determined collaboratively by school leaders and parents.

Lee’s proposal has no anti-discrimination language that would prevent schools from selectively admitting, or expelling, students based on criteria that may include color, disability, test scores, family income, religious affiliation, national origin, or sexual orientation.

State laws typically include anti-discrimination language regarding eligibility for education programs. Even Lee’s 2019 Education Savings Account law, which created vouchers for some students in Memphis and Nashville, and later in Chattanooga, requires participating private schools to certify that they will “not discriminate against participating students or applicants on the basis of race, color, or national origin.”

The newest legislation isn’t so broad in its protections.

To satisfy far-right conservatives, for example, it specifically bars students who can’t show that they’re in the United States legally from participating in the proposed program. That would violate federal law and could set the stage for another protracted and expensive legal challenge to Tennessee voucher law.

Already, students of color, kids from low-income families, and those with disabilities are often left out of school choice programs due to the locations and supply of private schools, transportation challenges, confusing admission policies, and the high cost of tuition, national data shows.

Without the non-discrimination language, Lee’s voucher policy as proposed raises the risk not only that Tennessee’s schools will become more racially and economically segregated, but also that tens of millions of taxpayer dollars could flow to so-called segregation academies that were established in the 1960s and 1970s for white children during the desegregation movement.

Some of those schools still exist, although Chalkbeat has not analyzed which private schools in Tennessee fit that definition.

North Carolina built its school voucher program the same way that Lee has advocated for Tennessee. When it launched in 2014, the program was only for low-income families, but in 2023, state lawmakers expanded eligibility to students of all income levels and those already attending private school.

According to reporting by ProPublica, 39 schools that it identified as likely segregation academies have received taxpayer money from North Carolina’s voucher program.

You can read Tennessee’s voucher bill here and track its movement in the legislature here.

Correction: A previous version of this story said Americans for Prosperity paid for TV and radio ads promoting Gov. Lee’s Education Freedom Act. The radio ads were paid for by Americans for Prosperity, while the TV ad was paid for by American Federation for Children, another pro-voucher group.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

NYC asks private school families to waive their right to sue in exchange for special education services

2024-12-05T23:37:04+00:00

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After denying thousands of New York City students with disabilities critical services earlier this year, Education Department officials are now offering them a chance to restart those services — with a big catch.

Just weeks before the start of the school year, the city Education Department, with little warning, began strictly enforcing a June 1 deadline for students with disabilities who attend private school and requested city-funded special education services to which they’re entitled under state law. The deadline had previously been loosely observed, and its newfound enforcement was part of a larger crackdown meant to rein in alleged fraud and ballooning costs.

While roughly 17,000 families filed on time, another 3,000 families missed the cutoff, losing out on services like tutoring or speech and occupational therapy.

Education Department officials promised to start restoring services for the late filers once they’d arranged services for families who met the deadline.

This week, officials took a step toward making good on that pledge, sending out letters to thousands of families who missed the deadline offering vouchers to cover the cost of special education providers.

But the offers come with a big asterisk.

To receive the vouchers, families have to sign a waiver relinquishing their rights to file a legal complaint against the city Education Department, according to the letter obtained by Chalkbeat. Families have two weeks to decide whether to sign it.

The proposal is already drawing sharp criticism from some lawmakers.

“After failing to provide these services, [the city’s] plan to dangle in front of parent and guardians their children’s badly needed educational support in exchange for being freed from legal liability is nothing short of outrageous,” said Rita Joseph, Brooklyn City Council member and education committee chair, in a statement posted to the social media platform X.

Officials told Chalkbeat that asking families to waive their rights to sue the Education Department was the only way to restore the services without opening up the city to “hundreds of millions of dollars in liability.”

By offering the late filers services, the city is forfeiting its right to use the missed deadline as a legal defense, which creates massive legal exposure, officials said. The Education Department is unwilling to take that risk without the waiver since the city already spends north of $500 million a year on special education for private school students, officials said.

For families eager to restart services, the new offer poses a dilemma.

On one hand, accepting the offer may be the fastest route to restarting desperately needed services, according to special education lawyers who spoke with Chalkbeat.

But it means losing the option to force the city to retroactively cover the costs of the services they’ve missed so far this school year, known as compensatory services. It also means families can’t force the city to supplement the value of the voucher if, as often happens, families can’t find a provider willing to accept the standard rate the city offers.

“They’re kind of putting parents in between a rock and a hard place,” said Jesse Cutler, a partner at Regina Skyer and Associates, a firm that represents families in special education cases. “I think it’s a case-by-case decision — you have to look at all the circumstances.”

Here’s what several lawyers said families should consider when weighing the offer from the Education Department:

How fast do you want to restart services?

For some families, the most important consideration might be how quickly they can resume services after months off, said Rebecca Shore, the director of litigation at Advocates for Children, a group that represents families pro bono in special education disputes.

“If the parent has already found a provider, and the provider accepts the voucher, it certainly can be a course that they should consider,” said Shore. “It would be probably the fastest course.”

Otherwise, families may need to file a legal claim called a due process complaint that is heard by an impartial hearing officer, a process that can take time to resolve.

“What you’re looking at is several months, if not longer,” Cutler said.

Plus, winning a favorable ruling from an impartial hearing officer isn’t guaranteed, and city officials would likely challenge a family’s legal claim by noting they missed the filing deadline, which is enshrined in state law.

Shore said a family still “can have a claim” against the city even if they missed the deadline. But she didn’t want to generalize about a family’s chances of prevailing because the outcome of a given case is highly dependent on the specific facts.

Education Department officials argued that families who missed the deadline “essentially have no legal recourse” and therefore have little to lose by accepting the city’s offer.

Are you seeking ‘compensatory’ services?

One concrete thing that families would give up by accepting the Education Department’s offer and signing the waiver is the right to push the city to pay for compensatory services for this school year.

Normally, families can file due process complaints to try to force the city Education Department to pay for services to which their child was entitled but never received. By signing the waiver, families lose that option.

“These students are entitled to services [in] September, October, November, December,” said Shore. “Giving up their right to make-up services for that entire time period, again, is a parent’s consideration.”

Can you find a provider who accepts the Education Department’s voucher?

The last big variable is whether families are willing to give up the right to try to force the Education Department to pay a higher rate than the voucher offers.

The city’s voucher for special education tutoring services is worth $86 an hour, but many providers charge more than that, Shore said. To cover the difference, families often have to file a legal complaint against the Education Department seeking an “enhanced rate.”

City officials have argued that the enhanced rate system is rife with fraud and say many providers are overcharging or collecting for services they don’t perform.

One of the conditions of accepting the Education Department’s new voucher offer, however, is waiving the right to seek an enhanced rate. That could put families in a tough spot, legal advocates said.

For families who don’t already have a provider lined up who accepts the Education Department’s rate, finding one in the middle of a school year would be a “Herculean feat,” said M’Ral Broodie-Stewart, a lawyer at Staten Island Legal Services.

“It’s great if the family has a provider that is able to accept the Department of Education’s rate,” Cutler said. “But there is a substantial and significant lack of providers citywide.”

Education Department officials said families unable to find a provider can contact their local Committees on Special Education for help. The Education Department also employs 19 itinerant special education teachers who work with private school families. But that’s a drop in the bucket of the roughly 20,000 students entitled to services.

Making matters even more complicated, the legal process for pursuing an enhanced rate is in flux. In past years, families have relied on due process complaints to compel the city to pay more than the standard voucher rate. The state’s Board of Regents passed a resolution this year empowering the city’s Education Department to set up its own system to adjudicate those requests. A lawsuit has temporarily put that resolution on hold, but it’s still unclear what the process will look like in the long term.

Education Department officials said they plan to post an FAQ on the city’s website to help parents decipher the waiver.

But Broodie-Stewart recommended parents consult a lawyer before making a decision.

“The average person may not fully understand what [the] legalese term of ‘release, waive and relinquish’ means,” she wrote in an email. “Yet they would be giving their rights away by signing this form.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC special education staffing shortage leaves students in limbo, teachers union charges

2024-11-20T22:45:10+00:00

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At one Bronx school for students with significant disabilities, a single staff member must push multiple students in wheelchairs through the hallways.

In Queens, students with disabilities miss out on traveling to job sites to learn basic career skills because there aren’t enough staff to supervise them.

And across New York City, some students languish at home because they are not allowed to ride a school bus without a dedicated aide.

In each instance, students with complex needs aren’t getting the support they are legally entitled to due to a shortage of paraprofessionals, teacher aides who form the backbone of the city’s special education system. Survey results released Wednesday by the United Federation of Teachers underscored that the situation is most severe in District 75, a network of schools that serve students with disabilities who need more support than typical schools offer.

Paraprofessionals are tasked with a wide range of duties, from tending to students with behavioral issues, breaking down classroom lessons into manageable chunks, helping potty train, and accompanying students who need assistance on bus rides to and from school.

Over 1,400 full-time paraprofessional positions remain vacant, Education Department officials confirmed. There are 23,564 active paraprofessionals, a nearly 8% decline since June 2020.

“What you have is triage going on at schools — we’re having multiple people doing multiple jobs,” Michael Mulgrew, the teachers union chief, told reporters at a press conference. “[Students’] ability to have a good life is what’s in the balance here.”

According to the union survey, which garnered responses from 81% of public school campuses citywide, District 75 schools are hardest hit. About 70% of District 75 union chapter leaders reported staffing shortages; 68% said their school did not provide regular coverage when a paraprofessional is absent; and 76% said students aren’t receiving all of their mandated services, including counseling, speech, and occupational therapies.

Including teachers, therapists, and counselors, there are nearly 2,300 special education staffing vacancies across 474 schools, union officials said, though Mulgrew acknowledged the UFT has not been able to get precise data from the Education Department of staff vacancies and needs. (In response to a Chalkbeat request for more detailed vacancy data, a department spokesperson only shared the figure for paraprofessionals.)

How the staffing shortage hurts schools

When the school year started, Undrea Polite, a paraprofessional at a District 75 school in Brooklyn, said her school was short 26 aides. She and her co-workers are stretched so thin that they worry about leaving the building for breaks during the day, as many of her students have significant needs ranging from emotional disorders to visual impairments.

Polite was recently pulled out of her lunch break to help calm a student because the school’s counselor was tending to another child in crisis who needed to be taken to the hospital.

“You’re on your lunch break, but you’re not on your lunch break because you have to keep your ears out to listen … to make sure that you can keep all of the kids safe,” she said.

At P993Q, a District 75 program in Queens, students sometimes miss out on trips to job sites like Applebee’s or Old Navy because there aren’t enough staff to supervise them, said Rob Roszkowski, who helps coordinate the regular visits out in the community to learn vocational skills.

“Our kids are out every day — community instruction is very important,” he said. “It’s a nightmare for the coordinators to find enough people” to oversee the visits.

His school’s students may take classes alongside their general education peers, part of a legal requirement to educate students in mainstream classrooms to the greatest extent possible. But they can’t always attend those classes because the paraprofessionals required to accompany them are missing, Roszkowski said.

On some campuses, the lack of paraprofessionals has prompted safety concerns for both students and staff. At P186X, a District 75 program for some 700 students in the Bronx, the school is short at least 40 paraprofessionals, estimated Jo Macellaro, a teacher and union chapter leader.

Many of the students lacking one-on-one paraprofessionals have serious medical issues or severe behavioral challenges that require constant monitoring, Macellaro said. The shortage has also made the jobs of the existing paraprofessionals that much harder, creating even more churn and job openings.

A lone paraprofessional might have to push multiple students in wheelchairs at a time, Macellaro said. In one case, a paraprofessional trying to lift a student out of a wheelchair on their own hurt their back, Macellaro added.

“People are just extremely frustrated,” Macellaro said.

Plus, some children with disabilities may be prone to wander from their school buildings, making it even more essential for District 75 schools to have enough staff on hand.

The shortage of aides can mean students never make it to school in the first place. Some students with health or behavioral issues are not allowed to ride yellow school buses without a paraprofessional. If that staffer is missing, families may not be able to ferry their children to school on their own.

“Some of those kids are home, truly home, because they can’t get to school,” said Maggie Moroff, a special education policy expert at Advocates for Children. (City officials may provide a rideshare if no paraprofessional is available, though it can be time consuming for families because a caregiver must commute with them.)

Union officials call for reforms

School staffers and union officials say special education staffing challenges are longstanding, and districts across the country are struggling to hire the staff they need.

In New York City, the starting salary for paraprofessionals is just shy of $30,000 a year, making it difficult to recruit and retain staff.

But union officials said it can be hard to hire new paraprofessionals even when there are candidates for the jobs due to a complex hiring process.

Schools are typically only allowed to hire paraprofessionals who have been excessed from other schools during the first month of the year, and there often aren’t enough staffers in that pool to fill all vacancies, union officials said. And even once principals are allowed to nominate new hires for paraprofessional positions, it can take weeks or months for them to wind through the Education Department’s hiring process.

“As it stands, the paraprofessional hiring system is broken, leaving hundreds — and possibly thousands — of people who want these jobs unable to navigate the application process,” Mulgrew wrote in an October letter to the state’s education commissioner raising broader concerns about special education staffing shortages.

Macellaro said their school’s administration has worked hard to round up more applicants to fill the vacant positions, collecting a list of roughly 80 candidates interested in becoming paraprofessionals.

“Knowing that we have all of these people with their resumes just sitting there in a pile ready to work, and the DOE is just not doing what they need to do to let them work is even more frustrating,” Macellaro said.

An Education Department spokesperson said the nomination period for paraprofessionals opened in October and schools have been able to hire full-time paraprofessionals since late August. The spokesperson added that Macellaro’s school, P186X, has nominated 62 substitute paraprofessionals since last month.

The spokesperson, Nicole Brownstein, said hiring for paraprofessionals remains open for most schools. “We look forward to filling these positions,” she wrote.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

Newark Public Schools taps Planned Parenthood to teach sex ed, health care to students with disabilities

2024-11-20T20:19:03+00:00

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Students with disabilities at American History High School are learning about sexuality, healthy relationships, and LGBTQ+ inclusivity among other health-related topics through a partnership between Newark Public Schools and Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan New Jersey.

The nonprofit organization, which provides sexual and reproductive health care and education across the country, is offering eight sex education workshops to students ages 18 to 21 in the transition program at American History. Parents do not have to provide consent for their children to participate in the workshops, according to Paul Brubaker, the district’s communications director.

The transition program teaches students with disabilities life skills and provides support as they leave the school system and head to the workforce and life outside school. Last month, the Newark school board approved a “memorandum of understanding” with Planned Parenthood, a formalized partnership that allows the organization to provide workshops on the introduction to sexuality, self-advocacy, puberty, self-esteem, and consent, among other topics at no cost to the district this school year.

Planned Parenthood’s staff “has the education, certification, training, and work experience in this area so as to be able to provide the services responsibly,” wrote Brubaker in an email to Chalkbeat on Wednesday.

With students having more access to information and social media than ever before, it’s vital to provide a basic education on sexuality and health care rights, said Jessica Preleski, senior director of education services at Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan New Jersey. For students with disabilities, it’s important to offer that education in a way they can understand and that allows them to ask questions, Preleski added.

“We really let people know that people with disabilities also have changing bodies,” Preleski said. “They have relationships and they even have sex. We try to simplify the presentations a little more and provide visuals so the understanding is there.”

Typically, Planned Parenthood’s workshops are for middle and high school students. At the middle school level, students learn about reproductive anatomy and hygiene and when they get into high school, those conversations also cover sex.

“We always say, it’s not a one-time conversation,” Preleski said.

At American History, the 45 students in the transition program will learn about a range of topics, including the difference between sex, gender, and identity as well as 20 options to prevent pregnancy, including abstinence, hormonal & barrier methods, and lifestyle choices. Last school year, the organization also provided workshops to American History students in the transition program, Preleski said. Every year, Planned Parenthood also provides high school and transition program students at New Jersey Regional Day, a district school for students with disabilities, with their sex and health-related education workshops.

But before Planned Parenthood enters any classroom, they speak with school and district leaders to learn more about the type of instruction their students may need. The school’s administration also notifies parents of the program and topics that will be covered. Planned Parenthood met with team leaders at American History to understand what instruction works for their students and what information they need.

“Why were we requested? What is it about healthy relationships that students need to know?” Preleski said. “Did something happen? Do they have questions about consent?”

From there, school districts receive a copy of the lesson plan in which Planned Parenthood lays out its objectives and connects them with state learning standards, Preleski added.

Each lesson is 40 minutes long and interactive to ensure students are engaged, learning, and feeling safe. For students with disabilities at American History, the organization takes a different approach by providing more visuals with their lessons, printing out photos and placing them in front of students, and repeating things more frequently to support their understanding.

During the workshops, students can also ask questions anonymously by writing them down on index cards. At home, students can also use Planned Parenthood’s sexual health chatbot called Roo. The AI chatbot answers questions backed by professional health educators from the organization, Preleski said.

Sex ed lessons cover internet safety, consent, self-esteem

Planned Parenthood provides workshops to help parents and teachers understand health-related topics and support them in answering student questions. Planned Parenthood also attended the district’s Parent University program, where district parents, community leaders, and staff discuss a wide range of topics related to youth and schools. Last school year, the organization provided an overview for parents to navigate conversations about sex and also provided training to teachers during professional development days about creating safe spaces for students and handling tough questions.

“Sex ed has changed so much from when I got it. It used to be more prevention-based, and now, it’s also about internet safety, consent, and self-esteem,” Preleski said “It can be really hard and daunting but we want to provide the resources and help guide those conversations.”

During training, teachers have also raised questions about referring students to Planned Parenthood health centers and pregnancy options through safe haven laws in New Jersey. Under New Jersey’s Safe Haven Infant Protection Act, the state allows any individual to safely surrender an infant, legally and anonymously at any hospital, police station, fire station, ambulance, first aid, or rescue squad.

New Jersey laws also require schools to provide human sexuality instruction but each district is responsible for creating its own curriculum, provided they comply with learning standards set by the state’s department of education. The state’s Comprehensive Health and Physical Education portion of New Jersey Student Learning Standards requires sex education programs to provide a “comprehensive range of high-quality information” in schools but also mandates that curricula stress abstinence as the most reliable means of avoiding sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.

The state also has several laws that allow minors to either receive certain services without prior parental consent or authorize them to consent for specific health care services, including some preventive services, according to the New Jersey chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. In particular, state laws cover care for pregnant minors, STD care, HIV treatment, treatment for drug or alcohol use or dependency, outpatient mental health treatment, and services related to sexual assault. Young adults 18 and older are allowed to consent for their health care, but their rights may be limited if they are cognitively impaired and unable to give informed consent, according to the NJAAP.

As part of its partnership with Newark Public Schools, Planned Parenthood also provides a student internship program called Teen LINKS. The organization recruits and trains high school students to teach their peers about sex through school events or formal classroom visits. Students at Science Park and East Side High Schools and BRICK Gateway Academy are part of the Teen Links program.

“Sex ed isn’t just for youth, it’s for everyone,” Preleski said. “We’re constantly learning about issues and really enforcing that informed decisions really promotes safer decisions.”

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Special education staffing shortages put students’ futures at risk. How to solve that is tricky.

2024-11-20T00:31:39+00:00

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Every year, more special education teachers quit than graduate from the nation’s teacher preparation programs, even as the number of students diagnosed with disabilities keeps rising.

Without enough qualified teachers and therapists, students don’t always get the help they need to be successful in school. Shortages also contribute to serious situations where kids are locked in small rooms, teachers physically hold down students, or children disrupt their classmates’ learning because they haven’t learned how to regulate their own behavior.

There was broad agreement that special education staffing shortages are a dire problem at a public briefing held by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Friday. But there were widely divergent ideas about how to solve the issue and what role the federal government should play.

Some educators and experts said the solution is for the federal government to fulfill its decades-old pledge to cover more of the costs of special education. In their eyes, the Education Department should be flooding the special educator pipeline and offering training to all teachers to better support students with disabilities.

Others said it’s about incentivizing the job, and that special education teachers should be paid more than their colleagues and offered retention bonuses. Still others said that states should ease licensing rules and expand private school voucher programs to give desperate families more options.

The briefing, meant to inform the president and Congress, was held as President-elect Trump prepares to start his second term in office. Trump has vowed to expand school choice and dramatically scale back the federal role in education — a move panelists said could affect students with disabilities a lot or a little, depending on how the plan is executed.

The briefing did not include testimony from the U.S. Department of Education, which Trump has said he would abolish. Stephen Gilchrist, the Republican Trump-appointed commissioner who called for the briefing, said the department’s absence was “unconscionable.” An Education Department spokesperson said scheduling conflicts prevented the agency from being there in person, but it would send written responses.

The debate comes as the number of students with disabilities is growing. Some 7.5 million students required special education services as of the 2022-23 school year, the latest federal data shows, or around 15% of students. That was up from 7.1 million or 14% of students in the 2018-19 school year, just before the pandemic hit.

It’s unclear if the rise is due to schools getting better at identifying students with disabilities or if more children have needs now. Many young children missed early intervention and early special education services during the pandemic, and many educators say they are seeing higher behavioral needs and wider academic gaps in their classrooms.

“Students are arriving in our classrooms with a high level of dysregulation, which is displayed through their fight, flight, or freeze responses,” Tiffany Anderson, the superintendent of Topeka, Kansas’ public schools, wrote in her statement. “Students are also displaying more physically aggressive behavior.”

All of that has trickle-down effects. When kids disengage or act out, schools often remove them from class, said Dan Stewart, the managing attorney for education and employment at the National Disability Rights Network. That could be a suspension or something more informal, like cutting a child’s day short. Then the burden of providing educational support falls on families, said Ariel Simms, the president of Disability Belongs, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of people with disabilities.

“Parents and caregivers have had to step in to fill gaps in areas like tutoring, therapy, and learning accommodations, resulting in heightened stress and financial strain,” Simms told the commission in her statement.

Why special education teachers are in short supply

There are many reasons for the shortages. While the number of special education teachers has risen over the past two decades, the demand still outpaces the supply, writes Chad Aldeman, who researches teacher labor markets. Around 16,000 more special education teachers leave public schools each year than teacher prep programs train to replace them.

Special education teachers are more likely to change jobs or quit teaching than their general education colleagues. On top of that, many districts struggle to hire and keep paraprofessionals, whose crucial but low-paid work helps teachers meet the needs of students with disabilities. All of that increases workloads and contributes to burnout.

To get by, many schools increase class sizes or rely on substitutes and emergency credentialed teachers who often lack the proper training to work with students with disabilities.

“We had to hire virtual teachers and those on special visas, which complicated matters for our special needs students who were already facing academic and social challenges,” Karen Lockerman, a special education teacher in rural South Carolina, told the commission of how her district handled pandemic staffing shortages. “Language barriers and virtual instruction added further difficulties to their learning.”

Some say more funding; others want voucher expansion

To some advocates, the solution is obvious: The federal government needs to pay a bigger share of schools’ special education costs. Back in 1975, when federal lawmakers passed what would become the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, they said the government would cover 40%.

But “actual federal funding for IDEA has never come close to that and is usually well below half of this ‘full funding’ amount,” Jessica Levin, the litigation director at the nonprofit Education Law Center, told the commission. Without adequate funding, Levin said, “it is impossible to meet the educational needs and legal rights of students with disabilities, including ensuring there are sufficient numbers of qualified teachers.”

Anderson said that underfunding means her district has to pull money from the general education budget to cover the costs of educating kids with disabilities. Kansas gave schools an extra $75 million to pay for special education this year, but there aren’t any plans to keep that up as of now. Federal pandemic aid that helped is about to expire.

The federal government and states also could do more to knock down financial barriers to becoming a special education teacher, said Julian Vasquez Heilig, the director of the Network for Public Education, an advocacy group, by offering more scholarships, stipends, and loan forgiveness. Investing in the expansion of “grow your own” initiatives, which often produce too few teachers to change overall staffing levels, could also help.

Jonathan Butcher, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said the federal government could elevate examples of states like Indiana, which created a program that pays for licensed teachers to go back to school to get their special education license and condenses their coursework. The pandemic aid-backed program has produced over 600 licensed special education teachers since 2021 and has become a go-to strategy for some districts to fill vacancies.

In Topeka, Anderson has tried recruiting paraprofessionals, career changers, and international teachers. Through a state program, parents who hadn’t gone to college or worked in a classroom before got on-the-job training from experienced teachers. Still, all of that effort hasn’t really made a dent.

“These programs have given us additional alternative pathways; however, the shortage is so significant, it has not eliminated the need and the crisis school districts like Topeka Public Schools continue to face,” Anderson told the commission.

Butcher, of the Heritage Foundation, also floated another idea: changing federal law so that families can take the portion of IDEA funding that would normally go to their child at a public school and use it however they see fit — an idea that’s similar to creating a national voucher program for students with disabilities.

“By making IDEA ‘portable,’ families could purchase services from education therapists, private school tuition, or other education products that fit their child’s needs,” Butcher told the commission in his statement. “This policy would help alleviate the pressure on public school officials to find special education personnel while also giving families private education choices when frustrating legal battles with school districts prevent students from receiving the services they require.”

Many advocates for students with disabilities worry such an idea would strip kids of their right to a free and appropriate education, as families typically have to waive that right to participate in a private school voucher program at the state level.

The idea would require action by Congress and buy-in from Trump. Still, some are taking Butcher’s proposal seriously, as the Heritage Foundation published Project 2025, a policy playbook written by several former Trump White House officials. That plan calls for turning most funding for special education into block grants that states would control.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Embattled interim principal at NYC’s Beacon High School won’t seek permanent role

2024-11-19T02:16:18+00:00

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The embattled interim principal of Manhattan’s Beacon High School is withdrawing his name from contention to become the school’s permanent principal, he told the school community in a Monday email obtained by Chalkbeat.

Interim Principal Johnny Ventura’s decision to step aside comes after months of escalating tension with parents and administrators over his handling of special education and communication. The strife spilled into public view after parents called for Ventura’s removal in a public meeting last month and a Chalkbeat story detailed the struggles of special education students at the coveted Manhattan high school.

It’s unclear when Ventura will step down and who will replace him, but he will remain in place until his successor takes over, according to his email. Ventura didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In a letter to Beacon families and staff Monday afternoon, Ventura said he decided to take his name out of the running “after thoughtful reflection on my personal and professional journey.”

He touted “incredible milestones” during his tenure of just over a year and a commitment to putting students first.

“As I prepare to embark on a new chapter, I am confident that the strong foundation we’ve built together will propel Beacon to even greater heights,” he added.

Ventura, a former assistant principal at Brooklyn Technical High School, took the helm at Beacon at a delicate moment for the school.

Beacon was in the midst of a significant change in its student population, accelerated by pandemic admissions reforms that brought in growing numbers of students with disabilities and from low-income families. Ventura, who identifies as a Black Latino, was the first principal of color at a school that has faced student protests over admissions policy and racial strife in recent years.

Ventura’s handling of the school’s efforts to support its growing number of students with disabilities was at the heart of his conflict with parents and teachers. Students with disabilities often went without routine accommodations and failed courses at higher rates than their peers in general education, according to multiple parents and school data.

Many families and educators placed the blame for the special education failures with Ventura and Assistant Principal Naisha Baidy, and criticized Ventura’s communication about racist, antisemitic and threatening graffiti.

Ventura said in his letter he was proud of his work “enhancing systems for our students with special needs.”

Teachers said some of Ventura’s efforts to improve the situation – including implementing a new school-wide grading policy – only made things worse. Some educators said Ventura didn’t embrace the school’s approach to pedagogy, which prizes student inquiry and projects over tests, and had driven staff morale to an all-time low.

But others said Ventura was unfairly blamed for problems that predated him and suspect his race played a role in the criticism he received.

Ventura’s successor will be just the fifth principal in the school’s 30-year history, but the third in a five-year span. Founding principal Ruth Lacey oversaw the school with just a brief interruption for over 25 years.

The school’s educational model, which allows students to forgo Regents exams and submit performance based assessments like projects and portfolios, has gotten increasing attention in recent years as the state begins the multiyear process of removing Regents as graduation requirements across the state.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

Trump plan to ax the Education Department might affect kids with disabilities a lot — or a little

2024-11-15T21:11:54+00:00

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A federal hearing about special education teacher shortages turned into a debate about how the potential elimination of the U.S. Department of Education would affect students with disabilities.

The exchange, which occurred Friday during a public briefing of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, speaks to how Donald Trump’s election is already shaping education policy discussions amid widespread uncertainty about how his proposals could play out.

Trump vowed on the campaign trail that he would dismantle the federal Education Department and hand more control over education to the states. The federal law that guarantees students with disabilities a right to a free and appropriate public education dates back to 1975, before the Education Department existed as a standalone entity. That law would remain on the books even if the department were disbanded, but it’s less clear how funding would change or who would be responsible for protecting students’ rights.

Eliminating a federal department would require an act of Congress. Trump has not spelled out exactly how special education funding or administration would change if that happens, but some have made suggestions.

Project 2025, a political playbook written by former Trump White House officials, for example, calls for turning most federal funding for special education into “no-strings” grants for school districts distributed by another agency altogether: the Department of Health and Human Services. Trump has tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic with no education experience, to lead that agency.

Project 2025 also calls for moving the Office for Civil Rights and any “assets” in the federal special education office that work on discrimination to the Department of Justice. There, civil rights enforcement would be done through lawsuits, not investigations, as they’re done now in the Education Department.

At the briefing, Commissioner Mondaire Jones, a Democrat and former congressman, asked a panel of experts whether eliminating the Education Department would have an effect on students with disabilities and the shortage of educators to teach them.

Several panelists said the federal government still needs to fund education, even if the Education Department no longer exists.

Eric Hanushek, a prominent education researcher of school funding and a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said he thought the proposal was more of a “political statement about how much we want Washington to be intruding in state education policy,” and that it wouldn’t actually change much for students with disabilities.

It would still be Congress’ job to decide how much to spend on fulfilling the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Hanushek said, even if funding were disbursed through another agency, like a revamped Health and Human Services Department.

“I don’t think it has any obvious impacts on IDEA funding,” Hanushek said. “I personally think that the federal government should have a larger responsibility in special education funding.”

But he cautioned that students with disabilities could get less immediate attention without an education secretary calling attention to their needs from the bully pulpit. Eliminating the department and moving its work elsewhere could also jeopardize data collection and research about students with disabilities, Hanushek said.

William Trachman, the general counsel at the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm that’s suing the Biden administration over its Title IX rules, said the answer would depend on what replaces the Education Department.

“It is not going to happen that there is no federal role in special education whatsoever,” he said. Whether the Department of Justice takes over civil rights enforcement, whether special education moves to HHS, or whether states get block grants to use for special education, “a lot of the impact of what happens is going to be revealed through those details.”

Others said eliminating the Education Department would have serious consequences for students with disabilities.

Tuan Nguyen, an associate professor at the University of Missouri who studies teacher labor markets, said he worried that without a federal Education Department putting pressure on states to require certain standards for teaching, who ends up working with students with disabilities would be a “free-for-all.”

“Years of evidence have shown that when states don’t have a mandate to make sure that our teachers are licensed and qualified, they’ll put anybody they can in the classroom,” Nguyen said.

Amanda Levin Mazin, a senior lecturer at Columbia University’s Teachers College, said she worried that without an Education Department, there would be cuts to incentives that help people enter the special education teaching profession. The Education Department has the discretion to award a variety of grants to school districts, universities, and others to support teacher recruitment and pipeline development.

Jessica Levin, the litigation director of the Education Law Center, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of students with disabilities, said she worried that eliminating the department would hurt the enforcement of students’ civil rights. Historically, most federal civil rights complaints in education are related to a student’s disability.

“The Department of Education and the experts within it play a crucial role in enforcing those civil rights for students with disabilities across the country,” she said. “This is an incredibly dangerous proposal, both on a practical and symbolic level.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee governor backs Trump plan to abolish U.S. Department of Education

2024-11-14T01:44:47+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee said Wednesday that he’d welcome closing the U.S. Department of Education under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, adding that states can do a better job of deciding how to spend federal dollars on students.

“I believe that Tennessee would be more capable than the federal government of designing a strategy for spending federal dollars in Tennessee,” Lee told reporters when asked about the prospect.

“We know Tennessee. We know our children. We know the needs here much better than a bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. does,” Lee said.

The Republican governor’s comments come as Trump assembles his cabinet after soundly defeating Vice President Kamala Harris last week to win a second term in office. As of Wednesday, he had not named his choice to be U.S. secretary of education.

During his campaign, Trump said one of his first acts as president would be to “close the Department of Education, move education back to the states.” The Republican Party’s platform also calls for shuttering the federal agency, as does the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

Tennessee’s governor called it “a great idea” to dismantle the agency, which was created under a 1979 federal law during President Jimmy Carter’s administration.

“I think the federal bureaucracy that was built into the Department of Education starting in 1979 has created just that: a bureaucracy,” Lee said.

Tennessee has a template for spending federal funds

Trump has not provided a detailed plan for what would happen to federal funding or particular programs if the U.S. Department of Education were shuttered — a move that would require an act of Congress.

Lee suggested that education funding could be distributed to states similar to how Tennessee negotiated a Medicaid block grant waiver program with the first Trump administration, giving the state government more control over how it spent the money.

“We saved Tennesseans a billion dollars in taxpayer money over four years,” Lee said, “and we split the savings with the federal government.”

Federal funds typically make up about a tenth of a state’s K-12 budget. For Tennessee, that amounts to about $1.8 billion distributed to local districts for its public schools, most of which supports students from low-income families, English language learners, and with disabilities.

Lee said Tennessee would continue to spend that money to support its neediest students.

“I think that Tennessee is incredibly capable of determining how dollars should be spent to take care of kids with disabilities, to take care of kids that live in sparse populations, or with English as a second language,” he said.

Asked about the federal agency’s enforcement of civil rights protections — which some have suggested could pivot to the U.S. Department of Justice — Lee said the state would have a role in that work, too.

“The complaint process could and would still exist,” Lee said. “We would make sure that it happens in this state.”

Critics question the state’s commitment to special student groups

Tennessee doesn’t have a very good track record of educating and caring for its students who need significant additional support.

It was one of many states, for instance, that once had laws excluding children with disabilities from public schools. The premise was that those kids would not benefit from a public school education. Before the passage of a 1975 federal law establishing the right to a public education for kids with disabilities, only 1 in 5 of those children were educated in public schools.

Recently, the Tennessee Disability Coalition gave the state a “D” grade on its annual performance scorecard that includes education services.

Students with disabilities comprise a significant part of Tennessee’s public education system.

About a tenth of the state’s public school students use an individualized education plan, or IEP, that’s intended to ensure that the student receives specialized instruction and related services for their disability.

Federal laws protecting students with disabilities would remain on the books even if the education department went away, but it’s not clear how enforcement would work or what would happen to funding. The authors of Project 2025 suggested that funding be turned into something resembling a voucher and given to families.

Federal education funding has been hotly debated in Tennessee

Tennessee has gone further than any other state in recent history in exploring its relationship with the federal government.

A year ago, after House Speaker Cameron Sexton suggested that Tennessee should look into the idea, a legislative task force spent months studying the feasibility of saying no to federal dollars.

Citing testing mandates, Sexton had complained of federal strings attached to those dollars. And the governor voiced support for the panel’s work and complained of “excessive overreach” by the federal government.

But some critics said the bigger issue was the U.S. education department’s role in enforcing constitutionally guaranteed civil rights protections for students.

Ultimately, the panel’s Senate and House members disagreed about their findings and issued separate recommendations. The Senate report highlighted the risks of taking the unprecedented step of rejecting federal funding, while the House report recommended taking incremental actions to further explore the idea. Nothing specific happened in the ensuing months.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Memphis Democrat who served on the panel, said the Senate’s conclusions should give the governor pause.

“There are reasons why we have the U.S. Department of Education — to make sure that all kids have the opportunity to receive a public education and to have their civil rights protected,” Akbari said.

She noted that segregated schools existed less than 75 years ago across the nation.

“It’s unthinkable that we would move away from these very sacred and important protections, not just regarding race but gender, children with special needs, the handicapped community,” Akbari said.

Alexza Barajas Clark, who heads the EdTrust advocacy group in Tennessee, said the federal role in education is “to level the playing field for all students,” especially those from rural communities and low-income families or who have a disability.

“Let’s not lose focus about what is at stake,” Clark said. “At the center of every education policy decision is a student.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

A crisis over special education at NYC’s Beacon High School erupts in calls for new leadership

2024-11-13T23:46:21+00:00

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Four days after this story published, Beacon’s interim principal announced he would not seek a permanent role at the school.

Parent after parent took the mic at a public meeting in Manhattan last month, painting a dire picture of the state of special education at Beacon High School.

One parent said teachers at the Hell’s Kitchen school are “sentencing my child to fail, and no one is able to fix the problem.” Another said, “We are watching Beacon’s demise, and we feel trapped.”

Dan Bright, the father of a ninth grader with a disability, said Beacon was so ill-equipped to support students with disabilities that he transferred his son to a new school within two months.

How the school fell so short in accommodating students in special education — and who is to blame — is at the heart of a crisis that has been roiling the Manhattan high school for months. The turmoil threatens to upend the school’s leadership and is forcing Beacon to confront longstanding questions about its mission and identity.

Long considered one of New York City’s most coveted public high schools, Beacon had some 4,400 applicants last year for 360 spots, according to city data. It’s nationally recognized for its progressive approach to education, which emphasizes student inquiry and projects over tests.

In recent years, Beacon’s student population shifted, accelerated by pandemic-era admissions reforms that increased numbers of students with disabilities, from low-income families, and testing below grade level in math and English. The changes brought new challenges, according to families and educators.

The school has struggled to provide students with disabilities with routine accommodations, such as extra time on exams, and many such students have received failing grades at a higher rate than their peers in general education, according to interviews with more than a dozen parents, educators, and students, and a review of academic records.

Some parents and educators blame the crisis on a variety of missteps made by interim Principal Johnny Ventura, who took the helm in 2023, and Assistant Principal Naisha Baidy, who started in 2021 and oversees special education. Nineteen parents and teachers submitted testimony, much of it anonymous, to the city’s Panel for Educational Policy last month criticizing the leadership of Ventura and Baidy and calling for their removal, according to a copy obtained by Chalkbeat.

The conflict between faculty — some of whom have been at the school for decades — and the administration has many teachers eyeing the exit, several staffers said.

“I’ve never seen more people dissatisfied and looking for the door,” said one veteran teacher, who, like other current Beacon educators, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

But others say Ventura came in facing significant headwinds and is being blamed for problems that predate him.

The student population changed “at a pace that the school wasn’t ready for, the teachers weren’t ready for,” said Alberta Conteh, the parent of a Beacon senior and president of the Parent Teacher Association. Ventura is “inheriting a lot of things that are not innately his fault, and then obviously he gets the blame,” she added.

The conflict at Beacon, and how the school accommodates its changing population, could have implications for other selective schools. Of the city’s 27 most sought-after screened schools, 22 saw an increase in their percentage of students with disabilities between 2019 and last school year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of city data.

Ventura, reached by phone Wednesday, said a number of the criticisms from parents and staff were “not true” but declined to elaborate, referring a request for comment to the Education Department’s press office. Baidy couldn’t be reached by email or phone.

Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said Beacon has “a long history of serving students with disabilities,” including a partnership with a District 75 school, which serves students with significant disabilities, located in the same building. The Education Department has provided coaching and training on best practices in special education, and Superintendent Alan Cheng is actively working with the school to decide on next steps “that best serve all” students, Tull added.

Debates over Beacon’s mission stretch back decades

Launched in 1993, Beacon began as a small school with a diverse student body and educational philosophy opposed to standardized tests. Beacon is also an original member of the city’s consortium network of schools, where students complete “performance-based assessments,” like projects and portfolios to graduate, rather than the Regents exams used in the rest of the state.

But as the school grew in size and prestige, some faculty members say it drifted from its original ethos.

Beacon began screening applicants based on academic outcomes in the mid-2000s, leading to dwindling numbers of Black, Latino, and low-income students. And many of the new teachers and students were less committed to the consortium approach, some educators said.

“Beacon is the rare example of a pretty big school where they’ve managed to make this kind of assessment system work at a very high level,” said Harry Feder, a former history teacher and parent at Beacon who now serves as executive director at FairTest, a New York-based organization that advocates against using standardized testing in college admissions. “But over the years … there’s cracks in the facade.”

The debates over admissions resurfaced during the pandemic — amid a citywide reckoning over the effect of school admissions policies on diversity at selective high schools — and as Beacon’s founding principal, Ruth Lacey, retired. The school continued to screen students, but it adopted admissions reforms that decreased emphasis on grades and set aside two-thirds of seats for students from low-income families.

Beacon High School students protest former President Donald Trump's immigration policies in 2016.

The shift was significant.

The school’s proportion of students with disabilities, which had been steadily rising even before the pandemic, jumped from 13% in 2019 to 20% last year. The share of economically disadvantaged kids rose from 33% to 50%, according to city data. In 2019, just 17% of Beacon freshmen who took state math exams in eighth grade entered the school having scored below “proficient.” By 2022, the last year for which data was available, that number was 37%.

A new principal takes the helm

Many in Beacon’s community greeted Ventura’s appointment in the summer of 2023 with excitement. The school’s first principal of color, Ventura, who identifies as a Black Latino, openly shared his story of dropping out of high school and earning a GED diploma.

Ventura, a former school counselor, came to Beacon from Brooklyn Technical High School, the city’s largest and one of its most selective high schools, where he served as an assistant principal overseeing special education. Some families and educators thought that would be a boon at a time when Beacon was seeing enormous growth in its special education population.

“I was optimistic that he, as an Afro-Latino, as someone with a background in social work and special education, could really find ways to bring the community together,” said Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, a parent leader and former member of the Panel for Educational Policy who advised Ventura early in his tenure at the school.

But staffers and parents soon grew concerned over missteps. When the school discovered racist and antisemitic graffiti in March, which included a school shooting threat, Ventura initially left out the racist remarks and threat in a communication to parents. The oversight spurred one student to create an online petition calling for Ventura’s removal. Ventura later apologized for the omission.

Teachers bristled at Ventura’s attempts to direct classroom instruction, given his lack of experience as a classroom teacher and in consortium schools. Some said he showed little interest in, or understanding of, the school’s consortium approach.

According to an internal union survey of more than 60 teachers in October, only about 20% said the principal valued their instructional expertise and looked out for their welfare, according to results shared with Chalkbeat.

A contentious meeting of the teachers union chapter earlier this year also revealed divisions along racial lines. Several Black staff members spoke up in support of Ventura and said they’ve personally felt marginalized at the school, according to multiple staff members present.

Conteh, the PTA president, said she suspects Ventura’s race has played a role in the criticism he’s received.

“Are there things that he’s being held to because of his color?” said Conteh, who identifies as a woman of color. “It’s just a fact. … People have a lower threshold for failure if you’re a person of color.”

Special education complaints boil over

As the internal fighting among faculty continued, families felt increased urgency to address the situation of students in special education.

Roughly 54% of students in special education received failing grades in 10th-grade Geometry during the third marking period last year, compared to 18% of students in general education, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat. More than 40% of students with disabilities in Algebra 1 and ninth-grade biology got failing marks in the same quarter, compared with 16% and 14%, respectively, for general education students, the data showed. (Final course grades were not included in the data.)

In last year’s school survey, just 48% of Beacon parents of students with disabilities said they were satisfied with how the school was meeting their student’s individualized education program, or IEP — the lowest percentage of any high school in the city where more than six parents responded.

Multiple parents told Chalkbeat that the school failed to place students in classes with dedicated special education teachers, a violation of their IEPs. Parents also said that teachers routinely denied relatively common accommodations, such as extra time on tests and homework, the option to retake exams, and graphic organizers and study aids — even when they’re outlined on students’ IEPs.

There have been improvements: This fall, 95% of students entitled to a dedicated special education teacher were placed in a class with one, up from 84% last fall, according to special education reports reviewed by Chalkbeat.

But there’s still some disagreement over where to point the finger for the school’s problems in special education.

Some parents said some teachers’ attitudes are a big part of the problem.

“A lot of teachers have never taught to any kids with learning differences, and they’re totally out of their depth,” said one parent of a student in special education, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear their child could face reprisal. “There’s tremendous resistance among some staff.”

During one meeting of the School Leadership Team last year, a math teacher said students with disabilities couldn’t be expected to keep up in higher-level math courses, according to a parent present.

Several veteran teachers countered that, with some exceptions, teachers want to learn to better support students with disabilities but haven’t gotten the necessary help from the school’s leadership. Some educators blame Ventura and Baidy for mismanaging staffing assignments and ignoring teachers’ and parents’ requests for help.

“We are working every which way possible to fight against the same system that [parents] are fighting against,” said one teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We’re just hitting the same brick wall.”

Ventura has made efforts to improve the situation, but parents and educators say some have backfired.

This fall, he unveiled a new grading policy meant to address concerns from parents that rules varied widely between classes, and some courses relied too heavily on tests. The policy, a copy of which was reviewed by Chalkbeat, mandated that tests count for no more than 70% of a course grade and required teachers to offer two assessments a quarter.

Several educators said they supported the idea of bringing more coherence to a school where teachers have long had wide latitude to set classroom policies, but they objected to the fact that it was done with little consultation of teachers.

“All of a sudden, we have these, hammer, top-down policies without any meaningful discussion,” said a veteran teacher who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Some parents said they ultimately blame Ventura, as the school’s leader.

“A school like that needs a really strong principal who can make the case to educators” to change their practices, said one parent, but Ventura is “basically alienating all the teachers.”

Beacon’s crisis could have ripple effects

How Beacon weathers its current challenges may well reverberate beyond the school.

The consortium model has attracted increasing attention as the state embarks on a multiyear effort to remove the Regents graduation requirements — and Beacon is its crown jewel.

The school has also been at the center of some of the city’s most fiery debates over school admissions and equity. How it adjusts to its changing student population could have an impact on future efforts to diversify the city’s screened schools. Some teachers who have pushed for the school to open its admissions worry that its current struggles could undermine those efforts.

“We’ve created this change … and haven’t created structures to support those kids,” said a veteran teacher who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “That leaves a space open for people to say, ‘See, these kids can’t make it here.’”

At stake in all the debates over the school’s leadership and direction is whether Beacon can live up to its founding ideal of providing a top-notch progressive education to a wide swath of city kids, educators said — something at which the school once excelled.

This story was updated to clarify that many Beacon ninth-graders don’t take the state math exam in eighth grade.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

After years of closures, four new specialized schools open for Colorado’s ‘most vulnerable’ students

2024-10-24T09:45:00+00:00

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Three new specialized Colorado schools began working with school districts this fall to serve students with some of the highest needs in the state. A fourth new school works with teenagers and young adults who are in the juvenile justice system.

Known as facility schools, the number of these specialized schools had been dwindling for years due to low state funding, staffing shortages, and operating hurdles. But the four new schools are an indication that a state law passed last year is having the intended effect of increasing options for what one state report called some of Colorado’s “most vulnerable” students.

Together, the new schools will provide more than 100 new facility school seats for students in Colorado, according to the state, shortening the long waitlists that have become common.

“It’s a sign that things are moving in the right direction,” said outgoing state Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, an Arvada Democrat who sponsored the 2023 bill. “But it’s going to take a little bit more time to fully know the impact.”

Two of the new schools, TACT and Joshua Early Childhood Center, were existing programs that are now designated by the state as facility schools, opening up the flow of both public school funding and students. Another school, Austin Centers for Exceptional Students, is brand new to Colorado. Austin Centers runs six similar schools in Arizona.

Rocky Mountain Leadership School in Idaho Springs serves a small number of adjudicated boys and young men ages 16 to 20 who are in the custody of the state Division of Youth Services.

Many students who attend facility schools struggle with intense mental or behavioral health needs. Some have diagnoses of autism or emotional or intellectual disabilities. Others have experienced trauma, chronic illness, or substance abuse.

Facility schools are often schools of last resort. School districts and other state agencies send students to facility schools when they can’t meet the students’ needs. The districts pay tuition, and the facility schools also get funding directly from the state.

Photos of students from Austin Centers' schools in Arizona hang in its new Westminster school.

There were 80 facility schools in Colorado in 2004, but the number had plummeted to 30 by the time the new law was passed in spring 2023. Two more facility schools, Devereux Cleo Wallace in Westminster and Jefferson Hills in Lakewood, closed shortly thereafter.

But the 2023 law seems to be slowing the pace of the closures, advocates said. Among other changes, the law increased state funding for facility schools, allowing them to raise teacher pay and better compete for talent. It also created a new category called specialized day schools that provides a different way for schools and programs to get licensed as facility schools.

And the law created a grant-funded program that allows facility schools to band together to pay for services such as food, accounting, and IT. An early pilot showed participating facility schools saved between 15% and 30% on those services.

“It was the biggest sigh of relief for me of, ‘Yes, this is what we intended for this bill,’” said Becky Miller Updike, the executive director of the Colorado Association of Family and Children’s Agencies, which represents several facility schools.

But challenges remain. Most Colorado facility schools, including the new ones, are located along the Front Range. That leaves students in rural parts of the state with few to no options.

“The giant black hole continues to be the non-metro area,” Miller Updike said. “We all hope we can get a lot more geographic representation across the state for these kinds of schools.”

Austin Centers is located in the former Witt Elementary School in Westminster.

Austin Centers was called to Colorado by long waitlists

Brad Trout, principal of the new Austin Centers school in Westminster, said the organization had been looking to expand outside Arizona for several years. Austin Centers looked at six states including Colorado, said Trout, who previously worked for the organization in Tempe.

“When they looked at Colorado, they found that there were a lot of students that were homebound, and a lot of students that were on waitlists to get into facility schools,” Trout said. “That’s really the impetus behind the decision to come up here.”

Austin Centers was approved by the Colorado Facility Schools Board in early August. But word had gotten out before then. Trout said he began hearing from school districts in June.

“School districts started reaching out to me, sending me copies of [special education plans] saying, ‘Hey, can you review this kid? Let me know if this is a student you could work with,’” he said. “School districts were taking a big risk on us getting approved.”

Austin Centers now has 44 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, some of whom travel as long as an hour and 45 minutes to get there. It’s located inside the former Witt Elementary, which was shuttered by Jeffco Public Schools in 2023 due to declining enrollment.

Class sizes are no bigger than eight students; there are sensory materials in every classroom; and the school has a team of physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, and psychologists to help students regulate their behavior and access learning.

Courtney Leyba, the Denver Public Schools administrator in charge of placing Denver students at facility schools, called Austin Centers “a godsend for us.”

“We now no longer have students waiting to find a placement,” she said at a recent school board committee meeting, noting that the district had already placed 17 students there.

Michael Hurst helps attendees of TACT operate a lift with a Toyota RAV4 during an auto shop and mechanic class in 2023.

TACT teaches the trades to teens

TACT, which stands for Teaching the Autism Community Trades, is for older students with autism or other neurodiversity. Located in a warehouse in Englewood, TACT teaches skilled trades such as carpentry, welding, auto mechanics, and culinary arts.

“This isn’t building birdhouses,” said founder Danny Combs, who was inspired to start TACT in 2016 because he has a son with autism. “It looks like what a trade school should look like.”

TACT offers workshops for younger children, but its main programs focus on training teenagers and young adults for good-paying jobs in the trades, helping them find positions, and then supporting them at work. The organization was historically funded through a combination of philanthropy and state programs for people with disabilities.

But since TACT is not a traditional school, Combs said the organization would sometimes run into problems when trying to work with school districts. Even if it was written into a student’s special education plan that they should attend TACT for vocational training, Combs said school principals would sometimes refuse to send them.

So in 2019, TACT began looking into becoming a facility school. But the organization didn’t quite fit the mold. It wasn’t a day treatment center or a residential program, as many facility schools are. It didn’t have a child care license, as some others did, and it didn’t offer the traditional therapy programs of many facility schools, though Combs says it is therapeutic.

“Our students are getting therapy; they just don’t know it,” he said. “It’s more real.”

The new specialized day schools category finally allowed TACT to become a facility school for students aged 18 to 21 who are still enrolled in public schools. Students with disabilities can delay graduation to attend vocational or life skills training until they turn 21.

TACT currently serves 80 teens and young adults, but Combs said only 35 are between the ages of 18 and 21. Of those, only eight qualify as facility school students because they haven’t yet graduated high school. The goal is to grow that number in the coming years, Combs said.

“Now this allows students who want to come here the opportunity,” he said.

An instructional assistant at the Joshua Early Childhood Center works with a student on their individualized programming.

Joshua School fills a need for early childhood seats

Joshua Early Childhood Center also serves students with autism, but on the other end of the age spectrum, where there was a lack of facility school seats.

The school’s current students range in age from 4 to 8, though it’s licensed to serve children from ages 3½ to 10, said Executive Director Cindy Lystad.

Lystad oversees three schools in total: Joshua Early Education Center in Centennial and two locations of the Joshua School that serve school-age students in Englewood and Boulder. Each student has a one-on-one instructional aide who personalizes their education.

While the two Joshua School locations had been facility schools for many years, Joshua Early Education Center operated under a different model, Lystad said. Twelve of the 24 early education seats were filled by students with autism whose health insurance paid their tuition. The other 12 seats were filled by neurotypical preschoolers whose families paid tuition.

The neurotypical students served as behavior models for the students with autism, a so-called inclusion program that Lystad said worked beautifully but wasn’t “fiscally salvageable.” Last school year, the school transitioned its 12 insurance seats to facility school seats. Lystad said the seats were filled before the state had even approved the facility school license.

“Districts were saying, ‘I want a seat, I want a seat, I want a seat,’” Lystad said.

So this school year, Joshua Early Education Center transitioned fully to a facility school. All 24 seats were filled within 24 hours with students who’d been on a waitlist, Lystad said.

“We field multiple calls a day at all of our campuses of, ‘How do I get my child into your school?’” she said. “It almost breaks my heart because every single one of those phone calls is a kid, is a family, is a situation. They are desperate for a place for their kiddo.”

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org .

ABA in school: Some families are still being told no despite a state law billed as ‘a path to yes’

2024-10-02T18:50:07+00:00

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Every day, Ileana Sadin picks up her 5-year-old son Julian from kindergarten in Denver and drives him to a therapy clinic. Julian has autism, and his pediatrician has prescribed 35 hours of applied behavior analysis, or ABA therapy, per week to help Julian communicate.

But Julian doesn’t get nearly that many hours of therapy. At most, he gets 10 a week after school.

Denver Public Schools has refused his parents’ request for a private ABA provider to work with Julian in his kindergarten classroom, even though the family’s private insurance would pay for it.

Without ABA therapy in school, Julian’s parents worry he is losing skills. Before he enrolled in public school, an ABA therapist helped Julian participate in lessons at his day care, his parents said. Julian learned the alphabet and could count to 20 in English and Spanish.

When Julian transitioned to public school, his parents were told, “‘He’s making progress. He can count to 10 now,’” Julian’s father, Joshua Kurdys, recalled. “He could count to 20 a year and a half ago. That says something to me.”

A 2022 state law was intended to make it easier for students to get ABA therapy in schools. But ultimately it was watered down to require only that districts have a policy that addresses how a student with a prescription for “medically necessary services” receives those services in school.

Parents and advocates say that has led to an uneven experience for families across school districts and less support for students, some of whom end up quietly lost in the shuffle while others end up in a loop of frustration, explosive behavior, and suspension from school.

While Denver is following the letter of the law, parents and advocates allege, it’s not following the spirit. Advocate Meryl Duguay called Denver’s policy and process “a show to get to a no.”

Meredith Fatseas, the Denver district’s director of mental health services, said the district looks at each student’s case individually and that its process is “rooted in inclusive and equitable practices.”

“When requests come in, we are taking them seriously,” Fatseas said. “It’s not a rubber stamp.

“We are committed to the obligation of meeting students’ individual needs in the education setting, which is why we’ve taken a stance of owning this process,” she said.

Data shows Denver Public Schools says no more often

ABA uses rewards to reinforce behavior. If a child sits in circle time, works on a math problem, or takes turns with a peer, for example, they are given a reward like a high five or a favorite toy. It’s often recommended for children with autism to help them communicate, interact with others, and manage frustration.

Denver Public Schools’ policy says the decision of whether to allow an outside ABA therapist into the classroom is up to the team that develops a student’s individualized education program or IEP. An IEP lists academic and other goals for students with disabilities and the services the school district must provide. The IEP team includes district and school staff as well as the student’s parents, though the district ultimately writes the IEP.

If parents disagree with anything in the IEP, their recourse is to file a due process complaint with the state, which many families see as daunting and potentially costly.

Data obtained by Chalkbeat in an open records request shows that last school year, Denver Public Schools, the largest school district in the state with 88,000 students, received 28 requests for ABA therapy in school and granted only three, or about 11%.

Other big Colorado districts said yes more often. Jeffco Public Schools, Douglas County School District, and Cherry Creek School District granted all of the requests for ABA therapy they received last school year. Aurora Public Schools granted half the requests it received in the last three years.

Fatseas said Denver’s rate doesn’t take into account approvals made through a second, long-standing process that allows parents to request a private provider work with their child during non-instructional time only, such as art class or recess. The requests are meant to be for services that are not medically necessary.

Those types of requests are made at the school level, and the district doesn’t track how many are received or granted by individual school principals, Fatseas said.

But advocates who work on behalf of students with disabilities said that in their experience, fewer requests are granted now than were before the 2022 law and the district’s new policy.

“It’s as if after we shed light on it, trying to give access to all students who might need this service, they’re more rigid,” said Duguay, an education consultant who helped push for the 2022 law.

Pam Bisceglia, executive director of the nonprofit Advocacy Denver, said that as of last school year, she had worked with at least 15 families who had requested ABA services for their child. The district only granted one request, and only after Bisceglia asked for an outside mediator to be brought in.

Ileana Sadin stands with her son Julian outside the offices where Julian receives ABA therapy.

Bill set out to find ‘a path to yes’

Families’ frustration drove the 2022 Colorado state law. Originally the bill, known as HB 22-1260, would have required districts to allow ABA in school. The 2022 bill was the second attempt after a first attempt in 2020 got derailed by the pandemic.

“When parents approach schools with a prescription, they are often told no,” state Rep. Meg Froelich, who sponsored the bill, said at the first hearing in April 2022.

“We are here to find a path to yes,” said Froelich, a Democrat who represents Englewood, Sheridan, Cherry Hills Village, and part of Denver.

But now, Froelich said, it’s clear that the law isn’t always working as intended.

“We’re a local control state, so the prevailing wisdom is you can’t tell school boards what to do,” Froelich said in an interview. “We tried to write [the bill] that the path can’t be, ‘We don’t do that here.’ But there are too many ways the school can essentially say no while appearing not to.”

The first hearing on the 2022 bill lasted seven hours. The testimony provides an in-depth look at the desperation and frustration of parents who believe ABA therapy benefits their children, and the qualms and concerns of school districts hesitant to let outside providers in.

Elizabeth Schmidt told state lawmakers that because her third grade son didn’t have the support he needed, he’d been suspended from his suburban school district 12 times in a four-month span.

“He has had the cops called on him, he has been secluded, locked in rooms, and has had a school administrator who believes he has a right to put his hands on him to gain compliance,” she said.

Parent Laura Kornmueller testified that her son’s school refused to allow his ABA therapist into the classroom but told her she was welcome to pull her son out of class to go to his ABA clinic.

Right before her son’s kindergarten graduation ceremony, she said the principal told her that her son would be held back in kindergarten because he’d missed too much school.

“They said he can leave school to get the therapy he needs,” said Kornmueller, who didn’t name the district her son attends. “Then he was punished for not attending school. So which is it?”

Other parents said they too felt forced to choose between ABA therapy and school. The few who’d gotten ABA therapy in the classroom said it happened because of a lawsuit or a mistake.

Sandy Mikesell said her son’s principal didn’t know she was “violating an unwritten district edict” when she allowed an ABA provider into the school, which is located in a suburban district.

Mikesell said her son went from spending 80% of his day in the mental health office, where he missed his academic lessons, to being able to stay in the classroom. Although the district caught wind of the situation and tried to cut off the ABA services, Mikesell said her family had the data to show the therapy worked.

School districts raised concerns

Meanwhile, school officials said allowing outside ABA providers into classrooms would be disruptive and distracting to both the student receiving the therapy and their classmates. ABA therapy could also interfere with other special education services, they said.

Callan Ware, the executive director of student services for Englewood Schools, asked lawmakers to imagine a second grader whose IEP says they must receive speech therapy, occupational therapy, and mental health services.

If the student misses their mental health services because they’re working with their ABA provider, Ware said, “who needs to make that up?”

“We aren’t allowed to give up our services so an outside provider can come in to give their services,” said Lisa Humberd, then the executive director of special education for Widefield School District 3 and now head of the Consortium of Directors of Special Education.

Providers testified that’s not how ABA therapy works. It’s not a separate therapy delivered in an office, they said, but supports the student to participate in classroom lessons.

But districts also argued that allowing outside providers into schools could be a liability. Other parents might not want a strange adult in the classroom, they said. And while a child’s pediatrician may decide ABA therapy is necessary, the child’s special education teachers may not think so.

Michelle Murphy, executive director of the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, said the bill would raise “very real legal concerns for schools” if they were forced to allow in medically necessary services. She noted that she was putting “medically necessary services” in air quotes.

ABA therapy is controversial. Nationwide, some parents have accused ABA providers of being overzealous or even abusive to their children, and some autistic adults have said the premise of ABA therapy forces people with autism to conform to societal norms in a harmful way.

But the controversy didn’t seem to play a role in Colorado lawmakers’ decision. The objections of the school districts did. To appease them, Froelich amended her bill. Instead of requiring districts to allow medically necessary services in school, the bill required districts to have a policy.

“As with all things, our original intent in the bill was to be very much more forceful and to say, ‘You have to allow this and you can’t say no,’” Froelich explained when introducing her amendments.

“I think we will probably revisit this if parents are finding they can’t quite get what they need or the policy isn’t addressing certain circumstances,” she told fellow lawmakers in 2022.

Two years later, Froelich is frustrated.

“You do this victory lap when you pass it,” she said in an interview, referring to this bill and others, “and then you realize the implementation is 20 times harder than it should be.”

In Froelich’s mind, IEP teams should not be making the decision about whether to allow ABA therapy providers into the classroom. She has asked the Colorado Attorney General’s Office to issue an opinion to that effect. A spokesperson said they’d received the request and are looking into it.

Froelich has also asked the Colorado Department of Education to issue new guidance. A spokesperson said the department is “working with districts and other stakeholders to review how the current guidance might need to be clarified or updated.”

Without ABA therapy in school, Julian’s parents worry he is losing skills. Every day after school, Julian's mother Ileana Sadin picks him up and drives him to a clinic to receive ABA therapy.

In kindergarten and still without therapy services

Chalkbeat spoke with three families whose children have a prescription for ABA therapy. All three requested an outside ABA provider be allowed to serve their child in the classroom, at the expense of their private insurance. All three were denied by Denver Public Schools.

Two of the families did not want their names used in this story for fear of retaliation by the district.

All three families said they went through DPS’ process. As described by Fatseas, the district’s director of mental health services, the process involves an evaluation by a board certified behavior analyst, or BCBA, who works for Denver Public Schools. A BCBA is one type of professional who can provide ABA therapy.

The district’s BCBA interviews the student’s pediatrician and their outside ABA therapist. The BCBA also observes the child at school, reviews their records, and collaborates with other special education teachers and school-based providers to write a recommendation for the IEP team.

Julian’s parents said DPS didn’t follow that process in their son’s case. District officials said the process has evolved over time. But even when DPS did adhere to its current process, as happened with the other two families, the district still said no.

Fatseas said ABA theory is baked into the interventions that all Denver school-based mental health staff use with students, even if they’re not providing one-on-one ABA therapy. With requests for outside ABA providers to come into the classroom, Fatseas said the question the district tries to answer is whether the service is necessary for the student to make progress toward their IEP goals.

In Julian’s case, DPS said it wasn’t.

Julian is a sweet 5-year-old whose mother describes him as agreeable. He struggles with communication, social skills, and learning, but he doesn’t lash out in frustration.

Unlike some children with autism, Julian can speak. But his speech is mostly phrases he’s memorized. On a recent drive to his after-school therapy, Julian sat in his car seat with a banana and a chocolate milk, marveling at the trucks on the highway.

“UPS truck!” he said. “That’s a big one! Orange semi truck! That’s a big one!”

According to IEP documents provided to Chalkbeat by Julian’s parents, DPS rejected the family’s request for an outside ABA provider because Julian was making progress without one. But his parents wonder if Julian could be making more progress with help from an ABA therapist.

Julian’s most recent IEP, from June, noted that he had increased the frequency with which he took turns with a peer and shared toys from zero out of five attempts to one out of five attempts.

“They’re like, ‘Learning happened! See?’” Kurdys, Julian’s father, said in an interview.

Julian’s parents said they believe DPS set Julian’s baseline so low — at zero — that it would be impossible for him not to make progress. DPS said it could not comment on individual students.

Advocates said low baselines are a common problem.

“The bar is so low, they’re not considering what a student is actually capable of and should be achieving,” said Duguay, who does not work with Julian’s family but has worked with several other families whose requests for ABA have been denied.

In IEP meetings, Julian’s parents pushed back. But so far, DPS has stuck to its denial.

“I don’t know how we can say with a straight face he doesn’t need ABA therapy,” Sadin, Julian’s mother, said in one IEP meeting, according to a recording provided to Chalkbeat. She was reacting to test scores that showed Julian was in the bottom first percentile for academic skills.

“He has such problems with communication, it’s not easy to elicit what he usually knows,” she said in the meeting. “Not to harp on the ABA, but this is what ABA is about.”

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org .

NYC cracked down on private school special education costs. Hundreds of children lost services.

2024-09-19T20:01:46+00:00

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Days before her 9-year-old daughter started the school year, Suzette received crushing news about the girl’s special education services at her Bronx Catholic school.

For years, as part of its legal obligation to support students with disabilities in private and parochial schools, New York City’s Education Department had covered the cost of services for Suzette’s daughter, who is hearing impaired. That included a device to amplify her teacher’s voice in her hearing aid, speech therapy, and an aide to make sure she understands what’s happening during class.

But on Aug. 26, Suzette learned that the department had decided her daughter was no longer eligible for those services — not because she didn’t need them but because Suzette had missed a June 1 deadline to request them. The news left Suzette angry that her daughter was denied for what felt like a technicality, and facing a choice between letting the services lapse or paying out of pocket.

“I can’t imagine what this year is going to look like and how much further behind she’ll be for fifth grade without that extra support,” said Suzette, who asked that her last name be withheld to protect the family’s privacy.

In an effort to address ballooning costs and some cases of alleged fraud, the city’s Education Department recently stepped up enforcement of the June 1 deadline for special education services — one long enshrined in state law but loosely enforced — while simultaneously giving families less notice about the deadline than in past years. The Education Department sent families who missed the cutoff boilerplate notices that their students would not receive services, ranging from speech therapy to tutoring, for the rest of the school year.

The Education Department has already heard from roughly 1,300 families who missed the deadline but still want services, officials said.

The ramped up enforcement of the June 1 deadline is part of a larger crackdown on a system city officials say has run amok. In a separate policy shift over the summer, state officials passed an emergency regulation preventing private school families from bringing legal actions, called due process complaints, in certain special education cases.

But the crackdown has already denied critical services to kids who rely on them and could make it far more difficult for families to access support in the future, according to interviews with more than a dozen families, advocates, and legal experts.

John Farago, a hearing officer who has ruled on special education legal claims for decades, said the moves are deeply troubling.

“The city’s Education Department has now for this last year — in the most aggressive and vicious way I’ve seen in the more than 40 years I have been conducting hearings — tried to do everything they can to stop these children who attend private schools from getting special ed services at all,” he said.

Department officials say they are addressing urgent problems with the system. The cost of providing special education services for children in private schools has exploded, as have the number of legal complaints filed by those families. City lawyers also point to incidents of alleged fraud in which they believe providers have artificially inflated prices to bilk more money from the city, or failed to provide services for which they charged.

“We’re going to discover that there’s substantial fraud in this space.”
Education Department General Counsel Liz Vladeck

Last school year, the city received roughly 26,000 legal complaints related to special education, and it paid out $1.35 billion on those claims, officials said. That’s up from 6,000 cases and $189 million in payments a decade ago, officials said.

“It’s out of control,” said Education Department General Counsel Liz Vladeck in a recent interview.

A 2022 New York Times investigation found that growth in payments for services such as tutoring has been fueled in large part by the city’s Hasidic schools, called yeshivas. More than half of special education complaints in the 2021-22 school year came from neighborhoods in Brooklyn with the highest concentrations of such schools. The Times found that some agencies have been paid millions to provide services, but the services were not always needed or provided.

City officials said that tightening restrictions is the only way to get a better handle on the problem.

“At the end of the day, we’re going to discover that there’s substantial fraud in this space,” Vladeck said. “I think that there are more than a few bad actors.”

Advocates and families who spoke to Chalkbeat, however, said that the city’s blanket enforcement is denying critical services to families who did nothing wrong while failing to address the root causes of the rising costs.

“They’re using a hammer to kill a fly. It’s going to greatly harm children who need services,” said M’Ral Broodie-Stewart, a lawyer at Staten Island Legal Services.

City officials take aim at ballooning special education complaints

The crisis stems in part from the city’s obligation under an unusually expansive state law.

Under federal law, public school systems are required to pay for private school tuition and services for students with disabilities if they can’t provide an appropriate public option. But a New York State law passed in 2007 goes a step further: Students have an individual right to special education services even if they could be served in a public school. In those cases, parents are still on the hook to pay for private school tuition, but their children may receive therapies and tutoring paid for by the city.

Those services can take place at private schools, in students’ homes, or at separate centers.

While cases involving tuition reimbursement soak up a disproportionate share of the attention from politicians and the media, it’s the latter types of cases — where parents pay tuition but seek city-funded services — that have exploded in number and cost in recent years.

Of the more than 26,000 complaints filed last year, about two-thirds came from families whose kids could have been served in public schools. The city spent north of $500 million on those students last year, Vladeck estimated, noting the city has not historically tracked those costs separately.

City officials didn’t provide one single explanation for the boom in cases. But they described a strained system that has become costly, inefficient, and ripe for fraud.

One problem is that the city has nowhere near enough special education teachers to match with the private school students who need them as demand has grown, Vladeck said.

The city instead offers vouchers to families to find their own private special education teachers, issuing some 15,000 vouchers this year. Families have long complained that the vouchers don’t pay enough for most private providers, even after the city doubled its hourly rate last year, from around $42 to $86. In cases where providers charge more than the value of the voucher, or are unwilling to deal with a longer commute to a student’s neighborhood, families routinely file legal complaints to force the city to accept a different provider, often at a higher cost.

City officials contend their updated voucher offers a fair market rate, and they say that some providers are taking advantage of both the city and families by failing to provide promised services, or using unqualified teachers.

The current system has driven costs for the city far beyond what other districts spend and what federal law requires, and it raises questions about the state’s 2007 law, Vladeck argues.

“Is it the right thing to expect the school district to have 10,000 itinerant teachers that can be deployed?” Vladeck said. “What we’re looking at in terms of the demand here is not something that I think anybody ever envisioned.”

Disagreements over how to fix the system

Though there’s little disagreement that the current system is riddled with flaws, there are sharp disagreements about who’s to blame and how to fix it.

Education Department officials argue they’re obligated to act decisively to rein in costs and root out fraud. That’s why officials are enforcing the June 1 deadline, one of several steps they’re taking to vet requests for services.

The other major change, approved over the summer by the state’s Board of Regents, bars families from bringing due process complaints in cases where the city’s voucher didn’t cover the full cost of a special education teacher. Instead, the city has set up a new system run by the Education Department to resolve those cases – one Vladeck says will help the city quickly spot and shut down possible fraud.

“They’re using a hammer to kill a fly.”
M’Ral Broodie-Stewart, Staten Island Legal Services

But to many families and advocates, the city’s crackdown seems to punish families for problems for which the Education Department is ultimately responsible. After all, children have a right to the services, like the extra tutoring, in special education plans that the Education Department is responsible for crafting.

“You don’t fix documented incidents of abuse by attacking the children,” said Farago, the hearing officer. “You fix them by solving the underlying problem: You hire, or develop, a large cohort of [special education] teachers. You do what it takes to make sure that children receive the services you know they need.”

Some advocates are particularly concerned that the changes to the due process system will make it far harder for families to file complaints, and they are unsure how the new system set up by the city will work.

“The hearings will go down by 8,000 or 10,000 this year. That doesn’t mean that these kids no longer need the services,” said Jesse Cutler, a partner at Regina Skyer and Associates, a law firm that represents families in special education cases. “The DOE is able to wipe their hands clean.”

City officials said that families who have lodged requests for higher rates for special education teachers in the new city-run system will hear back within 60 days and have a right to appeal with the state.

Families caught in the city’s dragnet

Perhaps the most controversial, and consequential, of the Education Department’s recent changes was the decision to strictly enforce the June 1 deadline.

Suzette’s daughter, who depends on a listening device and help from an aide to make sure accommodations are in place for her hearing impairment, is suddenly without that help. The city has also stopped paying for her speech therapy sessions.

The Bronx family chose a Catholic school because of its quiet classrooms and strict discipline. A public school they considered seemed noisy by comparison, and Suzette feared her daughter might struggle to hear the teachers. Plus, Suzette said the local public schools she attended growing up felt dangerous, and she worried her daughter might face bullying due to her disability.

The city’s sudden enforcement of the June 1 deadline caught Suzette off guard. The Education Department used to automatically send notices informing families at private schools that they must request special education services by June 1, which prompted Suzette to send in the paperwork each year. But the city did not send similar notices this year — in yet another bid to reduce fraud.

“We’ve seen notarizations that are false or dated before the parent’s signature, or that purport to be from parents, but it’s the same handwriting on a few dozen of them,” Vladeck said.

But without the reminder to submit the paperwork, the requirement slipped Suzette’s mind. Just days before the school year started, the city informed her that her daughter was no longer eligible.

“I felt like that was malicious, that was intentional,” Suzette said. She noted that at her annual meeting with city Education Department staffers to renew her daughter’s services for this school year, which occurred on June 4, no one mentioned she’d missed the deadline.

Now, she’s in damage control mode. She is working to line up group speech therapy sessions that she’ll pay for out of pocket, at about $35 each. Her daughter’s learning plan entitles her to one-on-one services three times a week, though Suzette is unsure whether she’ll be able to afford it and is waiting for a quote on the cost.

“This whole thing does feel like a punishment,” she said.

Jennifer Varvara, whose 14-year-old has autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, said her teen’s services were similarly yanked for missing the deadline. Her son attends Monsignor Farrell High School in Staten Island and was supposed to receive speech and occupational therapy and tutoring.

“It seems like the city just decided to do this out of nowhere and not actually let anybody know, which is really a horrible thing to do,” Varvara said. “You’re preying on special needs kids who need these services for a reason.”

City officials have told families who missed the deadline that they are working to provide services once they’ve lined up support for families who met the June 1 cutoff, though it’s unclear when that might happen.

The Education Department has also offered families a different solution: enrolling in a public school.

Many families said that wasn’t a realistic option so close to the start of the school year. They were unlikely to get refunded for tuition they’d already paid, and they didn’t want to disrupt their child’s education.

Even some parents who say they met the June 1 deadline have struggled to get help.

Rosanna Gioia, a Staten Island mom, said she mailed in her annual request for services about a week before the deadline, but didn’t receive a confirmation. She dashed off an email on June 3 to double check.

Rosanna Gioia, whose 12-year-old daughter attends a Catholic school and was denied special education services just days before school started.

The next day, an Education Department rep confirmed the city received Gioia’s request for services, which includes counseling, speech therapy, and extra help from a special education teacher to help address her seventh grade daughter’s severe anxiety and selective mutism.

But on Aug. 28, in response to an inquiry from Gioia about counseling services, department officials said her daughter wouldn’t be eligible for any special education support.

A boilerplate email claimed she missed the deadline.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Newark Public Schools in compliance with special education timelines after years of monitoring

2024-09-13T10:00:00+00:00

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After 12 years of monitoring, Newark Public Schools is now in compliance with federal and state timelines for identifying and evaluating students with disabilities and will no longer be required to provide semi-annual reports showing data in reaching mandated goals.

The district has shown improvements in raising its compliance rate for meeting with parents who request a special education evaluation, evaluating eligible students, and implementing special education services, according to a state monitor. The progress is a result of a 2012 class action settlement agreement in M.A. v. Newark Public Schools, et al., a federal lawsuit that set a 95% compliance goal for the district to raise its historically low rates in evaluating students and delivering services on time.

The progress achieved by the district is a victory for Newark’s parents and children but the state’s monitoring focused solely on complying with federal and state timelines, said Elizabeth Athos, senior educational equity attorney at Education Law Center.

“The case doesn’t necessarily address the quality of the services that kids are getting,” said Athos, who along with a team of attorneys spent a decade in court arguing a lawsuit that resulted in the state’s monitoring under the settlement agreement.

The 2012 settlement agreement stemmed from a 2001 lawsuit filed by a group of six parents represented by the Education Law Center and Gibbons P.C. The case alleged that Newark was violating its “Child Find” duties, a mandate under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that requires all school districts to identify, locate, and evaluate children with disabilities, regardless of the severity of their disabilities.

Newark Public Schools has seen a dramatic increase in the number of students with disabilities in recent years. This school year, roughly 7,000 students with disabilities are enrolled in district schools and make up less than a quarter of the district’s nearly 40,000 students. This fall, another 11,000 students are English language learners, pointing to the district’s growing need to provide additional support and resources for vulnerable students.

During the first week of school this month, some students with disabilities missed class due to enrollment issues. In previous years, parents of students with disabilities have had trouble securing school services such as transportation and other services required under their child’s Individualized Education Program. The COVID-19 pandemic also affected students with disabilities who were some of the hardest hit by learning disruptions with some requiring makeup services they lost during that time.

Since the monitoring process began in July 2012, the district has been required to issue reports every six months to verify its compliance with state and federal timelines, as part of the settlement agreement approved by the federal district court on Jan. 27, 2012. The agreement tasked the district with achieving 95% compliance with the following two requirements:

Within 20 days of a request for a special education evaluation, the district must meet with parents to determine if a student is eligible for an evaluation, and, if so, obtain parental consent for evaluation; and
Within 90 days of parental consent, the district must conduct a special education evaluation and implement special education and related services for eligible students.

Under state law, the district has to continue to follow those requirements despite the end of the compliance monitoring.

The district started the monitoring process with a 90-day compliance rate of 32% and is now achieving compliance rates above the 95% goal, according to the Education Law Center. The district’s 20-day compliance rate has also risen since July 2012, when it started at 84%. The rate has been consistently at 98% or higher since February 2021, the Education Law Center said.

“While we are pleased with the progress that has been achieved, going forward, the district must broaden its focus to ensuring the quality of its decision-making during the child find and evaluation process,” said class co-counsel Lawrence S. Lustberg, of the Gibbons law firm. “We will not demand that NPS continue its extensive reporting to us, but we intend to watch closely during the next year, to make sure there are no signs of backsliding.”

Diane Janson, the designated special education compliance monitor, and Kim Murray, director of the New Jersey Department of Education’s Office of Special Education, assured Athos and the plaintiffs in the case that the district and Superintendent Roger León had “the support and structure in place to sustain the progress it has made,” according to a press release issued by the Education Law Center.

The district will continue internal monitoring and would reach out to Janson for assistance as “it works to continue improving its special education program,” the press release said.

Newark has also worked to improve its special education program after citations from the New Jersey Department of Education. In 2019, the state cited the district for failing to meet key mandates related to education plans for students with disabilities. In 2022, the state department also found the district had problems with reporting in education plans, notifying parents of meetings, and missing meetings with parents and students with disabilities as part of responsibilities mandated under IDEA. The state ordered the district to take corrective action by November 2022.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

‘We’re already overwhelmed’: Students with disabilities miss class during the first week of school

2024-09-11T20:42:29+00:00

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Robert Brown and his wife moved to Newark after 10 years of living in Florida, where they faced challenges in getting special education services for their two sons who have autism.

Their children, Warren, 9, and Nathaniel, 6, are both nonverbal and require speech, applied behavior analysis, and occupational therapies. Nathaniel has a more severe disability, Brown said, and requires the same services as his older brother along with behavioral therapy and a classroom aide.

After enrolling his sons in Newark Public Schools in July using the Newark Enrolls application online, he thought they were all set.

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But on Sept. 3, Newark Public Schools’ first day of school, Brown took his sons to McKinley Elementary School, the school they were supposed to attend, only to be told McKinley had space for Warren, but not for Nathaniel. The younger boy has been forced to stay home ever since — missing the crucial first week of a school year as well as much-needed services that help with Nathaniel’s disability.

The Browns are not the only family whose return to school has been marked by confusion and disruption. Several other parents of children with disabilities told Chalkbeat Newark that on the first day of school, they were told their child did not have a school placement. Other parents said they were told their child was enrolled at a different school.

The issues families are grappling with this year speak to a growing need in the district where an increasing number of students require special education services. This school year, roughly half of Newark Public Schools’ nearly 40,000 students is made up of vulnerable students in need of additional support and resources. This fall, roughly 7,000 students need special education services and another 11,000 are English language learners.

The district said it’s not experiencing a problem with enrollment and that those seeking a placement can visit the Newark Enrolls website or the school closest to their home for direct assistance and support, Paul Brubaker, Newark Public Schools communication director, said in a Sept. 6 email to Chalkbeat. Students who have completed the enrollment process and are placed at school receive the services and accommodations they are entitled to from their first day of attendance, Brubaker added.

But Brown said that’s not what his family has experienced.

After a plan to move to New York fell through, the family scrambled to secure an apartment in Newark over the summer. Brown said he enrolled his sons in the district by using the Newark Enrolls application. By early August, he had already sent the district his children’s Individualized Education Program, a written plan that outlines the services a student with a disability needs in school, along with a list of 10 schools he would prefer his children to attend.

“We’re going through the motions, but it’s frustrating, you know because I did everything early, I figured that, you know, that would have helped,” Brown said. “I know there’s an overcrowding problem, but you know, he needs to go somewhere. He can’t be out of school, this isn’t the 1700s.”

Brown says he’s reached out to the district’s Board of Education and a special needs coordinator at the state’s department of education, which are in the process of finding a school for Nathaniel but the principal at McKinley told him no seats are available for students with disabilities across the city.

And the clock is ticking. Brown is set to begin work in a few weeks, while Nathaniel sits at home along with his sick grandmother who is cared for by Brown’s wife.

Nathaniel, who has severe autism, will run around the house and scream when he’s told not to do something, Brown said. The family goes to bed by 10:30 p.m. every night so Nathaniel can sleep through the night but often he wakes up around 3:30 a.m. full of energy. His son’s neurologist prescribed medication for Nathaniel but in the end, Brown said, his son needs the proper services to help him manage his disability.

Like Brown, Alyssa Drysdale was told on the first day of school that her kindergarten daughter Eva, who has an IEP, was not enrolled at the school she was supposed to attend: Quitman Street Elementary School where she had gone to pre-K last year.

Drysdale waited over an hour on the first day of classes in the school’s gym with her daughter Eva, who requires speech therapy and may need an aide this school year as she can be easily triggered in a classroom environment. Drysdale wasn’t told why she and other parents had to wait until she spoke with school staff who told her that Eva wasn’t enrolled in the school, Drysdale said.

The school’s principal and her staff were working to find a placement for Eva when Drysdale realized she needed to check her car. As she was walking out, she saw her car getting towed.

“I see my car in the back of a tow truck, and I had to pick up Eva, and she’s so heavy, and I’m literally chasing the tow truck down. Like, please, oh my God, can I have my car back now? I wasn’t expecting to take this long,” Drysdale said.

When she went back to the school, Drysdale “just wanted to cry there, like I was so sad.” She spoke with a caseworker who said to wait for a call from the district with a placement for Eva. In the meantime, Drysdale said, they offered a take-home packet so Eva could do school work at home.

Instead, Drysdale said she returned the next day to drop Eva off at the school.

“I do work overnight, but the only time I do get to rest is during school, so I ended up dropping her in the morning, but this situation was a little weird to me,” Drysdale said.

The next day, a caseworker told Drysdale they would take Eva while the school figured out a permanent placement for her. But Drysdale isn’t sure if her daughter will move to another classroom or when her speech therapy, which Eva needs so she can learn to express herself better, will begin, Drysdale said.

“She can express her needs,” Drysdale said, ”but as far as being in depth, she wouldn’t be able to explain herself.”

Newark students with disabilities face recurring problems

Brown’s and Drysdale’s enrollment issues are just a fraction of the problems parents of students with disabilities have faced in Newark. Students with disabilities also face greater learning challenges as they have been some of the hardest hit by the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, with some requiring makeup services from learning disruptions.

In 2019, the New Jersey Department of Education cited the district for failing to meet key mandates related to education plans for students with disabilities.

In 2022, the state department also found the district had problems with reporting in education plans, notifying parents of meetings, and missing meetings with parents and students with disabilities as part of responsibilities mandated under the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA). The state ordered the district to take corrective action by November 2022.

This year’s enrollment problems are also affecting high school students. Tameerah Green’s son, Jaimir Velez, is a 10th grade student with an IEP, who last year, attended Eagle Academy located inside Weequahic High School. On Aug. 16, Green received a letter from the district confirming that her son’s district-provided transportation would arrive on the first day of school and drop him off at Eagle Academy.

But on Sept. 3, after her son was picked up by his bus and dropped off at Eagle Academy, Green received a call from Clark Thompson, the school’s child study team social worker, notifying her Jaimir was supposed to attend Malcolm X Shabazz High school, not Eagle. No one had told her about the school change prior to that morning.

Jaimir has a learning disability and needs a stable environment with familiar teachers to avoid sparking behavioral issues, Green said. The mother sent Jaimir to Eagle Academy the next day, on Sept. 4, but when he returned home, Jaimir said a teacher told him he wasn’t supposed to be at the school.

On the third day of school, Jaimir started to complain about headaches and stomach cramps, which Green feels is a result of not feeling welcomed at the school. Jaimir hasn’t been back to school since Sept. 4.

“I took him to the doctor today to make sure everything was fine but I know where it’s coming from,” said Green on Monday.

Advocate Nadine Wright-Arbubakrr has a long history of working with Newark families to secure school services such as transportation and, through her nonprofit Nassan’s Place, offers summer camps for children with disabilities. But this is the first time she has heard about parents of students with disabilities facing enrollment issues during the first days of school.

“How is it possible that these parents continue to deal with these problems every school year? It’s just not fair,” said Wright-Arbubakrr, who founded Nassan’s Place more than 10 years ago to help families navigate the problems she once faced as a Newark parent of a student with autism.

With the second week of school underway, Brown and his family are hoping the district can find a school for Nathaniel soon. In the meantime, he’s looking at schools outside of the district, including The Deron School of New Jersey, a private K-12 school that offers programs for students with disabilities at its Montclair and Union campuses.

But ultimately, he hopes Newark can provide his youngest son with a public school education, “because that’s why we came here.”

“I’m going to start working in maybe a couple weeks, but I’m not going to be here, then everything, mostly, is going to be on my wife,” Brown said. “We’re already overwhelmed.”

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Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan Department of Education makes another push to get federal civil rights case thrown out

2024-08-30T21:47:01+00:00

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The Michigan Department of Education on Friday made a final legal plea for a U.S. Department of Education administrative judge to dismiss all claims that the state agency violated the rights of students with disabilities during COVID-era school closures.

Attorneys representing the MDE again questioned the enforcement authority of the federal department’s Office of Civil Rights. The MDE’s filing said lawyers for the office had “scant allegations” and accused them of performing “legal gymnastics” in the case.

Many Michigan public school students with disabilities did not get the instruction and services they were entitled to under anti-discrimination laws, such as speech language pathology and social work, a years-long federal investigation found.

The state still has not given the students mandated compensatory services, or additional assistance to help kids catch up, according to the civil rights office.

Federal officials also said the MDE repeatedly gave incorrect information about what rights students were entitled to in presentations and correspondence with parents and school districts after.

Additionally, the civil rights office said that the MDE did not have a designated employee on staff to ensure compliance with civil rights laws, as is federally mandated.

The MDE’s latest filing, a brief in support of its motion to dismiss the case last month, comes after the civil rights office accused the MDE of trying to “shield itself from scrutiny” and misunderstanding federal law.

“Schools and districts faced unique challenges during the pandemic, but students with disabilities never lost their right to equal educational opportunity under Section 504,” said a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education in an email. “These students deserve for MDE to make things right, and we expect the administrative law judge will decide that MDE is legally required to do so.”

In its legal filings, the state has denied any wrongdoing.

“Due to the ongoing proceeding, the Michigan Department of Education has nothing more to add to the detailed documents we filed,” said Bob Wheaton, director of public and governmental affairs for the MDE. “We remain strongly committed to providing equal access to educational opportunities to all students in Michigan – including students with disabilities.”

States that don’t comply with laws protecting students with disabilities risk losing federal funding. In the 2023-24 school year, Michigan received $461 million in federal aid for special education.

Marcie Lipsitt, a Michigan special education advocate who filed the initial complaint, said it seeks compensatory services for all students with disabilities who have either individualized education programs or Section 504 plans in the state.

IEPs indicate services that students with disabilities are entitled to, and 504 plans lay out needed accommodations for students with disabilities who do not require special education services.

Lipsitt said on Friday that the MDE’s latest response reaffirms her belief that it does not understand the federal law.

“It is clear the MDE refuses to accept responsibility for issuing unlawful guidance,” on districts’ requirements, Lipsitt said Friday.

Attorneys for the MDE said in the latest filing that the OCR is relying on “dated and unpersuasive precedent.”

Here are some of the key areas of dispute as laid out in the filing:

The filing says that the civil rights office does not have the authority to enforce Section 504 regulations for students who are also covered by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The MDE claims that authority belongs to the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, a different arm of the Department of Education. In previous court documents, lawyers for the civil rights office said that is inaccurate and that the office does have jurisdiction.
The MDE said that the civil rights office is trying to hold it accountable for the actions of local school districts. The filing says that the civil rights office has no authority to impose supervisory responsibility on a state education agency for districts’ compliance with Section 504. In previous documents, the civil rights office cited federal cases that found states have some responsibility in ensuring district compliance.
The MDE claims that the civil rights office has not alleged that any students were denied a free and appropriate public education or were discriminated against due to the guidance the state agency gave to districts and parents. The civil rights office previously said it is not obligated to identify individual students whose rights were violated to prove noncompliance.
The MDE says it now has a federally mandated 504 coordinator and is in compliance with the law. The civil rights office previously said that the state did not have a coordinator for years and that the MDE updated its website to identify the coordinator one day before it filed its motion to dismiss. The civil rights office said the MDE did not give proof that any harm from the “years-long violation” had been resolved or that it won’t happen again.

Now that the MDE has made a final brief in support of dismissing the claims, an administrative law judge from the DOE will rule on the motion.

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

This story has been updated to include a new response from the MDE.

Summer child care can be a puzzle. For parents of children with disabilities, it’s even more complex.

2024-07-24T22:59:50+00:00

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During the school year, many Chicago Public Schools students with disabilities receive additional support in classrooms, from one-on-one support from special education classroom assistants to services such as speech-language or occupational therapy.

That support system for children can disappear in the summer.

While many families struggle to find summer programs that cover the majority of the day and are lower in cost, parents who have children with disabilities say such options for their children are very few and hard to come by. Working parents with children who have disabilities often have to piece together private therapy sessions, half-day summer day camp for four to six hours, and other child care

Chicago Public Schools currently serves over 52,000 students with Individualized Education Programs, but only 9,019 students are eligible as of July 12 for the district’s summer program for these students, also known as Extended School Year.

For students who aren’t eligible for the Extended School Year program, families look to Chicago Park District’s summer day camps for kids between 6-12 years old and special recreational programs for children and teens between 8 and 17 years old. These programs run for about six weeks and can cost $160 or more, but financial aid is available for families. Many of these programs have limited spots and parents say they fill up quickly in the spring.

Chalkbeat talked to five Chicago Public School parents of children with disabilities about challenges they face finding summer programs for their children.

A costly summer camp with one-on-one support

Emily Metz’s son Will, a 7-year old with Fragile X Syndrome, a genetic disorder, and ADHD, is going to an Apache Day Camp in the city. The nonprofit organization offers summer programs across several sites throughout the city and the suburbs where children and teens participate in activities such as swimming and performance arts. Metz chose this program because it accepts children with disabilities and provides them with a paraprofessional.

But costs for Apache can run high. According to Metz, for all children it costs around $5,000, but for Metz it costs around $10,000 because Will needs a paraprofessional.

Will Metz and his brother watching television.

In previous years, Metz explored affordable options to get child care in the summer for Will. Her son is eligible for the Extended School Year through his Individualized Education Program. Metz said the program would not work for her because there’s no guarantee it will take place at his current school and Will feels very anxious when he has to change his environment and schedule.

In addition, the Extended School Year covers child care for the morning and early afternoon but not the full work day – a concern for Metz who works a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job. Metz tried sending Will to a special recreation program at the Chicago Park District but the process was “too complex.” She said it was hard to find which park offers special recreation programs and if those camps would offer an aide. There were also a few slots.

While Metz has Will in a summer camp now, she is worried about the lack of child care in August when summer camp ends and right before school starts. Right now, she and her husband are planning to take paid time off from work to take care of Will.

The lack of child care before school starts is “creating gaps for disabled kids and their families on top of the insurmountable challenge of just finding care for the majority of the summer,” Metz said.

Summer camp during the day, learning in the evening

Philoniese McCray has a 6-year-old son named Niles who has autism and is currently attending summer camp at Penny Lane Schools in Oak Lawn, a suburb south of Chicago. From Monday through Friday, Niles swims three times a week and takes a trip on Thursday.

The program costs McCray almost $300 a week.

Philoniese McCray and her son Niles.

“It wasn’t something that I had budgeted for,” she said, “but I mean, I really have no other choice if I want him to be in a safer environment and be monitored properly.”

If McCray had it her way, she would have enrolled her son in an academic enrichment program to help him keep up with his studies. But she couldn’t find anything that would work for her family.

In addition to camp, McCray sends Niles to speech-language therapy, teaches him at home, and enrolled him in a literacy program to teach him how to read.

Combining two camps to cover a full day

Abby Vlahos’ 7-year-old son, who has a genetic syndrome and autism, is splitting his summer between the Extended School Year program at his school, Beard Elementary School on the city’s northwest side, and a summer program for children with disabilities in Maine Township, a northern suburb of Chicago.

After school ended in June, Vlahos’ son started summer camp at Maine-Niles Association of Special Recreation, a 20-minute drive from her house, to ensure that her son had something to do over the summer. The overall cost for her family is about $2,000 for the whole summer. Vlahos said her family would have to pay around $6,000 if they decided to enroll him the entire summer. Since her son attends the Extended School Year program for six weeks, she doesn’t have to worry about sending him during that time.

Vlahos’ son started the Extended School Year program two weeks after the school year ended. He goes from Monday to Thursday between 9:15 a.m. to 1:15 p.m and to summer camp in the suburb on Fridays. On days when neither program is available, she and her husband divide child care and use babysitters when they are working.

Like Metz, Vlahos isn’t looking forward to the one week before the start of the new school year on Aug. 26 when they won’t have any child care until the school year begins.

Finding a special recreation program at a nearby park

Elizabeth Martel is a mother of three kids who are 12, 14, and 16. Her 12-year old daughter, who has intellectual disabilities, has been going to a special recreation program for children and teens with disabilities at Norwood Park every day between 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Children can spend the summer doing art and crafts or swimming with peers their same age.

Martel says the program is perfect for her family because it is affordable — $164 for six weeks — and it’s only a 10-minute drive from their home.

Martel knows her family is lucky because only a few parks offer special recreation programs for children with disabilities and a small number of slots are available.

Martel met the park’s special recreation director when her daughter was 5. So, once her daughter turned 8, she was able to join the park’s program and has been going every summer since.

“The summer camp is wonderful. It’s pretty much exactly what it should be,” Martel said, but she wishes it was accessible to all families who have children with disabilities.

Driving to the suburbs every day

The Bryant family have 10-year-old fraternal twins, a boy and girl who both have autism, but they have different needs. Kim and Edward Bryant tried to get their son, who needs more support throughout the day like an aide, into a special recreation program at Norwood Park, but they weren’t as lucky as Martel.

Edward Bryant said Norwood Park’s special recreation program had a waitlist they had to sign up for in person. He ended up taking time off from work to sign his son up in mid-April. However, his son was placed on a waitlist.

The Bryant Family. Courtesy of Kim Bryant.

It was unclear how the waitlist would work and they did not receive a call back on whether the Bryants’ son got in or not. Kim and Edward said the park district’s current process makes it “so impossible” for parents to navigate.

The Bryants decided to send their son back to the Maine-Niles Association of Special Recreation’s summer program from Monday to Thursday. The Bryants’ son has been attending this program in the northern suburbs of Chicago for the last two years and they like it because the program offers one-to-one support and has more staff to support each child. However, Edward Bryant said that if he could have sent his son to a program closer to home, instead of a 20 minute drive, he would have chosen that option.

The Bryants have to pay a $2,500 non-residential fee for the summer program for the entire summer. If they would have gotten into the city’s park district special recreation program, they would have paid about $160 for the summer.

State ends scrutiny of Chicago Public Schools over long bus rides for students with disabilities

2024-07-22T21:35:01+00:00

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Citing the district’s progress, Illinois state education officials are no longer formally monitoring Chicago Public Schools to ensure that students with disabilities don’t have overly long bus rides to school, Chalkbeat has learned.

The state notified the district in April that it was ending a corrective action that required the district to “make every effort” to keep commute times for students with disabilities to less than an hour. The state imposed the monitoring in fall 2022, after district leaders acknowledged that roughly 3,000 students with disabilities had longer bus trips than that, with 365 of those students on trips longer than 90 minutes.

In its effort to comply with the state plan and deal with a bus driver shortage, the district cut busing for general education students at the start of last school year, and reserved seats for students with disabilities, as well students who are homeless — groups that are entitled to transportation under federal law. It offered free Ventra transit cards to general education students who would have previously been eligible for bus service, largely those attending selective enrollment and magnet programs.

The district was able to shorten bus times for most students with disabilities, but the ride lengths edged up over the course of the school year as more students with disabilities applied for bus service.

At the start of last school year, 47 students with disabilities were on commutes longer than an hour. By March, that number grew to 130 students; a district spokesperson did not immediately provide more recent data.

“As ISBE has noted previously, there are various challenges involved in limiting travel times in a large, urban school district,” state officials wrote in an April letter notifying CPS that ISBE closed the corrective action.

Even so, they wrote, CPS “made sufficient progress” and “substantially corrected this issue on a systemic level.”

A spokesperson for the ISBE did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Evan Moore said the district provided transportation to 9,356 students last school year, with a “vast majority” under an hour.

Federal mandates require public schools to serve students with disabilities, but not every Chicago public school has supports or resources to do so, especially for students with particular disabilities, such as those who are blind or deaf.

Whether or not a student with a disability gets bus service is determined in their Individualized Education Program.

Miriam Bhimani, one of the two people who filed the complaint that sparked the corrective action, said she doesn’t believe CPS has done enough to ensure students with disabilities are just as valued as other students.

“Without really addressing student assignments head on, we can still end up in situations where students are assigned a school that is very far from where they live,” Bhimani said.

The district remains under a separate corrective action plan focused on improving how students with disabilities are assigned to schools.

Moore said CPS is “continuing to explore and implement a comprehensive set of strategies” to provide transportation for students next school year, and that CPS will provide an update on busing later this summer. Officials announced in March that busing is not guaranteed next year for general education students.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Misguided Tennessee policies, not students, are root of classroom discipline problems, report says

2024-06-21T11:00:00+00:00

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Tennessee schools are increasingly punishing and excluding special education students with behavioral issues instead of providing them with evidence-based interventions to support their academic and behavioral growth, a new report says.

And it’s not the fault of teachers, school staff, or the students themselves, the author says.

In its report, released Friday, the Tennessee Disability Coalition blamed state policymakers for setting priorities and adopting policies that are ineffective at best, and likely harming thousands of the state’s most vulnerable students.

As a result, the coalition says, educators are using “ineffective, dangerous, counter-productive, and rights-violating practices” in the classroom.

The criticisms come after Tennessee enacted a string of increasingly stringent laws aimed at tightening discipline in the classroom — from the 2021 Teacher’s Discipline Act empowering teachers to remove chronically unruly students to a 2024 law requiring a one-year suspension for students who assault teachers at school.

Such policies, the report says, disproportionately affect students with disabilities, particularly those with behavioral issues, thereby restricting their educational opportunities.

“These policies not only sweep students with behavior needs into more restrictive settings, alternative school placements, and the juvenile justice system, they cast a net over other marginalized communities, including students of color and students in poverty,” the report says.

Jeff Strand, the coalition’s public policy director, said recent Tennessee laws also show a lack of understanding about special-needs students with behavioral challenges, leading to policies that are poorly suited to address the root causes of disciplinary issues.

“Good teachers know behavior issues are a child’s cry for help,” said Strand, a former special educator who authored the report. “What we’re doing in Tennessee is only making the problem worse.”

Specifically, the report calls out a shortage and high turnover of special education teachers; systemic gaps in training and support for special and general education teachers and administrators on the needs of students with behavior issues; a trend toward punitive and exclusionary practices; and a lack of student access to effective school-based supports and therapies, including enough school psychologists, counselors, speech-language pathologists, and board-certified behavior analysts.

Families say educators are under-trained and overwhelmed

Chris and Angela Powell’s family has experienced gaps in school services firsthand as parents of a child with autism and ADHD.

They describe their son Charlie as intelligent, caring, and kind. But his behaviors — whether shouting out answers, failing to complete worksheets, or fighting — often resulted in lost recess, hours in the principal’s office, or even being physically restrained or placed in a padded room during his first few years of elementary school in Williamson County, south of Nashville.

“These are invisible disabilities, and his behavior was his form of communicating. But he was being excluded and punished based on his disability,” said Angela Powell, now a special-needs advocate. “His general education teachers didn’t seem to understand how to work with children who have needs like ADHD or autism.”

The Powells say Williamson County’s two school districts lacked qualified therapists and other specialized support staff, leaving teachers with few tools to tackle classroom misbehavior. Charlie eventually was placed on homebound instruction, receiving his lessons in a home setting and missing out on the opportunity to attend school with his non-disabled peers. Now 12, he is being homeschooled.

“If the richest district in Tennessee can’t help my son learn,” said Chris Powell, “I shudder to think what families deal with in the other 94 counties.”

Meanwhile, the report identified only three of the state’s 10 largest teacher training programs — at the University of Memphis, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and University of Tennessee-Chattanooga — as offering more than two courses on teaching students with disabilities.

Also, while the state recently switched to a new K-12 education funding formula to provide more resources for students with higher needs, such as students with disabilities, the change did not require that districts designate such extra funds for special education services.

And while the state promised to inject an extra $1 billion annually in the K-12 funding pool, Tennessee remains in the bottom fifth of states in per-pupil funding.

Exclusion policies gave way to inclusion movement

Tennessee was once one of the many states that had laws formally excluding children with disabilities from public schools, on the premise that those kids would not benefit from a public school education. Before the passage of a 1975 federal law establishing the right to a public education for kids with disabilities, only 1 in 5 of those children were educated in public schools.

The expanded Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 marked the advent of the inclusion movement and the belief that children with disabilities, with some individualized support, can thrive in educational settings with their non-disabled peers.

But despite clear research on the benefits of inclusion for students with disabilities, surveys show general education teachers feel ill-prepared to work with them and struggle especially with special needs students with behavioral issues.

In Tennessee, about a tenth of the state’s public school students use an individualized education plan, or IEP, intended to ensure that the student receives specialized instruction and related services for their disability.

But according to data from the state education department, those same students receive a disproportionate share of formal disciplinary actions that include in-school and out-of-school suspension, expulsion, and transfer to alternative settings. In 2021-22, the most recent school year for which data are available, 12.5% of students with disabilities were removed from their classrooms, even though federal law limits excessive exclusionary discipline.

In addition, informal exclusionary disciplinary practices — which are difficult to quantify — are almost exclusively directed toward students with disabilities, the coalition says. They can include directing parents or guardians to take the student home for the day, inappropriate homebound placement, excessive use of threat assessments, inappropriate use of in-school suspension, and exclusion from school transportation.

Pending review of the report, a spokesperson for the state education department declined to comment on its assertions.

The leader of Professional Educators of Tennessee, which lobbied for the Teacher’s Discipline Act, acknowledged the challenges and nuances of disciplining students, especially those with special needs.

“We have seen since the pandemic an increase in mental health issues. That is why we at Professional Educators of Tennessee have worked hard to get additional funding for mental health in Tennessee,” said Executive Director JC Bowman.

He added that he’s open to new ideas that “ensure classrooms are safe and orderly, and every child has an opportunity to learn.”

The state comptroller is looking into the “informal removal” issue, also called “off-book suspensions.” Its Office of Research and Education Accountability has commissioned a report, which is expected to be released later this year, to better understand the use of informal removal, which often violates the rights of students with an IEP.

Strand says both pathways — formal and informal — can allow schools to avoid developing effective plans to correct bad behavior so they can stay in class and learn.

He recommends that Tennessee parents learn as much as they can about the rights of children with disabilities, including those with behavioral issues.

The coalition is hosting a free webinar at 5:30 p.m. Central time on Tuesday, June 25, on Facebook.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey Children’s Foundation to award $1M for multilingual learners, students with disabilities

2024-06-12T22:04:53+00:00

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Newark schools looking to bolster programs and create new initiatives or learning environments for the city’s most vulnerable students can apply for a new $1 million grant.

Sponsored by the New Jersey Children’s Foundation, the “Accelerating Outcomes for Exceptional Learners” grant program aims to provide city schools with more resources to develop, support, and increase achievement outcomes for Newark’s students with disabilities and multilingual learners.

The foundation is accepting grant requests that will focus on special education and multilingual programming and build new support systems to better serve those students, said Barbara Martinez, executive director of the foundation, a charter school-aligned nonprofit advocating for the improvement of public education systems. The grant comes as the number of diagnosed autism cases in Newark has surged since 2000 and multilingual learners have increased citywide.

“We wanted to help facilitate that by providing additional funding that may not be available through public sources to help schools innovate programs that maybe they wanted to try and haven’t been able to because of funding,” Martinez added.

Students in need of special education services are rising year over year and more than 10,000 students – a quarter of the Newark Public Schools’s enrollment – are multilingual learners.

In 2020, one in 20 Newark children had been diagnosed with autism, compared with one in 167 in 2000, according to researchers at Rutgers University. Last school year, Newark mothers of students with disabilities said they were still reeling from the negative effects of the pandemic and have struggled to secure in-classroom aides, compensatory education, and specialized services for their children. At Great Oaks Legacy Charter school in 2022, teachers raised concerns over the lack of resources for students with disabilities and teacher pay.

With the influx of English language learners in the district, officials will launch a new bilingual program at Malcolm X Shabazz High School this fall. The district is also wrestling with a shortage of bilingual teachers who can communicate in different languages. Most of the district’s multilingual learners speak Spanish or Portuguese, although some speak Arabic, French, Haitian Creole, or other languages.

The data shows schools need extra resources to tailor educational programs to these student populations, Martinez said.

“We have a lot of migrant students and we have schools that are doing the best that they can to serve as many children who are learning English and give teachers extra skills to serve special needs students,” Martinez added.

Schools can be awarded two-year grants of up to $100,000 starting in July and ending in June 2026. Schools should implement new programs by fall 2024 and new learning environments should be operational by fall 2025, but may be launched earlier, according to a Children’s Foundation press release. Traditional public schools and charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed, are eligible.

Applications with a focus on students with autism, students with emotional support needs, and students from migrant communities will be prioritized, according to the foundation’s press release.

Additional funding may be available for local organizations willing to conduct quarterly professional development cycles, help other grantees, and share data to measure and track their progress. The Children’s Foundation is also partnering with All Means All School Leadership Program, a 15-month cohort-based fellowship designed for school leaders to strengthen adaptive and technical skills in classrooms to increase equitable outcomes for marginalized students. The foundation will provide funding to cover tuition and travel for school leaders to participate in the program.

Schools interested in applying for an “Accelerating Outcomes for Exceptional Learners” grant can email sarah@njchildren.org.

Clarification: June 14, 2024: This story was updated to clarify that both traditional public schools and charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed, are eligible.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to ban seclusion in Colorado schools defeated, but sponsor pledges to try again next year

2024-04-30T18:27:15+00:00

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Despite testimony that one Colorado lawmaker called “horrifying,” a bill to ban the practice of shutting students alone inside rooms was defeated at the state Capitol.

State Rep. Regina English, a Colorado Springs Democrat and the main sponsor of House Bill 1167, asked last week that her fellow lawmakers postpone the bill indefinitely, effectively defeating it.

With just days left in this year’s legislative session, English said the bill was experiencing too much last-minute pushback from defenders of the practice known as seclusion.

Though English didn’t name names, a handful of school district and special education administrators had defended the practice to lawmakers in a hearing last month. The administrators described seclusion as a “last resort” measure that is sometimes necessary.

English pledged to introduce a new bill banning seclusion next year.

“It is my mission to make sure Colorado is the ninth state in the nation to ban this horrific practice used against our students,” she told the House Education Committee last Thursday.

The committee voted unanimously to defeat the bill. Several lawmakers said they were voting against the bill reluctantly and only at the sponsor’s request. They praised English for her courage and said they agreed that seclusion is wrong.

“The testimony we heard was horrifying,” said Rep. Barbara McLachlan, a Durango Democrat and chair of the House Education Committee. Seclusion, she said, “shouldn’t ever be happening.”

Under current law, Colorado schools are allowed to seclude students in rooms with the door closed. Staff must monitor students through a window or by video camera. Seclusion rooms must be “free of injurious items” and cannot otherwise be used for storage, custodial, or office space.

Students are often placed in seclusion because of their behavior. Available state data shows that young students with disabilities are disproportionately secluded.

English said a case at a popular Denver middle school called McAuliffe International School spurred her to sponsor the bill. An investigation by Denver Public Schools found that McAuliffe staff were placing students in seclusion without proper supervision. A former Denver school board member told lawmakers that the seclusion room at McAuliffe “reminded me of a prison.”

The former board member, Auon’tai Anderson, was among the parents and elected officials who testified last month in favor of the bill to ban seclusion. The most emotional testimony came from mothers who said their children with disabilities had been secluded.

The mothers spoke about how their children soiled themselves inside seclusion rooms because they were so scared and how, even years later, their kids had nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Parents said they were unaware their children were being secluded, in part because the schools didn’t use the word seclusion. Instead, schools referred to the rooms in which their children were shut inside by innocuous names like “the relaxation room” and “the opportunity room.”

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

The IEP recommended a special education classroom. We chose an inclusion school.

2024-04-25T13:00:00+00:00

Every year, on the first day of school, we take a picture of my now five-year-old son, Percy, by a chalkboard documenting his age, grade, interests, and more. I’m sure you’ve seen these pictures flood your Instagram every September.

In the blank for “when I grow up, I want to be,” most parents I know write in “teacher” or “firefighter,” as dictated by their child. But for my son, I write “an adult” because my dream has always been for him to someday be independent and live his life the way that he wants.

Cassie Hauschildt

Percy has moderate-to-severe autism spectrum disorder and has struggled his whole life to express himself, often lashing out physically in his frustration. Until last fall, he was entirely non-verbal.

My family and I have centered our lives around finding Percy the support he needs — from therapies for him to parenting classes for us. Yet, when it came to finding a school for Percy, we could not find one that wanted him and his diagnosis. The local school district gave him an IEP with no general education inclusion, and some local charters related that they had limited ability to serve Percy’s needs.

Educators saw a kid who was too hard, who lashed out, and whom they could not support.

Yes, Percy has behavioral issues, and I will be the first to tell you that it is not always easy to get him to do things. But Percy is so much more than just his autism diagnosis. He is also incredibly gifted and talented.

Around his fourth birthday, Percy started reading books and spelling words (in writing) at a breakneck pace. Going from knowing his alphabet to spelling more than 30 words on his own, Percy made it very clear that he was smart, capable, and really loved to learn. He especially loved to learn about the planets. Communicating with his talking tablet, he could name all the planets and their moons in the correct order.

We tried putting Percy in a special education-only environment, as the district recommended. It backfired. He turned to self-harm, banging his head against the wall to communicate his frustration and lack of stimulation. Every single day, he sobbed as we wrestled him into the car. Percy’s love of learning faded, even at home, as he regressed deeper into himself and away from the world.

It wasn’t until I took a wrong turn one day as I drove home from work that I stumbled upon a sign for a new school called Rocketship Explore Elementary. When I got home, I Googled it, and one of the first things I found was talk of “meaningful inclusion” being central to the Rocketship charter network. Students with disabilities such as Percy’s spend part of every day in a general education classroom, with their own paraeducator if needed, and another part of the day in a classroom for students with disabilities.

I enrolled him, and one month in, it was clear that Percy was getting the individualized support he needed to succeed. Today, Percy eats lunch, has recess, learns phonics, and goes on field trips with his general education peers.

I am so proud of Percy. More importantly, he’s proud of himself.

Every morning, his school day starts with a high-energy, school-wide morning assembly the school calls “launch.” This used to be a little overwhelming for my sensory-sensitive son, so he would not always participate, because forced inclusion doesn’t help kids.

But recently, as we walked in, Percy didn’t go on his normal path to his classroom. He watched, observed, found where his homeroom class was sitting, and joined the other students. Never before would he think to himself, “Huh, everyone else is sitting, so I’m going to also.” On that day, though, he sat down and stayed seated until the other kids stood. He observed this behavior and stood on his own! This would have been unheard of just a few months earlier. But meaningful inclusion has meant Percy can join his neurotypical peers at his own pace.

I am so proud of Percy. More importantly, he’s proud of himself. It is a joy to see. And there are so many kids out there like Percy who just need to be seen for who they are, for their exceptional gifts, not just their most challenging behaviors, and to be supported in their learning.

By embracing neurodiversity and providing tailored support for diverse learners, schools can not only transform lives but also reshape the narrative surrounding students with learning and behavioral differences.

Next September, when I pull out that first day of school chalkboard, I think I’ll let Percy fill in that blank himself. Because I know now that he will get to grow up to be anything he wants to be.

Cassie Hauschildt is a mom of two kids living outside of Fort Worth, Texas. Her children attend Rocketship Explore Elementary.

Young adults at Rikers say they’re systematically blocked from school

2024-04-04T20:32:26+00:00

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Young adults incarcerated at Rikers Island are systematically denied the opportunity to attend school, in violation of their legal rights, according to a motion filed Monday in federal court by The Legal Aid Society.

Those at Rikers who are ages 18-21 are entitled to attend the East River Academy, the public school in the facility, to work towards a high school diploma or GED. But in practice, they are frequently told they’re ineligible to attend school based on which housing unit they’re assigned to, or that they can’t attend class because no guards are available to escort them, according to declarations from 29 incarcerated young people.

That’s a violation of a 2016 court order mandating that young adults get access to education at Rikers, Legal Aid lawyers allege in the motion, which asks a federal judge in Manhattan to re-appoint a monitor.

“The City’s failure to educate these New Yorkers is not only a blatant violation of the 2016 court order, but heartbreaking and immoral,” said Lauren Stephens-Davidowitz, a staff attorney with The Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project, in a statement.

Rikers Island no longer houses 16- and 17-year-olds, who are now held exclusively in juvenile facilities. Education isn’t compulsory for the young adults on Rikers Island, but the city’s public school system is still required to enroll students through age 21 if they request it.

A 2016 order from U.S. District Judge George Daniels — part of a long-running lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Society two decades earlier — mandated that the city provide at least three hours of education to students who want it, and that access to school in jail shouldn’t depend on the housing unit a young person is assigned to.

But according to the testimony of more than two-dozen detainees, school on Rikers Island is often out of reach.

One man, now 22, said that he “asked captains many times if I could go to school” but wasn’t enrolled because of the housing unit he was living in. After more than a year of trying, he was transferred to a new unit that allowed him to attend school, but was late most days because the guard who escorted him didn’t arrive on time, according to his declaration.

In addition, classes were frequently canceled because of lockdowns and fights, he said.

Enrollment at the East River Academy has shrunk over the course of the pandemic, as the detention center struggled with severe staffing shortages.

During the 2019-20 school year, 27% of young adults ages 18-21 incarcerated at Rikers were enrolled in East River Academy, on average, according to an Education Department report. By the 2021-22 school year, the most recent for which data is available, only 18% of eligible young adults were enrolled, on average.

Violations of the 2016 judge’s ruling mandating school access are “wider in scope and greater in magnitude” than before the pandemic, lawyers allege in the motion.

According to Education Department data, 121 of the 217 students enrolled in 2021-22, or 56%, had a learning disability. But only 73 of those students got a completed Special Education Plan, a document outlining how the school intends to accommodate their disability, according to the report.

One 19-year-old with a disability who attended a specialized school with counseling services before he was arrested in December 2022 tried in vain for more than a year to start school at Rikers. He eventually gave up, according to his declaration.

The court previously appointed a monitor following the 2016 order, but his last report was in 2018. Conditions have since grown worse, Legal Aid lawyers argue.

Now, lawyers are asking the judge to re-appoint a monitor for another two years.

Several members of the City Council held an oversight hearing last October to address reports that some incarcerated youth weren’t getting access to education. “Today’s lawsuit reinforces those concerns and highlights multiple instances where the Department of Correction failed to meet their mandate,” said Council Education Committee Chair Rita Joseph (D-Brooklyn) and Criminal Justice Committee Chair Sandy Nurse (D-Brooklyn) in a joint statement. “Reversing course and addressing these challenges must be a priority for the Department.”

A spokesperson for the Education Department referred a request for comment to the Law and Correction Departments. A Law Department spokesperson said the agency is reviewing the motion. A spokesperson from the Correction Department said staff operate classes in multiple jails on Rikers Island and said new funding announced last month will bolster education programs.

4/5/2024: This story was updated to include comment from the Correction Department and City Council.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Lawsuit seeking makeup services for NYC students with disabilities survives another legal challenge

2024-03-29T21:24:37+00:00

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A class action lawsuit seeking to fast-track makeup services for New York City students has once again survived the city’s legal efforts to quash it.

A federal district court judge, Andrew L. Carter Jr., initially dismissed the case in 2022. But even after an appeals court overturned that decision, city officials used a different legal maneuver to try to get the suit tossed. Carter ruled this week that the lawsuit can largely move forward.

The lawsuit — filed in November 2020 by the nonprofit group Advocates for Children — argued that thousands of children with disabilities missed out on key services after the city’s schools switched to virtual instruction. The city struggled to distribute functioning remote learning devices, leaving some students without consistent access to instruction or other support such as physical therapy, the suit claimed.

Under federal law, students with disabilities have a right to “compensatory services” if their schools don’t provide all of the specialized instruction or therapies listed on their Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs. But seeking those services can require families to file a formal complaint — and the system that oversees those claims in New York City is dysfunctional and beset by delays that often stretch hundreds of days beyond the 75-day legal limit. (The complaint system is under federal court supervision thanks to a different lawsuit.)

The goal of Advocates for Children’s lawsuit was to force the city to come up with a streamlined process outside of that backlogged system to award extra services for students with disabilities.

“We’re looking for something that’s not each parent fighting on their own for relief,” said Rebecca Shore, the litigation director at Advocates for Children. She said the current process is “costly and inequitable for families without attorneys.”

The case has faced years of legal setbacks and delays. Carter dismissed the lawsuit two years ago because the families involved in the litigation had not tried to first use the formal complaint process. “Plaintiffs must exhaust their claims before coming to federal court,” Carter wrote.

Advocates for Children challenged that decision and a federal appeals court ruled in 2023 that the case should not have been dismissed. But city officials once again tried to get the case tossed.

(In his ruling on Thursday, Carter also ruled that the state’s Education Department should no longer be a defendant in the case, writing that the original suit did not claim state officials were directly responsible for the lost services.)

A spokesperson for the city Law Department declined to comment on the decision. A city Education Department spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

The city’s education department has provided some students with disabilities additional services to make up for pandemic disruptions. The department offered after-school and Saturday sessions to families, though the rollout was bumpy and many families did not participate.

Shore said her organization still regularly hears from families whose children missed out on services during the pandemic and would benefit from additional tutoring or other help.

The Education Department “can’t be absolved of their responsibility to make up the services that were lost,” she said.

One of the appeals court judges who reviewed the case said during a 2022 oral argument that cases like these are frustrating because they can take a long time to resolve but students need makeup services quickly.

If the case drags on for years, many students affected by the pandemic disruptions will have aged out of the school system and won’t ever get the services they missed out on, even if the lawsuit is ultimately successful.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Seclusion in Colorado schools: Parents, school officials split on a bill to ban the practice

2024-03-28T16:24:38+00:00

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Calling the practice inhumane, unethical, and akin to solitary confinement, opponents of secluding children alone in separate rooms in response to their behavior testified for hours Wednesday in support of a bill to ban the practice in Colorado schools.

The most emotional testimony came from mothers who said their children with disabilities had been secluded. Teresa Vargas recalled walking into her son’s school to see the then-fifth-grader shut in an office, holding a stuffed sloth that he brought to school every day up to the window.

As school administrators stood outside with clipboards, her son was crying “and asking, ‘Can I get out?’” Vargas said. Her son was in the room because he’d thrown the stuffed sloth, she said.

Christie Nichol said she didn’t realize her young son had been secluded for hours a day in what his elementary school called “the quiet room,” until she attended an art show at the school. When her son and a friend from his special education classroom showed her the room, Nichol said the boys had coined their own name for it: “the torture room.”

Other parents spoke about how their children soiled themselves inside seclusion rooms because they were so scared. Parents testified that even years later, their kids had nightmares and PTSD from being shut alone in rooms with innocuous sounding names like “the opportunity room” and “the relaxation room.” In one case, an advocate said a teacher referred to a bare seclusion room as “Australia,” alluding to a country with roots as a penal colony.

“For far too long, these rooms have served as symbols of fear and isolation,” bill sponsor Rep. Regina English, a Colorado Springs Democrat, said at the hearing Wednesday, “places where the voices of our most vulnerable students are silenced and their dignity stripped away.”

House Bill 1167, of which English is the sole sponsor, would require the State Board of Education to make rules banning seclusion by Nov. 1.

The bill would also give the State Board until July 1, 2025, to create a resource bank of materials “regarding appropriate alternatives to seclusion and restraint to assist school personnel with appropriate responses to behaviors.”

Although the House Education Committee heard testimony Wednesday, English asked to delay a vote on whether to move the bill forward. English said in an interview that she wants more time to work on amendments aimed at increasing the chances that the bill will pass.

Bill spurred by case at Denver’s McAuliffe International School

Colorado schools are currently allowed to put students in seclusion rooms with the door closed. Students must be monitored through a window or video camera. Seclusion rooms must be “free of injurious items” and cannot be otherwise used for storage, custodial, or office space.

Students are often placed into seclusion because of their behavior, and available data shows young students with disabilities are disproportionately secluded.

The use of seclusion has long been controversial, but it came under greater scrutiny last year when allegations surfaced about the use of seclusion rooms at a large and popular Denver middle school, McAuliffe International School. A subsequent investigation by Denver Public Schools found that McAuliffe staff placed students in seclusion without proper supervision.

English said the McAuliffe case spurred her to introduce a bill to ban seclusion. Former DPS school board member Auon’tai Anderson testified in favor of the bill Wednesday, describing the seclusion room at McAuliffe as a hidden room the size of a storage unit with locks on the window and door, and holes punched in the drywall by the students shut inside.

“It was very triggering, because it reminded me of a prison,” Anderson said in response to questions from state lawmakers. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

A 2020 Chalkbeat investigation uncovered weak state oversight of seclusion, and Colorado lawmakers in 2022 passed new limits and reporting requirements. But the new requirements don’t go into effect until June, leaving lawmakers and others with little data — and conflicting opinions from parents and school officials — about how widespread the practice is.

Administrators argue for keeping seclusion option as a ‘last resort’

Most of the testimony on Wednesday was from parents, advocates, and local school board members who supported the bill. But a handful of school district and special education administrators testified that they’d like to see changes to the proposal.

The administrators described seclusion as a “last resort,” but said it is sometimes necessary.

Amy Lloyd, the director of special programs for Harrison School District 2 in Colorado Springs, described a young girl who would disrobe and urinate and defecate on the floor.

When the girl began to take off her clothes, school staff would take her to another room, standing outside if she was throwing feces, Lloyd said. When the girl calmed down, which Lloyd said usually took 12 minutes, the staff would help the girl clean up and return to class.

Moira Coogan, a longtime Denver principal, said she’d worked with nonverbal students with autism who would try to run out of the school and toward the nearest body of water. Because seclusion is defined in Colorado law as putting a student in a room alone and blocking their egress, Coogan said she and other principals worry that banning seclusion would also prevent school staff from stopping a student from running out of the school.

“We do have instances where the behaviors are frightening and are at a place where we have to protect the student, sometimes from their own behaviors,” Coogan said.

Lloyd described the seclusion rooms in her district as small, unlocked classrooms with rubberized walls and floors to prevent students from injuring themselves. She said some rooms have comfortable bean bag chairs and sensory items to help students calm down.

But parents and advocates painted a different picture of seclusion rooms they’d seen that were the size of closets, with scratch marks running down the walls. In contrast to the 12-minute seclusion Lloyd described, parents and advocates told stories of children secluded all day, every day. One mother said the school moved her daughter’s desk into the seclusion room.

Denver school board member Michelle Quattlebaum said some students at McAuliffe International School went straight from the school bus to the seclusion room, which staff members referred to by the names of the students who used it: “‘Oh, that’s such-and-such’s room.’” Quattlebaum said school staff explained to the district that they were trying to “get ahead” of the students’ behavior “so everyone else can have a good day.”

“Colorado is better than this,” Darlene Derbigny, a school board member in East Otero School District RE-1 in La Junta, said during the hearing. “We need to do better.”

If the bill passes, Colorado would join a handful of other states that have banned seclusion, including Florida, Georgia, and Hawaii.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s universal school voucher bill draft drops. Here are 5 things that stand out.

2024-01-30T02:30:50+00:00

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Tennesseans got their first glimpse of Gov. Bill Lee’s plan to create a universal school voucher program that could eventually give all families tax dollars to pay for private school.

Two months after Lee announced his proposal, a draft of the Senate bill was inadvertently filed Monday due to a miscommunication, then removed a short time later from the legislature’s website.

Elizabeth Lane Johnson, the governor’s press secretary, said the draft’s “key pillars” are accurate, but she emphasized the document is a “framework” for ongoing discussions.

Johnson said majority leaders in the Senate and House will file so-called “caption bills” this week to outline the legislation’s intent and to meet filing deadlines. Full legislation, with updated details, will be filed later through amendments.

Here are five things that stand out about the plan, based on a Chalkbeat analysis of the eight-page draft.

No testing accountability

While the governor has repeatedly pledged to build accountability into his proposal, the draft wouldn’t require participating students to take state tests, or other assessments.

There’s no accountability provision — or mention of the word accountability — in the draft. There’s also no reporting requirements to track how students are doing, or evaluate the program.

Public school students are required to take annual TCAP tests in math, English language arts, science, and social studies. Students who participate in Tennessee’s current voucher program — which offers education savings accounts, or ESAs, to students in three counties — have to take state tests every year in math and English language arts.

The ESA program’s first test results, from Memphis and Nashville in the 2022-23 school year, were disappointing. Most of the 452 participating students performed worse than their peers in public schools after the program’s swift rollout earlier that school year, according to data from the state education department.

Lee emphasized accountability through parental choice when promoting his plan during visits last month to private schools in Memphis and Chattanooga.

Asked about the omission of testing requirements in the draft, Lee’s press secretary said the governor looks forward to having those discussions with members of the General Assembly.

No language to prohibit discrimination

The voucher movement has some roots in racist opposition to school desegregation in the mid-20th century, and critics have long charged that private schools pick and choose which students they want when accepting public funding through vouchers.

The draft legislation includes no language to prohibit discrimination based on race, creed, color, national origin, religion, disability, or sexual orientation.

Anti-discrimination language is frequently included in state laws regarding eligibility for education programs.

In fact, Tennessee’s 2019 education savings account law requires participating private schools to certify that they will “not discriminate against participating students or applicants on the basis of race, color, or national origin.”

No guarantees for students with disabilities

Private schools would not be required to provide the same level of services as public schools for students with disabilities, according to the draft.

The language says: “Although an eligible student participating in the program does not retain the right to receive special education and related services through an individualized education program, the student may be eligible under the (federal) Individuals with Disabilities Education Act … to receive equitable services through an individualized service plan.”

Essentially, parents in a private school can request some publicly funded special services, but with no guarantee of exactly what their student would receive.

By contrast, public schools are required to provide students with disabilities with specialized support and services determined collaboratively by school leaders and parents.

“In practice, what this means is that students in private schools have a lesser right to disability-related services than those in public schools, and often receive fewer, more generic accommodations and services,” said Jeff Strand, a spokesperson for the Tennessee Disability Coalition.

More private schools could participate, but not from out of state

While Tennessee’s current ESA program is open to state-approved or accredited private, independent, and parochial schools, the draft opens the door to other school categories that have little to no state oversight.

Those include church-related schools or other private schools that the state merely acknowledges are in operation.

The lack of accreditation from schools in those categories may affect a voucher student who wants to transfer back into a public school in the same grade. Public schools may require testing to determine grade level or number of credits.

The language specifies the school must be located in Tennessee, which would prevent out-of-state virtual schools from participating.

But there’s no mention of an application process for a school to participate, as the education savings account program requires.

Nor is there text to support tiny home-run schools, in which the parent must report to their local school district that their child is being home-schooled. However, church-related home schools, which typically have a minimum of 10 students, appear to qualify.

Funding for the new voucher program isn’t a sure thing

As the governor announced earlier, the program would start with up to 20,000 students statewide who would get $7,075 in taxpayer money next school year to attend a private school, or certain home schools.

Half of those students must be considered economically disadvantaged or currently participating in the ESA program. And beginning in 2025, all K-12 students would be eligible to receive vouchers, regardless of their family income.

If 20,000 students participated, it would cost the state $141.5 million a year, which would increase if the program grows in subsequent years. But the draft says any voucher disbursements would be “subject to appropriations and other available funds.”

Tennessee revenues have flattened since the 2023-24 fiscal year began last July, and financial experts have urged lawmakers to rein in spending.

Meanwhile, state lawmakers are closely watching developments in Arizona, the first state to offer universal school choice. That state is struggling to cover the costs of the universal school voucher program approved last year by its Republican-controlled legislature.

Below, you can read the draft legislation.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

NYC rolls out long-awaited school bus tracking app

2024-01-19T23:38:34+00:00

New York City is finally rolling out a long-awaited school bus GPS app citywide – four and a half years after officials first announced the plan.

The NYC School Bus App, developed in partnership with the rideshare company Via, allows caregivers of the roughly 150,000 students who ride a school bus every day to track their kids’ vehicles in real time. The sprawling school bus system, which serves tens of thousands of students with disabilities, often subjects students to hours-long rides, delays, and no-show buses. In the past, parents often had to repeatedly call bus companies to track down missing buses.

Education Department officials first announced the five-year, $36 million contract with Via in summer 2019. They said at the time the app would roll out citywide in the 2020-21 school year. Those plans were scuttled by the COVID pandemic, but even after the full return of in-person learning in fall 2021, it took two-and-a-half more years to get the app up and running citywide.

Mayor Eric Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks struck a celebratory note in a press release announcing the citywide rollout.

“I’m thrilled to be launching this system for families across the city and to provide peace of mind to parents as they send their babies off to school each day,” Banks said.

Lori Podvesker, a parent and director of disability and education policy at IncludeNYC, said launching the bus-tracking app was long overdue.

She often relies on text messages with a bus attendant to get a heads-up on when her son, Jack, will be picked up and dropped off each day from his District 75 program, which serves students with more significant disabilities.

“Knowing that I can access this information helps build trust,” Podvesker said.

She recalled an incident several years ago when Jack’s bus didn’t turn up and she frantically called the bus company, which didn’t answer the phone. When Podvesker called the Education Department’s transportation office, she was placed on hold.

“It is so nerve-wracking — especially as a parent of a kid with intellectual disabilities who’s nonverbal. You just freak out,” she said.

One Staten Island parent in 2021 resorted to slapping an Airtag on her elementary school daughter in lieu of working GPS on the school bus.

Podvesker welcomes the new app, but she wasn’t sure if it’s working yet for her son’s bus route, which ferries him from Downtown Brooklyn to the Lower East Side. When she logged into the app on Friday, a page came up that said, “No activity so far. We hope to see you soon!”

Still, she noted her son was already off the bus when she checked.

Indeed, officials’ claims of a full citywide rollout come with several big caveats.

First, the app only works if drivers sign up for the program – and currently about 25% of the city’s bus drivers aren’t signed up, according to officials. In the press release, officials advised caregivers whose kids’ drivers aren’t subscribed to contact the bus company and ask them to help.

An Education Department spokesperson said drivers are required to sign up and can be fined if they don’t. Use of the app was a part of the protracted contract negotiations with the city’s largest school bus drivers union that threatened to throw the school bus system into chaos last fall, the spokesperson added. While negotiations were underway, union drivers were instructed not to use the app, delaying the rollout, the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181, the city’s largest school bus drivers union, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Another obstacle for many families is that the app requires a New York City Schools Account, or NYCSA. Roughly a third of the city’s public school families weren’t linked to an account as of summer 2023. And for the tens of thousands of charter and private school students who also ride city school buses, signing up for a NYCSA is difficult or impossible, parents and advocates said.

A 2022 Education Department manual said private school students are “ineligible” for the accounts, and that charter school students can get one but have to go through a more onerous process.

Manhattan parent Naomi Peña said she lost access to her NYCSA when her son transferred to a private school because the Education Department couldn’t accommodate his learning disability. Her son still relies on city school buses, but she can’t access the new app.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” she said. “When busing routes get switched … we are left scrambling waiting for the new bus driver or matron to call us.”

An Education Department spokesperson said the agency is working with individual charter and private schools to give families access to NYCSA logins.

The bus tracking app is also supposed to have a feature that allows school administrators to track the buses of their students.

The school bus tracking app is the Education Department’s second recent high-profile foray into developing software to support families. The agency recently released its own grades, attendance and messaging app, following a catastrophic hack of Skedula, a widely used online gradebook run by an outside vendor.

To allay concerns about privacy, officials said they will “share the minimum required data, will require highly secure logins for all users, and will perform data encryption and continuous security testing on the system.”

The Via app also isn’t the city’s first attempt to equip school buses with GPS. A City Council bill from 2019 required the Education Department to install location tracking technology in all city school buses by that September – a deadline council members said they didn’t meet.

And, of course, even if the new app works seamlessly and makes it into the hands of every parent, it won’t address the many other problems plaguing the sprawling school bus system, including frequent delays and no-shows, buses without air conditioning, and an ongoing shortage of drivers and bus attendants.

“It wouldn’t necessarily make the routes shorter,” said Sara Catalinotto a long-time transportation advocate and head of the group Parents to Improve School Transportation. “But at least people wouldn’t come out into the cold to wait.”

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC says it won’t move forward with tens of millions in cuts to District 75 schools

2024-01-11T22:27:06+00:00

New York City’s Education Department is pledging not to move forward with tens of millions of dollars in budget cuts to District 75 programs for students with significant disabilities – but school staffers say they’re still getting mixed messages about the cuts.

Staffers at multiple District 75 schools said last month that their principals were instructed to cut $1 million or more from their budgets as part of citywide budget cuts ordered by Mayor Eric Adams. The planned cuts totaled roughly $97 million across the district and would have forced schools to slash spending on extracurriculars, supplies, and paraprofessionals, people familiar with the discussions said.

Following an outcry from school staffers, parents, and advocates over the planned cuts, Education Department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said earlier this week “we can confirm that there are no school-based cuts happening to D75.”

Another Education Department spokesperson denied that there was a “change in course” and insisted that District 75 schools were simply asked to review their budgets to ensure they aligned with enrollment, a “recurring practice for all schools.”

“We are working with district leadership to ensure this understanding is clear for all principals,” the spokesperson added.

But school staffers said they are still getting conflicting messages, and news of the reversal hasn’t yet trickled down to some schools.

Jo Macellaro, a teacher and union chapter leader at P.S. 186X in the Bronx, the city’s largest District 75 program, said the school’s principal is “under the impression that they are still happening.” The principal didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Another District 75 administrator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the reversal of the cuts has not been communicated to their school either.

Tameka Solomon, the chapter leader at P.S. 352X, another Bronx District 75 program, meanwhile, heard from her principal that the cuts are “on hold.”

The vague communication and confusion surrounding the cuts has left some worried that District 75 school budgets could still be vulnerable.

“In this top-down approach to school governance, there is very little that trickles down to actual schools,” said Paullette Healy, a parent of a District 75 student and long-time advocate. “Until I see it in writing, I still believe our students with disabilities are in jeopardy of losing their services because of these cuts.”

From the start, the specifics of the cuts have been mired in confusion.

In budget documents released in November, only $3 million a year in cuts was listed for District 75.

But staffers at four schools subsequently told Chalkbeat that their administrators were instructed by the district leaders to make far steeper cuts, effective immediately. The staffers added that their schools are not normally subject to big mid-year cuts, and pointed out that enrollment is up across the district.

The $97 million figure was communicated by District 75 Superintendent Ketler Louissaint in a meeting with principals, according to people familiar with the discussions.

News of the cuts drew outrage from staffers, parents and advocates.

One administrator warned that cuts to the school’s paraprofessional budget could pose safety risks for students with autism who are prone to run out of classrooms and buildings with no notice and need full-time monitoring by dedicated aides. That risk was underscored last week when an 11-year-old boy with autism ran out of his District 75 school in downtown Brooklyn and managed to board a train to Long Island. He was found four hours later unharmed.

Some advocates said the Education Department’s commitment not to enact District 75 school cuts was a positive step.

“We are relieved that what was rumored around cuts to the district serving those students isn’t currently in the cards and that, for now, the expertise the district offers should remain intact,” said Maggie Moroff, the senior special education policy coordinator for Advocates for Children. “Hard times can’t be an excuse for cutting services to those students who need support the most.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s District 75 schools for students with disabilities brace for tens of millions in cuts

2023-12-20T15:25:29+00:00

New York City’s Education Department has quietly been asking leaders of District 75 schools serving students with complex disabilities to slash tens of millions of dollars from their budgets, according to staffers at multiple schools.

The cuts, relayed to principals by schools Chancellor David Banks and District 75 superintendent Ketler Louissant, amount in many cases to more than $1 million per school, and are supposed to take effect immediately, according to staff from multiple affected schools. Across the district, they total about $97 million, and are supposed to help the Education Department achieve savings ordered by Mayor Eric Adams, people familiar with the discussions said.

The cuts would gut extracurricular programming, thin out supply budgets, and exacerbate an already severe paraprofessional shortage, potentially pushing schools even further out of compliance with students’ legally binding special education plans, staffers from four District 75 schools told Chalkbeat.

The roughly 26,000 students in District 75 often have complex disabilities that their local public schools are unable to accommodate, ranging from cerebral palsy to acute emotional challenges.

“They’re asking every principal in District 75 to cut close to $1 million from their budgets,” said a District 75 administrator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “There will be no paper or ink for the printers … children that are emotionally disturbed, autistic, will not be able to get a paraprofessional.”

Education Department officials didn’t confirm the amount of the cuts. But department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said, “We are in a fiscal crisis, and we are taking every action necessary to limit impact on schools.”

District 75 schools are undergoing a normal process of “reconcil[ing] enrollment with the number of classes needed to serve students,” he said. “Additionally, we are identifying vacancies, efficiencies, and underspending that can be used to meet the mayor’s savings target.”

But staff at District 75 schools said the steep midyear cuts are not typical. District 75 schools don’t get money through the Fair Student Funding formula used for other public schools and aren’t normally subject to “midyear adjustments” that require schools to give back money part way through the year if their enrollments are lower than projected, staffers said.

Moreover, the district’s enrollment has actually gone up in recent years, even as student numbers have cratered in much of the rest of the city. Enrollment in District 75 rose 3% between 2018-2019 and last school year, while K-12 schools lost 13% of their students citywide during the same period.

“We have so many students with referrals waiting for a new seat,” said Tameka Solomon, a teacher and union chapter leader at P352X in the Bronx.

District 75 cuts are larger than anticipated

The cuts far exceed what was outlined in the city’s November budget plan, which listed “savings” of $3 million a year in District 75 because of “lower than expected spending.” When City Councilmember Alexa Avilés, of Brooklyn, asked about a $97 million cut to District 75 during an oversight hearing last week, Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget Director Jacques Jiha pointed only to the $3 million cut outlined in budget documents.

But behind the scenes, the message from Education Department officials has been much different, educators said.

Solomon’s principal was asked to cut $1.3 million from the school’s budget, though subsequently the principal said the cut was on hold, she said.

The Bronx’s P186X, which is the city’s largest District 75 program with nearly 700 students, is also facing a $1.3 million midyear cut, according to teacher and chapter leader Jo Macellaro.

Many District 75 schools have already begun trimming overtime budgets that pay teachers to staff extracurricular programs and budgets for supplies, multiple staffers said. Those cuts are less painful than eliminating staff positions, but they still affect kids, staffers said.

“Even during COVID we always had an afterschool program, and now it’s like, ‘Don’t even think about it,’”said Allister Johnson, an adaptive physical education teacher and union chapter leader at a District 75 school.

“A lot of learning took place,” in the extracurricular programs, he added. “It’s sad for the kids and for the parents.”

Concerns grow over paraprofessional shortage

Reducing overtime and supplies budgets won’t be enough to achieve the required savings, however. Schools will likely have to slash the budgets for paraprofessionals, teaching assistants who provide extra support for students with the greatest needs, staffers said.

District 75 schools have already been experiencing a severe paraprofessional shortage.

The number of paraprofessionals working in city schools fell from roughly 25,700 in June 2020 to about 21,800 in November 2021, according to the state comptroller, a drop of roughly 15%.

As a result, many students with significant disabilities whose special education plans require a dedicated, one-to-one paraprofessional go without one, staffers said.

P186X is already short at least 30 paraprofessionals, according to Macellaro. On some days, one paraprofessional has to change the diapers of a dozen middle school students alone.

“People are getting injured. It’s already really not a good situation. And honestly we’re already rationing things like wipes,” Macellaro added.

Solomon’s school has largely been relying on substitute paraprofessionals. It’s better than nothing, but it often means investing extra time training people who may have never worked with kids, and less continuity for students who have to work with a rotating array of paraprofessionals, she said.

Further cutting the already diminished paraprofessional pool could have disastrous consequences, staffers said.

The District 75 administrator said their school has a number of students with autism who will attempt to run out of their classrooms and the school building with no warning. “Think about what’s going to happen” when those students don’t have a dedicated paraprofessional to follow them throughout the day, the administrator said.

An Education Department spokesperson acknowledged there is a paraprofessional shortage, but attributed it to “lack of talent,” not “lack of funds.”

The budget cuts laid out in November, which amount to 5% from each agency, include roughly $550 million from the Education Department. Additional 5% cuts are expected in January and again in the spring.

Among the Education Department cuts are $10 million from the community schools program, which pairs schools with community organizations to provide additional services to families, and $20 million from the city’s free summer school program.

But the cuts to District 75 appear to be the deepest so far to individual school budgets — a fact that’s baffled the District 75 administrator: “How do you justify asking the most vulnerable children in the city to go without?”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Perry school opens a sensory room with space for students to wind down — or amp up

2023-12-13T12:00:00+00:00

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The first thing a student might notice in Burkhart Elementary School’s new sensory room is the light tube. Or maybe the slide. Or the trampoline and crash mat.

There are magnetic tiles on a wall to the right and scooter boards all over the floor.

The room invites play, but it also serves a purpose: To help students calm down — or wake up — and get ready to learn.

“It’s such a cool opportunity, because there’s not a child in the school who couldn’t benefit from it,” said Brooke McDonald, the school’s occupational therapist who supervises the room.

The sensory room at Burkhart opened last week thanks to a $9,000 grant from the Perry Education Foundation. It’s a first for the school and only the second such space in Perry Township elementary schools, said the foundation’s president, Mary Blake.

In addition to funding the project, foundation representatives assembled the furnishings, painted the room teal blue, and dimmed the overhead lights with fabric hangings.

The sensory room at Burkhart Elementary is open to all students who need it for a few minutes at a time.

It’s open to all students who need it for a few minutes at a time, said McDonald, who also trains classroom teachers to determine which students might benefit from a break in the room. Only a few students at a time will use the room.

It will also serve as an important space for students in the Comprehensive Intervention Program, the self-contained special education program. Two of these classrooms opened at Burkhart this year after Perry redrew its attendance boundaries.

What each student needs from the sensory room will vary.

CIP teacher Ailis McCarthy said her students who get overwhelmed with noise and activity benefit from spending a few quiet minutes in the room in the dim light or watching the bubble tower. After that, they’re able to rejoin the group for their regular activities, she said.

Before the sensory room opened, McCarthy’s students would try to take these breaks in her classroom — which can be distracting to others, she said.

“We make sure they have regular time in their schedule to decompress or bring them up, depending on what they need, and that room has enough activity that they could do both,” McCarthy said.

The sensory room will serve as an important space for students in the Comprehensive Intervention Program, the self-contained special education program.

McDonald said some students may use it as a space to calm down at the end of the day, do movement exercises, and watch the bubbles in the light tube. Others may jump on the trampoline or rock on the soft foam spinners to burn some energy and regulate their emotional state ahead of a lesson.

“All of that is good for your body, and they have no idea,” McDonald said. “They just think, ‘I’m playing on the slide.’”

The district hopes to open sensory rooms at each of its elementary schools, said Vickie Carpenter, assistant superintendent for foundational learning.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Advocates demanded $1.25 billion to make NYC schools more accessible. They got $800 million.

2023-11-01T22:14:41+00:00

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New York City plans to spend $800 million over the next five years to boost school building accessibility for people with physical disabilities, officials revealed Wednesday. That figure is far short of what advocates had demanded.

Fewer than 1 in 3 of the city’s public schools are fully accessible to students and staff with mobility impairments, according to a recent report from the group Advocates for Children. The organization previously called on the city to dramatically ramp up spending to $1.25 billion to ensure that at least half of buildings would become fully accessible over the term of the new capital plan, which runs from 2025 through 2029.

With many budget concerns on the horizon — including the expiration of billions of dollars in federal relief money and additional cuts to city agencies ordered by Mayor Eric Adams — accessibility funding hewed closely to current levels.

The capital plan will increase funding for accessibility from $750 million under the current five-year plan, which runs from 2020 through 2024, to $800 million in the new one, according to documents released Wednesday. Advocates contend that is not enough to keep the current pace because of inflation and rising construction costs.

“Given the decades of inadequate attention that preceded this investment, nearly two-thirds of City schools will still not be fully accessible by the time the construction funded by the current Capital Plan is complete,” Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, said in a statement. “It is not acceptable to postpone compliance with [the federal Americans with Disabilities Act] for yet another generation.”

Lack of access to school buildings has long been a barrier for students with physical disabilities and has even drawn the attention of federal prosecutors. In past years, some children had few — or even zero — nearby school options. It can also limit students’ ability to take advantage of New York City’s extensive choice system, which allows children to apply for schools outside their neighborhood boundaries.

Queens mom Michelle Noris said she was disappointed when her son, who uses a wheelchair, could not attend the public elementary school across the street from their home. Instead, he wound up at a private school, with tuition covered by the city, about an hour away.

“I really wish he had friends down the block like all the other kids,” said Noris, who works as an engineer. Though her son is now in college — and has written about his experience navigating the city’s high school admissions process in a wheelchair — she remains an advocate for more accessible schools.

Although “there is an improvement” in terms of building upgrades, she said the school across the street from their home is still not fully accessible. At the current pace, it would take decades to make every school accessible. “They need to allocate more money to do more good work,” Noris said.

Officials have made some progress in recent years in part due to pressure from advocacy groups who have pushed for more funding — and attention — to the issue. By the end of the current capital plan, 1 in 3 schools are expected to be fully accessible, up from 1 in 5 five years ago. (The figures do not include certain alternative schools, prekindergarten programs, or charter schools. Nor do they include satellite campuses, as schools may have more than one location.)

The city has also boosted the number of schools that are considered “partially accessible” and worked to provide more granular information about which facilities on those campuses are accessible to students with mobility impairments.

Representatives of the city’s Education Department and School Construction Authority did not say what percentage of schools they plan to make fully accessible under the new capital plan.

“Building on prior plans, we will continue to enhance accessibility in our school buildings through a variety of measures, such as bathroom renovations, lifts, and ramps,” Kevin Ortiz, a spokesperson for the School Construction Authority, wrote in a statement. “We remain committed to improving access throughout the system.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC families push for special education open houses as high school admissions season heats up

2023-10-31T19:24:47+00:00

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Manhattan dad Tom Fiorella wanted a public high school that could challenge his child and accommodate learning disabilities. He spent countless hours scouring websites, attending open houses, and emailing parent coordinators in search of answers.

Does the school integrate students with disabilities alongside typically developing children in classes at all grade levels? Is support available for students who could handle advanced coursework but, like his child, also have a language-based learning disability? Would the environment feel welcoming?

“It’s complex – it’s a lot of work,” said Fiorella, whose child began ninth grade this year. “It was hard to get solid information.”

Now, a group of parent advocates is pushing for more high schools to offer open houses specifically geared toward students with disabilities. They’ve sent a flurry of messages to school leaders to persuade them to roll out the information sessions more widely.

That advocacy effort, which began last year, is already starting to bear fruit, said Jenn Choi, a special education advocate who created an email template and encouraged parents to send it to school leaders and superintendents.

The Brooklyn North high school superintendent has required all of the 47 campuses under her supervision to offer special education information sessions. And two other district leaders have been receptive or encouraged principals to offer them, including those who represent Queens North as well as the superintendent responsible for schools that use alternate graduation assessments, international schools serving recently arrived immigrants, and Outward Bound schools, messages sent to parents show.

Open houses are an important way for families to narrow down which 12 high schools to list on their application out of more than 400 options. All families, including those with disabilities, are welcome to attend those sessions. But parents and advocates say the traditional open houses may fill up quickly, gloss over special education, or wind up with little time for families to ask questions about whether the school is prepared to offer the services their child needs.

The city’s online high school directory makes it simple to filter schools by a wide range of categories — from sports teams to uniform requirements. Still, clear information about what types of special education classes are typically offered, what types of therapists are on staff, and even information about school building accessibility for those with mobility issues can be difficult to come by. Officials have improved access to information about physical building accessibility in recent years.

Using the city’s directory, “a parent can find the 30 high schools with girls’ golf teams in NYC in under 8 seconds,” Choi wrote in a guide for school leaders who want to offer special education open houses. If a parent wants to find schools that regularly provide a certain type of special education class, “they will have to pick up the phone and start calling over 500 schools, one school at a time.”

Although some schools have offered special education open houses for years, it’s unclear how common they are. An Education Department spokesperson could not say how many schools offer them now or in recent years.

Choi, who runs a special education consulting business and also navigated the admissions process as a parent of two children with disabilities, said they are relatively rare. Requiring all schools to offer them would help make the high school process friendlier to students with disabilities, she argues. Plus, they can serve an important accountability purpose, as school officials may commit to providing a range of services during the sessions.

“Parents are going to expect that promises are going to be kept,” Choi said. “And that’s how change happens.”

Even as some schools are embracing special education open houses, it can still be tricky to find basic information about them. For some schools, the city’s centralized directory lists whether a school offers such a session. In other cases, that information appears to be missing and individual school websites don’t always list them.

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein emphasized that “open houses are organized at the school level” and did not indicate whether the city would consider requiring all high schools to offer them. She also did not respond to a question about how families can find out about them given some of the inconsistencies in where they’re posted.

Maggie Moroff, a special education policy expert at Advocates for Children, said she felt torn about special education open houses. In an ideal world, information about specialized services should be woven into traditional sessions, she said, though that can be a challenge.

“You don’t want it to be siloed, but you want to make sure the right attention gets paid” to students with disabilities, Moroff said, adding that in practice she supports more special education open houses.

Specialized open houses can also make it more difficult for schools to hide that they’re not actually set up to support students with a variety of news, advocates said.

“You can have a school that can check off all the right boxes on paper,” Moroff said, “but when a family gets there, the way they are welcomed is quite different. You can glean a lot from that.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Dyslexia support proposals are back in the Michigan Legislature

2023-10-18T15:17:20+00:00

Four bills introduced in the Michigan Legislature this month would aim to better identify and teach students with dyslexia, and jumpstart reform initiatives that have stalled in the past.

The new legislation comes with bipartisan support and follows years of failed efforts to better address dyslexia in school — most recently last year, when a package of bills calling for better screening of students for dyslexia languished in the Legislature.

Dyslexia is a hereditary reading disability that affects an estimated 5% to 20% of people. Students with dyslexia who go undiagnosed and don’t receive interventions are more likely to struggle in school, and studies show most people with the learning disability who get high-quality instruction early on will become average readers.

“We have to do something about it now,” said Rep. Kathy Schmaltz, a Republican from Jackson who introduced one of the bills. “When we know how to fix something and we’re not doing it, that’s on us, and our children shouldn’t have to suffer because we can’t get it together.”

The legislation includes two bills in the House and two in the Senate. All four were referred to their respective education committees. Here’s what they would do:

A bill introduced by Sen. Jeff Irwin, a Democrat from Ann Arbor, would tighten the state standards for the literacy screeners schools use to ensure that they can identify a student who has dyslexia or has difficulty decoding language. The bill also aims to provide evidence-based support early on for students who are identified as having a reading disability.
Sen. Dayna Polehanki, a Democrat who represents parts of Canton and Livonia, introduced a bill that would set standards for teacher education programs to ensure future educators have the tools to help students with dyslexia.
In the House, Rep. Carol Glanville, a Democrat from Grand Rapids, introduced legislation that would create a dyslexia resource guide and advisory committee in the Michigan Department of Education.
Schmaltz’ House bill would require school districts to have at least one teacher trained in Orton-Gillingham, a multisensory teaching methodology that research suggests helps students with dyslexia.

Rep. Mike McFall, co-sponsor of Schmaltz’ bill, said the additional resources will give teachers “more tools to ensure positive student outcomes and educational growth.”

Lawmakers who back the bill say the measures would help students who have difficulty reading and processing language due to dyslexia. But some advocates disagree, citing Michigan’s restrictive parameters for determining whether schoolchildren are eligible for special education.

The percentage of students in the state identified as having a specific learning disability, which includes students who schools identify as having dyslexia, decreased from 35% in 2013-14 to 25.9% in 2022-23, according to data from the Michigan Center for Educational Performance and Information. Nationally, the number went up during the same time period, aside from a dip during COVID.

“It is meaningless if they don’t incorporate changes to the criteria for determining specific learning disabilities,” said Marcie Lipsitt, a special education advocate.

Lipsitt also said requiring schools to have one teacher trained in Orton-Gillingham methodology presents its own challenges.

“To say you’re training Orton-Gillingham, does that mean the teacher does four hours of training and then they are considered the Orton-Gillingham teacher?” she said.

Hannah Dellinger is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 education. Contact Hannah at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit students indulge their curiosity about nature in place-based lesson at Belle Isle

2023-10-16T20:13:23+00:00

As dozens of koi swam around a pond, a group of Detroit elementary and middle school students let out a chorus of oohs and aahs. Up close, the carp were dazzling — some with orange and white patterns, others painted yellow and with black spots.

Peeking over the metal railing along the koi pond, the students peppered their instructor with questions.

“What do they eat?”

“How long do they live for?”

“How do fish get pregnant?”

Kids can get awfully curious in the presence of nature. And that was the point of this exercise on a cloudy October morning, far away from the classroom.

The students were taking part in a weeklong lesson at Detroit’s Belle Isle Aquarium and Nature Center designed to help them investigate the natural wonders at the city park.

Koi swim in a pond at the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory on Detroit’s Belle Isle.

At a time when school leaders are grappling with the academic and emotional repercussions of the pandemic and waning engagement in the classroom, more educators are embracing immersive place-based learning as a way to capture the interests and curiosity of their students.

The case for nature- and place-based learning is growing, with more research arguing that such opportunities can provide students with a host of positive outcomes, such as increased motivation, improved critical thinking, and stronger student-teacher relationships.

In Detroit, former Michigan Teacher of the Year June Teisan has been working with the Detroit Public Schools Community District over the past year to provide students with hearing disabilities the opportunity to visit and explore Belle Isle, a vast island park that many young Detroit residents consider inhospitable or inaccessible.

Every day over the past two weeks, students in grades 1-8 from Detroit’s Bunche Preparatory Academy were bused to Belle Isle for the field trips.

“So many of us just take for granted having access to nature, and the mental and physical health benefits of understanding the outdoors,” said Teisan, a retired teacher and founder of the nonprofit InnovatED (313).

“Not everybody’s going to love bugs like I did, or not everybody’s going to enjoy reading a book here and there,” Teisan said. “But connecting with (students) and understanding more about them and saying, ‘How can I meet the needs, the interests and the passions that you bring with you?’ is important.”

The field trips take inspiration from the Big Lesson, a similar program started by fellow Teacher of the Year Margaret Holtschlag that serves students across mid-Michigan.

InnovatED (313) founder June Teisan (middle) speaks to a group of students at the Belle Isle Aquarium in Detroit as a sign-language interpreter translates her questions.

Outside learning piques student curiosity

That day at Belle Isle, students armed with a magnifying glass, a plastic spoon, and a pipette began to inspect Petri dishes full of water collected from the nearby marina. Almost immediately, they discovered mayflies and dragonflies.

“This is what ducks and fish are digging for. This is what they eat,” said Amy Emmert, director of education at the Belle Isle Conservatory and the instructor for the week’s lessons.

The lesson was exciting for eighth grader Husam Alnsiwi, who hopes to one day become a scientist.

“I know there’s writing involved, but I want to study chemistry and learn about real things and experimenting,” he said.

The students are accompanied by a classroom teacher and a group of sign-language interpreters. Teachers say the weeklong lesson is an important opportunity to expose students to what’s available in their own community and include them in activities that often are not tailored to their needs.

“Our teachers have said that this helps them,” Teisan said. “When kids are this excited, you can more easily say, ‘Now let’s write some of these words together. Let’s compose sentences about what our experience was.’’’

Teisan balanced trips with test prep

Teisan, who describes herself as “the kid who laid on her stomach and on the sidewalk looking at ants and chewing on bubblegum,” turned her early curiosities into a lifelong commitment to increasing youth interest in the sciences.

“I had the best job because I had the most toys,” she said of her 27-year tenure as a science teacher in Harper Woods, a city on the northeast border of Detroit.

In her role as an educator, she bridged the gaps between her students and the surrounding community, whether conducting history lessons inside the Detroit Institute of Arts or accompanying experts from the Audubon Society for bird-watching expeditions.

“Teachers are the ones I think who can build those connections when we’re not so busy doing standardized test prep,” Teisan said. “I caught a lot of flak from some administrators because I was not as into test prep, but what I was into is connecting with students and making learning engaging and tied to more of their interests.”

Detroit elementary and middle school students pose for a picture in between science lessons at Belle Isle Aquarium.

Later that day, students got out their black-and-white journals and began to take notes on the creatures they saw at the aquarium, sitting down in front of the animal of their choice to draw a picture and write down their observations.

With hundreds of species to pick from, Husam chose to write about the clownfish and blue hippo tang, a pair made famous by the lead characters in the Pixar film “Finding Nemo.”

“I imagined I was one of them. I feel like I’m really popular,” he said. “I’m in the movies, so you know who I am.”

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

Tenn. study on rejecting federal education funds has ‘no predetermined outcome,’ leader says

2023-10-05T14:50:17+00:00

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A leader of the group of lawmakers exploring whether Tennessee can feasibly reject nearly $1.9 billion in federal education funding says that the panel’s work will begin in early November, and that its findings — not politics — will guide its recommendations.

“There is no predetermined outcome for this working group, or for what the information we gather is going to show,” Sen. Jon Lundberg, a co-chair of the panel, said Wednesday.

“We want to look at what federal education money we get, where it goes, what we’re required to do to get those funds, and ultimately what’s the return on the investment,” the Bristol Republican told Chalkbeat. “I think this will give us a good overview.”

Lundberg, who also chairs the Senate Education Committee, was responding to criticism from Democrats that Republicans are seeking to undermine public education, cater to charter and private school interests, and advance the political aspirations of House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Crossville Republican and likely candidate for governor in 2026.

In February, Sexton said Tennessee should consider forgoing U.S. education dollars to free schools from federal rules and regulations, and should make up the difference with state funding. On Sept. 22, he and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, an Oak Ridge Republican, appointed eight Republicans and two Democrats to the working group to look into the idea and report back by Jan. 9, when the General Assembly convenes a new session.

Most of the federal money the state receives supports low-income students, English language learners, and students with disabilities. Tennessee school districts that are most reliant on U.S. dollars tend to be rural, and have more low-income and disabled students, less capacity for local revenue, and lower test scores in English language arts, according to a recent report from the Sycamore Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

Sen. Jon Lundberg

On Thursday, Lundberg and co-chair Debra Moody, a Covington Republican who chairs a House education committee, released the panel’s schedule showing five days of meetings in November, with the kickoff meeting on Nov. 6.

If the committee finds ways for the state to feasibly wean itself from federal education money that Tennesseans help generate through their taxes, Lundberg expects legislation to come out of its work. But he acknowledged that state revenue collections have lagged in recent months, potentially making it harder to cut the cord.

“Revenues are a valid concern, but that’s not our charge at this point,” he said. “We just want to do a deep dive on where we stand.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bo Watson warned lawmakers in August that Tennessee likely will need to begin curbing state spending. But on Wednesday, he endorsed the panel’s task.

“I think it’s premature to say whether there will be budget constraints,” said the Hixson Republican. “Evaluating our programs and our funding is always a healthy exercise.”

Even if officials decide the state can afford to pass on federal funds, JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, questions whether it could effectively manage resources designed to support underserved communities and ensure equal access to education.

He cites the Achievement School District as one example of poor oversight for a state-run program intended to serve students attending low-performing schools. The turnaround district took over dozens of neighborhood schools beginning in 2012, mostly in Memphis, and turned many of them over to charter operators. But it has had few successes to show for its decade of work.

Lundberg said that example shouldn’t stop the state from investigating the possibility.

“Do I trust the state more than the federal government? Absolutely,” Lundberg said. “I think that government that operates closest to the people is the best government.”

Gov. Bill Lee has said he’s open to the idea and denounced what he called “excessive overreach” by the federal government. However, he didn’t give specific examples on education when answering questions from reporters last week.

Advocates for historically underserved student populations say federal oversight is needed to ensure that the state and local districts adequately provide for every student and school.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats pointed out that the federal government provided nearly $30 million last year to public schools in Cumberland County, which Sexton represents. That’s 44% of the East Tennessee district’s budget. Three school districts in Anderson County, where McNally lives, received $31 million in U.S. funds, which covered 32% of their budgets.

You can look up exactly how much federal education funding is on the line for every Tennessee county.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information about the panel’s meeting schedule.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools won’t bus general education students for the rest of the semester

2023-09-27T19:41:03+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools won’t provide busing to general education students for the rest of the semester, officials said Tuesday.

District officials informed families of the decision Tuesday morning, said Charles Mayfield, CPS’ chief operating officer.

“We really wanted to give parents an early notice to let them know that you don’t have to come back and keep asking and hoping,” Mayfield said.

Mayfield said district officials will re-evaluate the decision in December before winter break and update families then on the state of transportation service.

Blaming a driver shortage, CPS has restricted bus transportation this year to students with disabilities and those who are living in temporary housing, groups that are legally entitled to transportation. District officials say they have just 681 drivers — similar to figures last month and half of what they need, Mayfield said.

At the start of the school year, Mayfield said the district would try to provide busing to more children if it could hire more drivers, but the needle hasn’t moved on new hires since August.

“We’re continuing to do more outreach,” Mayfield said.

Over the past year, the district has hosted roughly two dozen hiring fairs, raised driver pay rates by $2, to $22 to $27 an hour, and added more bus companies in an effort to ease the driver shortage, officials said. Mayfield said it may be too soon to try new strategies, given that boosting hiring can take a while, and some of the steps, such as increasing pay, went into effect only recently.

The limited bus routes have enraged many families of general education students who have relied on busing in the past, including those in magnet and gifted programs, and they have expressed their concerns at Board of Education meetings. These families are eligible for free CTA cards, including a companion pass for parents. But of the roughly 5,500 children who are eligible, just under 1,600 have used that option, Mayfield said. (The district mistakenly said in July that 8,000 students were eligible.)

Some parents of young children have said they can’t send their kids alone on buses or trains and also can’t accompany their children because of their work schedules.

Alexis Luna said the lack of transportation could force her to keep her third-grade daughter out of school occasionally. Because of Luna’s inflexible work schedule, the girl’s father usually drives her to Inter-American Elementary Magnet School in Wrigleyville in the morning, about 45 minutes from her Belmont Cragin home. Luna typically picks her up.

But if her father has to travel out of town for work, Luna won’t be able to cover the morning drop-off. In that case, Luna said, “I will have to put her in day care, and she’s probably going to have to miss school.”

Tuesday’s decision comes in the middle of the district’s school application season, during which families apply for gifted and magnet programs. The application period ends in November.

Last year, bus transportation was available to any eligible student. But the district has struggled since 2021 to provide timely and reliable service. For example, thousands of students with disabilities last year had commutes longer than an hour — a problem the district has nearly eliminated this year as it has restricted bus service.

Currently, the district is providing bus service to 7,300 students who have disabilities or live in temporary housing. It has also offered stipends to families of these students who prefer other modes of transportation. The first round of those are expected to be mailed out this week.

As of last Friday, 324 students with disabilities were waiting for routes, Mayfield said, adding that new requests continue to come in.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools shows off training program for students with disabilities — and considers opening more

2023-09-25T22:20:04+00:00

Mary Fahey Hughes, a member of Chicago’s Board of Education, went into mom mode Monday during a tour of her son’s former South Side school, which provides work and life skills training to older students with disabilities.

Standing to the side of a horticulture classroom at Southside Occupational Academy High School, Hughes smiled as she snapped photos of Aidan next to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was also on the tour. Aidan has come far from when he was diagnosed with autism as a child — and Hughes was unsure what his future would look like, she said.

She credits the Englewood school — from which Aidan graduated in June — with giving him the confidence to chat up the mayor and show off his alma mater.

“He just gained so much independence,” Hughes said in a hallway at Southside. “The thing I love about this place is there is so much respect for students where they’re at.”

Chicago Public Schools officials are considering expanding the model at Southside and a handful of other so-called specialty schools, which are meant to help students with more challenging disabilities transition into the real world, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said Monday.

Monday’s tour was the district’s opportunity to show off the model to Johnson and a slew of other city and district officials. If the district decides to grow the program, it would need to lobby the state for more funding, Martinez said.

“We’re having the conversation internally about, how do we look at these programs, build on their strengths and potentially expand them,” Martinez said.

The district has seven specialty schools that together enroll about 1,800 students with mild to moderate cognitive disabilities, said Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Three schools are early childhood programs that serve younger students with disabilities. The remaining four — including Southside — are for older students and have a focus on vocational and life skills.

Unlike traditional high schools, the district assigns students to these schools, Barragan said.

Some students with disabilities who look for work after graduation may benefit more from going through a specialty program first, Martinez said. He believes the need is enough to warrant doubling the number of specialty schools.

Other districts, such as New York City, have similar programs where students with disabilities learn vocational skills.

These programs, however, have drawn some criticism for segregating students with disabilities, instead of allowing students to build skills next to peers who don’t have a diagnosed disability.

Southside Principal Joshua Long has said his school model allows students to have the specialized attention they need.

At Southside, nearly 88% of students came from low-income families last year. Asked if schools like Southside limit students to low-paying jobs, Hughes said the programs hone skills that these young adults may otherwise miss out on, potentially leaving them stuck at home without work. Hughes noted that the schools serve students with a variety of strengths, and some graduates go on to community college.

“The problem is that a lot of jobs are low-paying, despite the amount of work that needs to get done,” Hughes said.

High school students can attend Vaughn Occupational High School and Northside Learning Center High School, both on the Northwest Side. Southside, in Englewood, and Ray Graham Training Center, in the South Loop, serve students who have met graduation requirements but still need “transition supports and services,” as determined by the team that creates their Individualized Education Program, according to the district. At these two schools, students are typically ages 18-22.

At Southside, where 360 students enrolled last year, students learn about various potential jobs and responsibilities they will need in the real world. Most students are exposed to every class, and some do internships, such as with the Museum of Science and Industry, said Kristen Dimas, a teacher at the school.

Long led the mayor and other officials through several different rooms that simulate a different career or life responsibility. Among the classrooms they saw were a horticulture class, a mock grocery store, a broadcast studio with a green screen, a garage where students learn to wash cars, and a café — complete with a bakery display case.

A group of students stopped by the horticulture room to ask if they had laundry. They would eventually go to the laundry room, where they learn how to wash clothes but also learn a mental checklist on basic hygiene.

“Smell your armpits. Do they smell fresh?” said a laminated list in the laundry room. “If not, put on deodorant.”

In a supply room, where a laminated document listed rules for folding a T-shirt, a student carefully practiced folding. Long gently asked her to get the mayor’s T-shirt size, but the student was shy. The mayor, who used to be a teacher, ultimately revealed he’s an extra large.

Mayor Brandon Johnson watches a student practice folding a T-shirt at Southside Occupational Academy High School in Englewood.

“But here’s the thing — you don’t have to tell everybody that,” he said to the student, who laughed and handed him a T-shirt.

The café and laundry classes are favorites of 18-year-old Josiah Hall, who enrolled at Southside in August. He especially enjoys spending time with the teachers, he said. He hopes to attend a four-year university, such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The school works to help students understand the career options that are right for them and to reach those goals, Long said.

For Aidan, Hughes’ son, that path has led to a new transition program for adults age 18 and older at Daley College. He’s also taking EMT classes and dreams one day of being a firefighter like his father.

Correction: Sept. 26, 2023: A previous version of this story said the program at Daley College is for people age 22 and older. It is for people age 18 and older.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

My teenage son has autism. Here’s what I wish his teachers and therapists understood.

2023-09-22T22:23:04+00:00

In December, my son who has autism was placed in a New York State-approved residential school. It was a process that I began looking into when he was 12 years old; he had just turned 15 upon placement. It was a long, arduous journey.

I’m still adjusting to the new normal of Josh’s absence and healing from having made this decision. Perhaps the greatest difficulty for our family is simultaneously dealing with a new staff, a new district, and a new school environment.

It’s typical for children to switch schools at different points in their education. What’s different with a special education placement, particularly one in which the child requires a more restrictive environment, is implementing an IEP and setting goals. The period of “we’re still getting to know him/her” can take months, and parents may not be a part of the process as much as we’d like.

Jennifer Berger

This most recent transition has me reflecting on the relationship between parents like me and the therapists and educators who help care for and educate our children.

Although we, parents, aren’t necessarily authorities in the fields of education or therapeutic interventions, we are experts in our children. We have spent years observing their habits, preferred environments, and strengths, and sometimes this information may not be seen as valuable in the same way a neuropsychological or speech evaluation is.

If parents are expected to be partners in their children’s education, we need to be consulted in their most effective interventions thus far. That involves building a direct relationship with not only the students but with their guardians, too.

As an autism parent, my knowledge evolved through continuous dealings with a motley crew of teachers and therapists throughout my son’s development. As is the case with students, there’s no one-size-fits-all rule in dealing with parents, but we all need to be an active part of the school team. This means talking not only about the goals we hope to set prior to an official IEP meeting and how they’re to be implemented — this means considering how we can best accomplish those goals together.

The best way to do this is to understand this most basic concept: Parents of many children with disabilities are terrified of their offspring’s impending transition into adulthood.

Asking us where we see our child at 21 is probably the worst way to start a conversation about the future. You may as well ask us what’s going to happen to our child when we die. A more compassionate approach would be, “What sort of path do you see for your son/daughter following graduation in order for him/her to achieve a purposeful and meaningful life? In general, our students exercise the following options,” and then provide a sample list. From there we can keep building on the necessary skills and goals to make certain that all of us are on the same page, while still retaining a sense of hope and perseverance in an already daunting situation.

In planning a student’s therapeutic interventions and goals, please make certain guardians understand the terms you’re using. Do not assume that they’ll know or ask. Hyposensitive, sensory integration, vestibular, and proprioceptive input are all terms I learned being hands-on in my son’s interventions as a stay-at-home parent. This is not the reality for all families, and even when it is, parents may fear that asking questions of educators and specialists will make them appear ignorant.

Parents of many children with disabilities are terrified of their offspring’s impending transition into adulthood.

To better enable a parent’s sense of meaningful participation, gently explain how and why what you’re doing may help and suggest activities into which we can integrate our child’s passions. This better helps us build upon your work at home.

When meeting to discuss my child’s issues, positive framing can make a big difference. Instead of saying “Josh has a very short attention span; it’s hard to get him to focus,” an alternative would be “Josh is so determined when he wants to do something, it’s hard to redirect him to an assigned task. How have you been successful in engaging him in a non-preferred activity?” Sometimes, I’ll have an answer and sometimes I won’t, but this will create a dialogue between us as opposed to a report of my son’s limitations and the frustrations that may arise along with them.

Finally, please don’t generalize when describing my child. Saying “I really like working with Josh” doesn’t give me any sense that you understand who he is or what makes him tick. Talk about his specific qualities, even if they seem irrelevant to the work.

I never tire of hearing school staff speak of Josh’s clever wit, sense of humor, or sweetness, and how they manifest in the classroom. Remember that parents of students with disabilities are raising children in a primarily neurotypical world, one in which our offspring’s attributes rather than deficiencies often go unnoticed, if not ignored.

We realize that the goal of their formal education is to prepare these students for a world outside of the classroom. To best accomplish this, we need to feel that there is more than a timeline involved. We need a sense of meaning in the effort we’re putting forth and the possibility for improvement in our child’s outcome. Only then can we keep pushing through the challenges, retain hope, and have a sense of why we are doing this work as opposed to an attitude of “what more needs to be done now?”

I understand that expecting the staff working with Josh to keep me updated on a weekly basis is unrealistic. If I want as full as possible a picture of his ever-evolving passage into adulthood, it’s my responsibility to maintain a dialogue between us. My hope is that those working at the residential school see these conversations as opportunities — not only for Josh but also for our family and in service of the essential work that they do.

Jennifer Berger lives in Queens, New York with her husband, Aaron. After 15 years of being a full-time mother and advocate for her son, Josh, she is now coping with the new circumstance of her son attending a residential school. At this point, Jennifer is reading, writing, healing, and taking it one day at a time.

A widespread school bus worker strike has been averted. Here’s what it means for NYC families.

2023-09-21T21:08:46+00:00

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New York City’s school bus workers have reached a tentative contract agreement with bus companies servicing thousands of routes — meaning a majority of families who could have been impacted by a strike will see uninterrupted bus services.

News of the agreement, which union officials and City Hall confirmed on Thursday, follows months of negotiation between the Amalgamated Transit Union and bus companies that contract with the city. New York City schools contract bus services with dozens of companies, and the union’s collective bargaining agreement with many bus companies expired at the end of June.

The tentative contract agreement, which secures services for thousands of bus routes that transport students to and from school each day, was first reported Wednesday night by the New York Daily News.

The terms of the contract must still be ratified by union members, according to union officials.

“We fought for the contract our members need and deserve to support themselves and their families, and so that there are enough skilled school bus workers to provide safe and reliable service to New York City families,” said Carolyn Rinaldi, chief of staff at ATU, in an emailed statement. “Our members are trained professionals. They are passionate and dedicated. Above all, they safely transport and attend to the most precious cargo in New York City — the children.”

The contract includes some guarantees on weeks of employment and medical coverage, as well as shorter progression to higher pay, among other things, according to the union.

Rima Izquierdo, an advocate and Bronx parent whose children take the bus to school, said she was grateful that a widespread strike appeared to have been avoided.

“That would have shut our city down,” she said. “And that would not have been good for anybody.”

What the contract agreement means for families

This year, some families returned to school as the potential strike fueled uncertainty over how their children would get to school. Though service continued as usual through the first few weeks of the school year, fear of future disruptions loomed.

Disruptions to school bus services disproportionately impact younger students, as well as students with disabilities and those who live in temporary housing.

The city’s Education Department previously estimated a strike would impact roughly 80,000 students across roughly 4,400 routes in the five boroughs, or more than half of the roughly 150,000 students who ride yellow buses during the school year.

About 25,000 of those affected would have been students with disabilities, officials said.

Now, a majority of those families should continue to receive services, though ongoing negotiations with the nonprofit school bus provider NYCSBUS and two other companies mean some families could still face strike-related disruptions, according to union officials.

“We are grateful that ATU Local 1181 and DOE-contracted school bus companies were able to come to a voluntary agreement,” a City Hall spokesperson said, adding it “will ensure continuity of service and peace of mind for the more than 80,000 students and their families who rely on these services, including thousands of students with disabilities.”

Why some families could still be affected by a strike

Negotiations with the remaining three bus companies could impact about 1,600 of the city’s more than 9,000 bus routes.

“That’s still a lot of kids,” said Lori Podvesker, director of disability and education policy at the non-profit INCLUDEnyc.

If each bus route carries even just 10 students, a strike would impact thousands of kids, Podvesker added.

“It’s really important if there is a strike, and in general, that there’s some kind of accountability system set up by the city that is school-based and keeps track of whether students miss services as a result of busing,” she said. “They need their services in order to access curriculum, and cumulatively, it builds up.”

Why families might see services disrupted without a strike

Even without a strike, some families may still experience issues with busing. The city’s vast school bus system often gets off to a rocky start, with families experiencing no-shows and long delays.

In a statement, Sara Catalinotto, the head of Parents to Improve School Transportation and a longtime transportation advocate, said her organization was “cautiously optimistic” that the settlement would include a wage structure that would help address staff shortages that lead to doubled-up bus routes that lengthen children’s commutes.

“A fair labor contract would be a step forward,” she said. “Much more is needed to repair the damage done by misplaced priorities and disconnected governance within NYC school busing.”

Izquierdo, the Bronx parent, remained concerned over the bus routes that could still be impacted as well as by the delays in bus service this year many have faced this year, including her own children.

“I feel like the least you can do for us is make sure our kids get to the building,” she said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools is asking the public’s input in hiring the next special education chief

2023-09-15T22:37:57+00:00

Issalma Franco knows what she wants from the next chief of the Chicago Public Schools’ department that manages special education services.

The Belmont Cragin resident is the legal guardian of her brother, a high school student with an Individualized Education Program, and said communication will be important in the future.

Her brother is doing well in school because he works with a good special education classroom assistant — something she hopes all students with disabilities have, said Franco.

“I think communication with students and the community, but also hearing what students need is really important,” said Franco. “I’m really thankful he has a SECA that listens to him and knows that he’s capable of achieving all his goals.”

Franco was among a handful of Chicago parents, educators, and community members who attended listening sessions on Thursday and Friday hosted by the Chicago Board of Education’s special education advisory committee to get the public input on a new chief. Those who attended said they want the next head of the Office of Diverse Learners Supports and Services to communicate with them, provide support for students, and offer professional development for current educators.

Asking for the public’s input in the hiring process is an unusual move that comes at a time when the department has faced state investigation and public criticism. The office of diverse learners is one of the largest departments in the district and provides services for nearly 64,000 students between 3 and 21 years old with Individualized Education Programs and 504 plans — about 15% of the district’s 320,000 students.

The department hasn’t had a leader since June when Stephanie Jones, the former chief, left amid criticism from the Illinois State Board of Education, which found that the district was not tracking restraint and timeout incidents at schools.

Jones had also come under fire by the Chicago Teachers Union, special education advocates, and parents of students with disabilities for high turnover rates in the department and lack of recovery services for students during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The next leader of the department will have to ensure that the needs of students with disabilities, many of whom are still recovering from pandemic fallout, are met. They will also confront challenges in making sure students receive services such as therapy and in hiring additional staffing to fill special education teacher and paraprofessional vacancies.

At Friday’s session, Stephanie Anderson, principal of Vaughn Occupational High School located on the city’s North Side, spoke about the need to train and provide professional development for current educators. Anderson’s school on the city’s north side serves only students with disabilities.

“I think we really need to look at how we have a really supportive structure for training and not just an online webinar here and there or going to one in-person training when you get hired,” said Anderson. “That’s not going to cut it.”

The two meetings this week were the first of four that will be held throughout September. Parents, educators, and community members can attend in person and on Zoom to tell the board what they would like to see from the next chief.

The board of education posted the job description Thursday. The special education advisory committee plans to provide the board with a finalist for appointment sometime in November or December.

The next two meetings will be at 6 p.m. Sept. 25 at Back of the Yards High School and at 4 p.m. Sept. 26 at Lavizzo Elementary School. There is also an online survey.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

First day of school for NYC: Smiles, sweat, and fears of a possible bus strike

2023-09-07T21:54:13+00:00

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Bronx student Avery Collazo began the school year on Thursday with an annual tradition: donning a bright blue T-shirt proudly exclaiming, “First Day of Second Grade.”

“He likes to stand out, to be a little different,” said Avery’s dad, Albert Collazo, who also brought a uniform shirt just in case.

The family joined dozens of others dropping off their children in the P.S. 121 schoolyard as the first day of school for New York City’s nearly 900,000 students brought out an array of emotions.

Some caregivers shed tears as they watched their kids walk inside the school building. Some kids smiled confidently; some shyly. There was also some sweat. High temperatures prompted a National Weather Service heat advisory, and the Education Department directed schools to limit outdoor activities after 10 a.m. Some educators and parents reported broken or non-existent air conditioners while some families were also concerned about overheated students on school buses.

Avery is enrolled in P.S. 121’s “gifted and talented” program, which pulls students from different neighborhoods. His mom, Elida, praised the city’s move to expand such programs, calling it “a great opportunity for a lot of other children.”

From left, Elida Collazo, Avery Collazo and Albert Collazo pose for a portrait on the first day of school at P.S. 121 in the Bronx.

Because the family has to travel outside of their zoned school to bring Avery to the program, they rely on a yellow school bus for transportation. Even though school bus drivers vowed to stay behind the wheel this week, families were still on edge about a possible strike, which could affect an estimated 86,000 students, or more than half of the children who ride yellow school buses.

“We’re definitely hoping no strike happens,” Collazo said.

For P.S. 121 mom Phyllis Moore, the new school year represented a fresh chance to get involved in her daughter’s education following her recovery from a stroke last year.

“I’m ready to be here, to get involved, to be on the school board, to do what I need to do,” said Moore. “We’re excited.”

Her daughter Lanyah, a fourth grader, has been in the school since kindergarten. She was excited to return to school with more age and experience, she said, but the 8-year-old was still nervous to find out who her teacher and classmates would be.

Schools Chancellor David Banks joined Mayor Eric Adams at P.S. 121, in the Bronx’s District 11, which is one of the districts in the first wave of the NYC Reads initiative. In a major shift in how the nation’s largest school system teaches its youngest children how to read, elementary schools in 15 of the city’s 32 local districts must switch to one of three literacy programs this year, with the rest following next year. District 11 selected EL Education, a curriculum that some schools in the area had already implemented.

“What I am going to be laser-focused on is ensuring every single child in the school system is on grade level no later than third grade,” Banks said. “The broader issue is, for even kids who don’t have dyslexia, they can’t read. And that’s because we haven’t taught them properly how to read.”

The push to change literacy instruction comes after years of attempts to improve the city’s middling reading scores — and after a widely used curriculum, which focused heavily on independent reading without enough explicit phonics instruction, was largely discredited.

Outside of P.S. 165 in Brownsville, Brooklyn, most parents said they hadn’t heard about the city’s curriculum mandate. The school, along with every elementary campus in District 23, is required to use a curriculum called Into Reading — by far the most common program that superintendents have mandated.

Sherifa Adams said her 6-year-old daughter Kaydence was already picking up reading skills, and Adams has mixed feelings about the change. “It’s first grade, so she’s already used to something,” said Adams, who learned about the curriculum mandate from a reporter. “I hope that this new reading curriculum only makes it better and not worse for her.”

The school plans to hold a curriculum night next week and will share more information about the new reading program with families then, an Education Department spokesperson said.

The literacy mandate may signal a wider effort to come, Education Department officials noted. The city is already pushing such changes for early education and ninth grade algebra. Some high school superintendents have opted to implement literacy instruction mandates on their own accord.

Students and families on the first day of school on Thursday at P.S. 165 Ida Posner in Brooklyn, NY.

Meanwhile, the city also continues to grapple with how it will accommodate the influx of children from asylum-seeking families. Banks announced Thursday that the city is hoping to address the chronic shortage of bilingual teachers by reducing a bureaucratic hurdle. For educators who are already certified in bilingual education but teach other areas, they will no longer lose tenure by switching subjects, Banks said. The move would affect about 500 teachers.

Despite the ongoing challenges, the first day of school also marked the tremendous progress that many of the newcomers have made since arriving last year.

At I.S. 93 in Ridgewood, Queens, one student who arrived in the country six months ago speaking no English made enough progress to enroll in an honors dual-language class this year. He was part of a team that won a classwide engineering competition Thursday, said his teacher Sara Hobler.

“This sort of thing is why I teach,” Hobler said. “It makes you take a step back for a moment and remember why you go through all the difficult parts of the job — for those looks on those kids’ faces when they realize they’re going to thrive.”

Busing woes, even without a strike

It has become all too common for students to have problems with yellow school buses, particularly on the first day of school. This year was no exception, as union officials continue negotiating with the city over a new contract. There were nearly 1,300 bus delays reported on the Office of Pupil Transportation’s website as of 4 p.m.

Brownsville mom Anika Smith said she received limited information about bus service and had yet to receive pick up and drop off times, even though her second grade son is entitled to transportation because of a disability.

Smith accompanied her son on Thursday to greet his teachers. Though the family lives a few blocks away from school, the mom said ongoing disruptions would be a “catastrophe,” forcing her to scramble to find relatives to help with transportation or rearrange her nursing shifts at a local hospital.

“I’m gonna have to take off a couple of days, switch around my hours,” Smith said. “I lose wages. I could get a write up … the hospital’s already short staffed.”

Outside her son’s school, P.S. 165, a staff member told a small group of families gathered in the schoolyard about the city’s contingency plans, including MetroCards or rideshare services for children with disabilities, those in temporary housing, or children in foster care.

Students and families arrive for the first day of school at P.S. 165 in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Naomi Peña, a mother of four children with dyslexia and co-founder of a Bronx-based literacy program, said her son’s bus arrived at their home just 10 minutes before his school was scheduled to start. By the time he arrived on campus, he was more than two hours late, meaning he missed his entire morning literacy block, she said.

The late bus – along with her daughter’s class having no working air conditioning – led to a disappointing first day of school, Peña said.

“It’s frustrating because I am just one parent that experiences these things, but it’s part of a larger ecosystem of hundreds of thousands of parents,” she said. “It shouldn’t happen. It shouldn’t. Our kids deserve better, especially on their first day.”

Enrollment, mergers, and navigating the system

Over the past five years, K-12 enrollment has fallen by more than 120,000, which can have big consequences for schools since funding is tied to student headcount.

At Brooklyn’s P.S. 165, for instance, enrollment dipped below 200 students last year — one of a growing share of elementary schools in central Brooklyn and across the city below that threshold. Though small schools can be more expensive for the city to run on a per-student basis, several parents said there are benefits, too.

“With a small school environment, she will get the help that she needs,” said Crystal Salgado, referring to her 6-year-old daughter, Cianna. “The teachers actually know the kids.”

For her part, Cianna was so excited to be back at school that she zoomed past her mother into the schoolyard. She said she was most excited for lunch, preferably pizza.

Crystal Salgado and her 6-year-old daughter, Cianna, arrive for the first day of school at P.S. 165 in Brooklyn. Cianna hoped for a pizza lunch.

Some school communities began to see controversial mergers last school year, like one at Lafayette Academy, which joined with West Side Collaborative.

Despite opposition from both of these small Upper West middle schools, the proposal passed. Morana Mesic, a former PTA president at West Side Collaborative who opposed the merger, said her seventh grade son cried last night as the realization hit that he wouldn’t be returning to the small school that had felt like home. Instead, he’ll be attending West End Secondary School, a much larger 6-12 school on the Upper West Side that he transferred to over the summer.

“He’s going into a whole new environment all over again, so he did have a really emotional reaction,” she said. “He was anxious, frustrated, and scared, saying, ‘I don’t know if I’m gonna be accepted.’”

Just over 30 blocks north, on the Upper West Side campus Lafayette shares with two other schools, families fanned into a crowded street, greeted by welcome signs and an energetic traffic conductor shouting, “Good morning! Good morning! Happy first day!”

Some students matched the excitement as they approached the building.

One Manhattan School for Children student said she couldn’t wait for “math, seeing my friends, writing, and anything I learn.”

Nearby, Jeanelle and Zaki Jarrah, stood next to their eighth-grader Finn. The family is new to the city, having just moved from Flagler Beach, Florida, a few weeks ago.

They said they were looking forward to their son developing closer connections in a smaller school environment. But they didn’t have a clear idea why they picked the Manhattan School for Children.

“We have absolutely no idea what we’re doing,” Jeanelle Jarrah said, laughing. “The school system here is so overwhelming.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC school bus service will run uninterrupted next week, despite looming strike: union official

2023-09-02T01:14:26+00:00

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New York City’s yellow school bus services will not face disruptions from a bus worker strike next week as the new academic year begins, union officials confirmed Friday.

The news comes after weeks of tense negotiations between the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents about half of New York City’s public school bus drivers and attendants, and bus companies that contract with the city.

Public schools in New York City begin Sept. 7

In an email, Carolyn Rinaldi, chief of staff at ATU, said that while there would be no bus service strike-related disruption next week as the new school year gets underway, the union remains at the bargaining table “to fight for what our members deserve — a fair contract.”

“For now, routes will be serviced and negotiations are ongoing,” she said, “but time is running out.”

Word that bus service would continue uninterrupted, for now, is likely to be a relief to many of the tens of thousands of families who rely on yellow bus services to transport their children to and from school, especially as it comes just days before school starts. But with negotiations ongoing, a bus worker strike could still occur in the coming weeks.

Even without a looming strike, the city’s sprawling school bus system often gets off to a rocky start, with many families experiencing delays or no-show buses.

Education Department officials previously warned a strike could impact roughly 80,000 students across 4,400 routes in the five boroughs. That’s more than half of the roughly 150,000 students who ride yellow buses across approximately 9,000 routes during the school year.

A strike would also disproportionately impact the city’s youngest students, who can’t take public transit on their own, as well as those with disabilities. Officials estimated roughly 25,000 of the potentially affected riders are students with disabilities.

Earlier this week, amid growing concerns, the city’s education department released a set of guidelines detailing how families who rely on busing could navigate a strike.

Some of the city’s alternative solutions include prepaid MetroCards and free rideshare services. But such programs can require parents to accompany their children to and from school — a trip that isn’t always feasible for working parents.

One parent and public school teacher who relies on busing said earlier this week that the potential strike had filled them with anxiety.

Without school buses, they said, “We can’t figure out how to get our children to and from school safely, and maintain our jobs.”

Alex Zimmerman contributed reporting.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Improper supervision in McAuliffe seclusion rooms violated DPS policy, investigation finds

2023-08-31T22:49:56+00:00

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A Denver Public Schools investigation found that former McAuliffe International School Principal Kurt Dennis placed students — or directed staff to place students — in two seclusion rooms last school year without proper supervision “and then either locked or held the door shut.”

That’s according to a three-page letter summarizing the findings that is addressed to Dennis and was provided to Chalkbeat by Dennis’ attorney, David Lane. The letter says that the facts support a finding that Dennis violated DPS’ seclusion policy.

The rooms were in use from Nov. 18 through the end of the school year, the letter says. The investigation found that McAuliffe staff continued “using these rooms for seclusion despite being aware that at least one of the rooms, which was damaged during the course of the school year, was not safe or appropriate for this purpose,” the letter says.

However, the letter says there was “insufficient evidence” to support an allegation that Dennis disproportionately placed students of color in the seclusion rooms.

Dennis was fired as principal of McAuliffe in July in the aftermath of a televised interview he gave to 9News in March expressing concerns about gun violence and student safety. The Denver school board voted last week to uphold Dennis’ firing. The allegations about the seclusion room came to light after the firing but before the vote.

DPS policy requires that “one or more staff members” accompany a student inside a seclusion room. In an interview Thursday, Lane said Dennis did not violate district policy because the policy doesn’t specify what to do if a student is acting violently toward the staff member in the room by hitting, kicking, and spitting at them, which he said was happening at McAuliffe.

“There was no policy on what to do in those circumstances, so there was no policy violation,” Lane said.

Dennis and Lane have denied that students were alone in the room because staff monitored them through a window in the door. Lane also disputes DPS’s numbers and verbiage. The letter implies four students were put in seclusion, while Lane claims it was two. The letter also mentions two seclusion rooms, but Lane said there was only one “de-escalation room.”

Lane said he plans to sue DPS on Dennis’ behalf in federal court next week.

Colorado law allows schools to seclude a student alone inside a room with the door closed as long as the student is monitored through a window or by video camera. In the wake of the McAuliffe allegations, state Rep. Regina English, a Colorado Springs Democrat, said she wants to ban the use of seclusion rooms statewide. English made the announcement at a press conference in Denver earlier this month alongside three Denver school board members.

The issue is already on lawmakers’ radar. A 2020 Chalkbeat investigation uncovered weak state oversight of seclusion, and in 2022, lawmakers passed new limits and reporting requirements for both seclusion and restraint, which means forcibly restricting a student’s movement.

DPS policy has long gone a step further than state law. DPS calls its practice of requiring a staff member to be in the room “monitored seclusion” or “modified seclusion.” In the 2018-19 school year, the district reported 111 instances of modified seclusion, according to a review written by DPS staff and obtained by Chalkbeat through an open records request.

Updated numbers for the 2022-23 school year were not immediately available Thursday.

Some of Colorado’s other large school districts reported even more incidents of seclusion in 2018-19, according to reviews written by those districts. Young students with disabilities were disproportionately subjected to seclusion, according to the reviews.

The state education department can investigate the misuse of seclusion. In 2020, for example, the department found that a rural school district violated state law when it secluded a kindergartner in a small booth in the nurse’s office normally used for hearing tests.

The kindergartner had wet his pants, refused to change his clothes, and kicked and hit two staff members, according to the findings. The department found that secluding him in the booth was a violation for several reasons, including that the seclusion was used as a “punitive form of discipline” and that the booth did not have adequate ventilation or was not big enough.

The Colorado Department of Education is now investigating the use of seclusion at McAuliffe, according to a department spokesperson. But the DPS investigation is complete.

DPS interviewed three students and 24 witnesses as part of its investigation, according to the letter summarizing the findings. Dennis declined to speak to investigators, who instead used public statements made by him or his attorney. Dennis told the Denver Post earlier this month that he had a lock put on the door of a seclusion room that was later removed.

Denver school board Vice President Auon’tai Anderson said at a press conference Thursday that the full 33-page investigation report, which was provided to board members but has not been made public, contains “stories that have kept me up this past week.”

“To the students who may have suffered, my heart aches for the pain you have endured,” Anderson said. “Saying ‘I’m sorry’ hardly feels adequate.”

DPS denied an open records request by Chalkbeat for a copy of the 33-page report, arguing that it was a privileged document. Lane said neither he nor Dennis has seen the 33-page report.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

After first week of classes, hundreds of Chicago students with disabilities waiting for bus routes

2023-08-29T17:50:44+00:00

A week into the new school year, hundreds of Chicago students with disabilities were still waiting to receive bus service, officials said.

A total of 733 students with disabilities, who are legally entitled to transportation under federal law, were waiting for bus service as of Monday, according to a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Additionally, 10 students living in temporary housing, who are also legally entitled to transportation, had yet to be assigned to routes.

Lacking half of the drivers it needs, the district decided this year to limit bus transportation to students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness. These students can alternatively choose to receive stipends of up to $500 a month to cover transportation costs, which families of close to 3,270 children have done, the district said. The district is continuing to receive new requests for transportation, a spokesperson said.

For the families who haven’t accepted the stipends, the lack of bus service can be challenging, especially for students with disabilities who have varying needs. Working parents may not have the flexibility to drive their kids to school, and taking public transportation may also not be feasible.

The district said its policy is to pair students with routes within two weeks of their request, and it appears to be making progress. As of Thursday last week, 1,045 students with disabilities were waiting for a seat on a bus — about 300 more than the number at the start of this week. The district has also shrunk travel times for most students with disabilities, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez announced at last week’s board meeting.

However, that progress is happening as the district said it would not provide bus service this year to other students, including those attending selective enrollment and magnet schools. Those students have instead been offered Ventra cards, including another card for a companion, such as a parent.

Parents of some of those children, who are also struggling to accommodate their children’s commutes, sharply criticized the decision during a Chicago Board of Education meeting last week.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Board President Jianan Shi said he understands “the challenges that this has on families.” But he believes the district is doing better, citing the improvement in commute times for students with disabilities, as well as the district’s efforts to address the driver shortage by planning to boost pay.

“CPS has the responsibility to serve our students with special needs and our students experiencing homelessness, and I believe we are doing that,” Shi said.

During last week’s meeting, chief operating officer Charles Mayfield said that even as the district has employed marginally more drivers, it has received more transportation requests. As of Aug. 19, the district employed 678 bus drivers, 22 more than it did at roughly the same time last year, a spokesperson said. The district has received just over 1,000 more requests for transportation as of this August compared to last year.

This is at least the third year that Chicago Public Schools has struggled to provide bus transportation for all students who are typically eligible. Last year around this time, roughly 3,000 students with disabilities were on routes that were longer than an hour, while more than 1,800 had not been routed, officials said.

The Illinois State Board of Education has taken notice of these issues. In 2021, state officials placed the district on a corrective action plan to ensure it was providing bus service to all students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs called for it. One year later, the state instituted a second corrective action plan to shorten commutes for students with disabilities.

Chicago bureau chief Becky Vevea contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC school bus strike looms ahead of new year. What families should know.

2023-08-28T20:45:29+00:00

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With a new academic year about to start, New York City schools are bracing for a potential bus worker strike that could affect tens of thousands of students who rely on yellow buses to get to and from school.

The possible strike comes amid continued negotiations between the Amalgamated Transit Union — which represents about half of New York City’s public school bus drivers and attendants — and bus companies that contract with the city. A strike could impact roughly 80,000 students across 4,400 routes in the five boroughs, according to the city’s education department.

That’s more than half of the roughly 150,000 students who ride yellow buses across approximately 9,000 routes during the school year.

About 25,000 of the potentially affected riders are students with disabilities, officials said.

Concerns over the potential strike have been brewing for weeks, after the union’s collective bargaining agreement with many bus companies expired at the end of June. But Monday, just days ahead of the Sept. 7 start of school, the city’s education department released a more detailed set of guidelines about how families could navigate a possible strike.

Here’s what we know:

Which students could be affected?

A school bus worker strike would disproportionately affect students who tend to rely on yellow bus services — including the city’s youngest students and those with disabilities.

It’s not clear yet which routes would be impacted. The city’s education department initially said it would release a map of potentially affected routes sometime this week, but Friday, officials said no map would be posted.

Families who are affected will receive an automated call, email, and text message from the city once a strike is confirmed, as well as on the first day of interrupted service, according to officials.

Even under normal circumstances, the city’s vast school bus system often gets off to a rocky start, with scores of families experiencing long delays or no-show buses.

And even if a strike is averted, it’s possible that the effects of the last-minute negotiations could ripple into the start of the school year. One source close to the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said school bus companies usually pick routes this week, but that isn’t happening because of ongoing negotiations.

How long could a strike last?

In a press release Monday, schools Chancellor David Banks said the city is “pushing for a resolution before the start of the school year,” but it remains unclear whether the strike will occur and how long it could last.

In 2013, a prolonged school bus worker strike saw services disrupted for more than a month, impacting more than 100,000 students and significantly driving down attendance rates in programs for students with disabilities.

What services will the city offer if a strike occurs?

Families impacted by the strike will be eligible for prepaid MetroCards through their school, allowing parents and students to travel to and from school on public transportation, according to the city’s education department. Families will receive four trips per MetroCard on MTA buses and subways each day during the school week.

Some affected students — like those with disabilities who are entitled to transportation services, or who live in temporary housing — will also receive access to a free rideshare service, which will provide a car to take them and a caregiver to and from school each day.

Ride-share services have typically been difficult for parents to take advantage of since they require parents to accompany their children to and from school. The car service would also provide a ride for the caregiver to any location in the five boroughs after drop-off, and pick them up there in the afternoon before returning to the school — an option which could make it more feasible for some parents.

One public school teacher in Fort Greene, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they worried about whether their two kids would be able to use the service, even though both would be eligible. They attend school about an hour away in Bensonhurst, where they receive specialized programming for students with autism.

“The earliest they’re allowed to be in the building is 7:30 a.m.,” the teacher said. “There’s no way I’m going to get them dropped off at 7:30 a.m., and take the hour ride, and still be there in time for my 8:10 classes.”

Some eligible families can also be reimbursed for transportation costs to get to and from schools in taxis or personal vehicles.

The city’s education department has not provided detailed information on how parents can access these alternative transportation services, but vowed to share further details before the school year begins.

Impacted families cannot opt for virtual learning if a strike occurs, but students will be excused for up to two hours of lateness caused by it.

Why are school bus workers considering a strike?

Union officials have been tight-lipped about the key sticking points in negotiations, though they have generally pointed to bread-and-butter economic issues.

“There has been a school bus workers shortage for several years,” Tomas Fret, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181, said in a statement earlier this month. “Drivers, attendants and shop employees simply cannot make ends meet.”

School building shutdowns in the wake of the pandemic prompted the city to furlough thousands of bus workers, and officials have since warned of driver shortages and challenges with recruitment.

A union spokesperson declined to comment on the status of negotiations or detail their demands.

How did the most recent school bus strike end?

The 2013 strike largely centered on job protections. Then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg was seeking new bus contracts to save money, and union officials wanted a guarantee that current workers could keep their jobs even if the companies they worked for did not win a new contract. (Bloomberg argued that the city was legally prohibited from making that promise.)

After a month, union officials called off the strike without winning job protections. The action was costly to bus workers, some of whom expressed frustration about the episode.

It remains to be seen how a strike this school year might play out in the court of public opinion. But some parent leaders who advocate on transportation issues have circulated a petition supporting the union’s demands for higher wages and detailing concerns about the city’s contingency plans.

Sara Catalinotto, the head of Parents to Improve School Transportation and a veteran transportation advocate, recalled that during the 2013 strike, “parent after parent testified their students had regressed and that they couldn’t get their kids to school under” similar transportation alternatives to what city officials are offering now: MetroCards and city-funded taxis.

“Those who remember it, the moment they heard the word strike, it’s a chilling feeling in your stomach,” she said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago shortens bus routes for most students with disabilities, while others wait for service

2023-08-24T22:14:56+00:00

Just 47 Chicago Public Schools students with disabilities are on bus routes longer than an hour, an improvement over last year when that figure was roughly 3,000 and 365 children had trips lasting longer than 90 minutes, district officials said Thursday.

“We are working to get that number down to zero,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting.

The progress comes after more than 8,000 students who may have been eligible for bus service in the past, including those in selective and magnet schools, were told in late July they would not receive busing, but can instead receive free Ventra cards, including for one companion, such as a parent.

Martinez said again Thursday that the district was focused on providing busing to students who are legally entitled to it, such as students with disabilities and those in temporary housing.

CPS officials did not immediately share how many students are waiting to be routed as of Wednesday. As of the first day of school, 7,100 students were on bus routes, and another 3,100 chose the stipend, according to a Monday press release from CPS.

The district has blamed an ongoing nationwide bus driver shortage. In late July, officials said they had just half of the roughly 1,300 drivers they needed.

At Thursday’s meeting, some parents whose children could not get busing, including Patricia Rae Easley, blasted the district. Easley lives in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side and has a daughter enrolled at Kenwood Academy in Hyde Park on the South Side — a route familiar to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who also lives in Austin and has a son enrolled at Kenwood.

“I’m trying to reach out to him,” Easley said. ”Maybe we can get in on their carpool.”

Charles Mayfield, the district’s chief operating officer, suggested CPS is not far from shortening long rides for students with disabilities. Three-quarters of those remaining 47 students who are on rides longer than an hour are on routes that are 61-66 minutes long, he said.

The district’s recent transportation struggles stretch back at least two years. In order to spur more hiring of bus drivers, Mayfield said the district has hosted several hiring fairs and is planning to work with bus companies they contract with to raise driver pay by $2.25. Currently driver pay ranges between $20-25 an hour.

The district was able to accommodate all students with disabilities or those living in temporary housing who requested transportation by the end of July, after extending the sign-up deadline twice, officials said at the time. But they could not guarantee immediate service for families who signed up after that.

Families can opt for stipends of up to $500 a month until they get routed. On Thursday, responding to criticism from some families, Mayfield described the transportation changes this year as a “tough decision that we all needed to make.”

Easley, the parent whose child attends Kenwood, said she pulled her daughter out of a private school so that she could attend the sought-after South Side school as a seventh grader this year.

She was caught off guard with CPS’s announcement three weeks ago that she wouldn’t get bus transportation. Easley said she has no use for the free Ventra card because she doesn’t feel public transit is safe enough for her daughter. That commute would involve two buses and a train, she said.

So she drives her daughter 40 minutes to Kenwood.

“It’s definitely not only an inconvenience but an expense,” Easley said. “An unexpected expense when we’re paying for gas that’s $4.57 a gallon.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Only 1 in 3 NYC schools are fully accessible to students with physical disabilities, report says

2023-08-23T10:00:00+00:00

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Fewer than one in three New York City public schools are fully accessible to students with physical disabilities, according to a report released Wednesday by Advocates for Children that calls on the city to ramp up funding for building upgrades.

With the city expected to release its initial five-year capital plan for schools in November, the group is pushing for $1.25 billion to more quickly address major gaps in building accessibility.

That funding, which would run from 2025 through 2029, would allow roughly half of the city’s schools to be fully accessible according to the report, addressing a longstanding problem that has drawn criticism from parents and federal prosecutors alike. The City Council is slated to approve the capital plan in June, though it is typically amended twice a year thereafter.

Officials have made some strides in recent years, in part due to pressure from advocates who successfully lobbied the city to devote $750 million to the effort in the current capital plan, which runs from 2020 through 2024.

The city is on track to boost the share of fully accessible programs from about one in five schools to one in three under the current capital program, according to the Advocates for Children analysis. (The figures do not include certain alternative schools, prekindergarten programs, or charter schools. Nor do they include satellite campuses, as schools may have more than one location.)

“That represents a huge amount of progress, which really shows that when you commit to making schools accessible, you can make a huge difference,” said Sarah Part, a policy analyst at Advocates for Children. “The current lack of accessibility isn’t inevitable.”

Inaccessible school buildings have long represented a barrier for students with physical disabilities, leaving children with few — or even zero — nearby school options. They can also limit students’ ability to take advantage of New York City’s extensive choice system, which allows children to apply for schools outside their home neighborhoods. Nearly 39% of schools have no accessible classrooms for students with mobility needs, according to the Advocates for Children report.

Abraham Weitzman, a rising junior at Columbia University who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, took the bus more than an hour each way to private school through eighth grade.

“This was while I lived across the street from an inaccessible elementary school,” Weitzman wrote in an email. “I didn’t get the chance to find community in my neighborhood.”

Weitzman eventually attended Bard High School Early College Queens, a fully accessible public school, though the process of navigating the high school admissions process was a challenge. The staff and students on many campuses were welcoming, but he quickly found the buildings weren’t as accommodating.

In one case, he visited a school he liked, only to find his wheelchair didn’t fit in the bathroom, leaving his mother to carry him into a stall.

Although he had a positive experience at Bard, access for students with physical disabilities across the public school system “is disgraceful,” Weitzman wrote. “We must put our efforts into making it better for future students.”

Obstacles for students remain despite building accessibility gains

Federal officials have also spotlighted dire accessibility problems.

In 2015, then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara released findings from an investigation that found elementary school accessibility problems in New York City were so severe they amounted to a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Even though many of the city’s school buildings are more than 100 years old, Bharara found city officials failed to improve accessibility even when renovating older buildings.

Part said the city has taken accessibility improvements more seriously in recent years. But the scale of the problem — and the massive amount of funding required to fully address it — means even if the city heeds Advocates for Children’s call for more funding, about half of schools will still not be fully accessible by 2029, nearly four decades after the Americans with Disabilities Act passed.

Asked about their accessibility goals, city officials declined to say whether they hope to make all schools fully accessible, though they pointed to improvements over the past five years.

“This report acknowledges how far we have come, and the ongoing $750 million commitment in our current capital plan towards our shared goal of making school buildings more accessible,” Kevin Ortiz, a spokesperson for the School Construction Authority, said in a statement, referring to Advocates Children’s analysis.

City officials have made incremental gains, including improvements that render some buildings “partially accessible.” About 20% of the city’s school buildings meet that definition, which means some — but not all — classrooms and facilities can accommodate students with physical disabilities.

In recent years, the city began releasing more granular school-level reports that outline which areas students with physical disabilities can access. Advocates for Children also created a map alongside their report with school-level accessibility information.

Partially accessible buildings can still present significant obstacles. Manhattan mom Yuvania Espino sent her daughter Mia Simpson, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, to a partially accessible elementary school in East Harlem that specializes in serving students with disabilities.

But the front entrance was above a small set of stairs, which forced the family to stand by a separate accessible entrance, sometimes in the rain, as they waited for a staff member to unlock the door each day.

Mia took classes on the school’s first floor, but didn’t have access to certain classrooms or support on other levels, including a second-floor gym that helped students with sensory difficulties. Over time, many of her friends moved to classrooms on other floors, which distressed Mia and made her act out, Espino said.

Mia Simpson, left, poses for a photo with her little sister, Kira. Mia lacked access to certain classrooms during her time at a New York City public school, and wasn’t able to use the school’s front entrance.

“We don’t know to this day what an elevator would have done for Mia’s academic performance at that school,” Espinso said. The family ultimately decided to send Mia to an accessible private school, where her tuition is covered by the city.

Mia, now 14, is still affected by accessibility problems. She often has to miss performances and other events at her younger sister’s public school because the auditorium is on the second floor and there is no elevator.

“When enrolling your kids in school, no parents should have to think about accessing the building,” Espino said. “I’m thrilled that we’ve taken some baby steps, but we need to buckle up and take some giant leaps.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Meet Giovanny Navarro, one of Chicago Public Schools’ newest teachers

2023-08-21T22:58:01+00:00

When Giovanny Navarro went back to Finkl Academy, where he had worked as a paraprofessional, he wasn’t sure his students would remember him. But as he walked into the classroom last year, they came running, some of them crying and giving him hugs.

“We miss you! When are you coming back?” Navarro recalls them saying.

The answer? Today.

For many students, it was the start of another school year. But for Navarro, it was a day full of firsts: His first day back at Finkl and his first time officially teaching solo.

Finkl Academy and other Chicago Public Schools welcomed students back on Aug. 21.

Last year, after working at Finkl for about four years, he took a break from the school — an intensive break — to learn from a mentor teacher at an elementary school in Englewood, while at the same time working on his master’s degree at National Louis University.

It’s all part of Chicago Public Schools’ Teacher Residency program. Launched in 2017, the program is tailored toward career-changers and district staff working in non-teaching positions, like Navarro. More than 150 teachers — the district’s largest group of residents since its launch — are in Navarro’s cohort. The vast majority are eligible to teach special education, early childhood education, or bilingual education, according to a CPS press release.

On Monday, Navarro said he was excited to be back and officially teaching at Finkl, a K-8 school where he’s spent years building relationships with children and their families. Finkl serves just over 200 students and is located between Pilsen and Little Village.

“It’s someone else’s kids, but they’re my students,” he said. “I always find ways to connect with them, to play with them, to teach them, to make their education memorable.”

Giovanny Navarro assists a student during a math class on the first day of school. In the corner, a math teacher also helps out a student. As a special education teacher, Navarro often collaborates, but this is the first year he is teaching without a mentor teacher.

He’s in his second year of his teacher residency. For the first year, residents are paired with a mentor teacher in a CPS school and paid roughly $40,000, according to the residency’s website. In the second year, they start teaching solo and earn a starting teacher salary of roughly $62,000. After completing the residency, teachers are expected to work for at least two more years in CPS.

The program aims to fill hard-to-staff positions, such as bilingual and special education teachers. Navarro is on his way to officially becoming both.

He still has some coursework to complete on his bilingual education endorsement, but Navarro grew up speaking Spanish. It’s a big part of why he chose to come back to Finkl — he said it’s where he feels like he can make the most impact. Nearly half of the students at Finkl come from non-English speaking homes and are learning English.

Navarro said he can relate. Around his sophomore year of high school, he migrated from Mexico to the U.S. and began learning English. Navarro said he hopes to help students like him to learn and believe in themselves. Over 5,000 new English learners joined the district over the course of last year.

“I have seen the struggle — how hard it is coming to a new country, where you don’t know people, you don’t know the language, the school looks totally different from other countries,” he said. “I want to be able to support students in not just education, but also in life.”

Navarro initially attended undergraduate school hoping to become a high school math teacher. But right after graduating, he started working in after-school programs at Finkl and said he fell in love with the work.

Since he had a secondary school teaching license, not an elementary school one, he couldn’t teach at Finkl right away. So he decided first to become a special education paraprofessional. But he said he saw an immediate need for special education teachers, especially teachers who could speak both English and Spanish.

After watching Navarro as a paraprofessional, Finkl Academy principal Nancy Quintana said she encouraged him to enroll in the residency program. Now, between his training in special education and his bilingual skills, she said, he could have been hired anywhere.

“There’s a national shortage, so he could have gone back to any school,” she said. “The mere fact that he came back to me is a true honor.”

Navarro said his training year required a lot of work — but ultimately felt rewarding. Both Navarro and his wife worked as teacher residents and returned to Finkl this year. In February, they had a baby boy. Juggling life, their own college work, and their jobs could get stressful, he said, but he’s grateful they could understand and support one another.

“We walked through this whole path together,” he said, “We both put a lot of effort into it. We were always doing what we had to and more.”

Giovanny Navarro stands in a math classroom at Finkl Academy. Throughout the day, he switches between classrooms.

This school year, Navarro said he’s mainly focused on understanding his students, from their motivations to their challenges. For some children, he said, school cannot be their number one priority.

“Sometimes we need to be able to identify who needs that extra help, and what are the reasons students are acting some way,” he said. “Seeing things on paper and seeing who does good and who doesn’t is easy — really looking, talking to them and finding the ‘why’ is what is hard.”

On Monday, he started laying some of that groundwork, spending most of the day getting to know his students and easing them back into learning.

He switched between classrooms, grades, and subjects. But no matter what or who or where he was teaching, he said he carried something with him: patience.

That’s his plan, for this first day and beyond.

Max Lubbers is a reporting intern for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Max at mlubbers@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools meets Aug. 21 deadline to train staff on restraint, seclusion, officials say

2023-08-21T22:04:28+00:00

Chicago Public Schools says it has met a state deadline to train school employees on the proper use of restraint, timeout, and seclusion, according to a press release Monday.

The district said it has met the Illinois State Board of Education’s Aug. 21 deadline to train two staff members per campus at 517 schools in de-escalation and physical restraint. The state board placed Chicago Public Schools under watch last fall after the district repeatedly failed to comply with state laws governing the use of restraint, timeout, and seclusion.

Over 3,000 staff members have completed training or are “in progress” at 513 district schools as of Aug. 21, similar to the district’s final count, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the district’s public database. Of the staff members trained, about 1,300 are school security officers.

The district missed several deadlines throughout the 2022-23 school year to come into compliance. In the Monday press release, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said restraint should be the last resort in schools and thanked school officials for making sure that staff were trained.

“We are proud to start the new school year with staff appropriately trained at every school and will continue to prioritize this important training for our school staff,” Martinez said.

Over the last school year, the State Board of Education issued repeated warnings to Chicago Public Schools over the use of restraint and timeout in schools.

In an April 18 letter to the district, the state board said Chicago Public Schools is “jeopardizing the health and safety of students and staff” because staff were not properly trained in restraint and timeout.

Last school year, Chicago Public Schools reported 220 incidents of physical restraint and timeout, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat Chicago through a Freedom of Information Act request. The numbers were a slight increase over the previous school year when the district reported 205 incidents.

Prior to 2021, the district did not report physical restraint and timeout incidents to the state. The data showed that in the 2022-23 school year, 151 employees involved in incidents were not trained, while in 2021-22, 113 untrained staff members were involved.

Between school years 2021-22 and 2022-23, a majority of students involved in physical restraint and timeout incidents were identified as Black and male, the data showed.

Other issues cited in that letter included the use of outlawed methods of restraints, students placed in restraints for long periods of time, and failure to notify parents within 24 hours if their children were restrained.

Restraint, timeout, and seclusion are disciplinary methods used to prevent students from harming themselves or others in school buildings. The state defines restraint as when a school employee restricts a student’s movement. Timeout is when a student is removed from a class and seclusion involves confining a student to a room without adult supervision.

A state law passed in 2021 aimed to reduce the use of these tactics and keep students safe during incidents, but did not did not put an end to their use.

The changes in law came after a 2019 report from Chicago Tribune and ProPublica found that school employees at districts across the state were overusing these disciplinary methods on students. A majority of students who were restrained or placed in timeout were students with disabilities, but the misuse of restraint and timeout can target all students. Students with disabilities sometimes have physical restraints or timeouts written into their Individualized Education Programs under behavioral intervention plans.

In a joint press release on Monday, State Superintendent Tony Sanders said the state board will continue to work with CPS to maintain the training. “Having appropriately trained staff is critical in the rare situations when a student’s behavior puts them or others in imminent danger,” Sanders said in the release.

Chicago Public Schools also said in a release on Monday that it will continue to train school employees since training certifications expire every year. The district said it plans to train staff on timeout procedures by the end of the first quarter of the school year — which the State Board of Education noted was missing from the district’s training.

Seclusion, restraint of Indiana students not accurately reported, audit finds

2023-08-17T16:02:34+00:00

This article was originally published by WFYI.

Audits conducted by the Indiana Department of Education show some schools do not accurately report how often they forcibly isolate and restrain students. The findings confirm a WFYI investigation published in June that found similar discrepancies.

Indiana lawmakers approved legislation a decade ago that was intended to regulate and curb the use of restraint and seclusion in schools. The law states these interventions should be used rarely, and only as a last resort in situations where the safety of students or others is threatened.

But the WFYI investigation found the state’s lack of oversight means it’s unclear if the law had its intended effect.

Seclusion and restraint are used thousands of times per year in Indiana schools, and the interventions carry the risk of injury and can harm students’ mental well-being. Students with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to these measures.

The IDOE began conducting audits — which are required under a state rule — following inquiries from WFYI. The agency had no record of an audit being conducted prior to this year.

The audits were quietly published as part of the Indiana Commission on Seclusion and Restraint’s agenda for a public meeting Wednesday. Commission members discussed the findings during the meeting — the first time they’ve met this year.

Audits find discrepancies in number of incidents

Most of the schools audited were able to provide the department with records that matched their data reporting. Still, each of the three audits identified discrepancies between the number of incidents of restraint and seclusion reported to the state, and the number of records of those incidents kept by several schools.

In each of the audits, the IDOE concluded a need for “enhanced record keeping” by schools and “improvement” on how incidents are reported to the state.

Schools are required to report how often they seclude and restrain students to the IDOE. The department selected at random 3 percent of schools that reported at least one incident of seclusion or restraint, and then it asked those schools to provide the reports associated with the incidents they reported to the state.

In the audit for the 2020-21 school year, nine of the 21 schools included failed to provide IDOE with records of seclusion and restraint incidents.

For example, Clarksville Elementary School — located just outside Louisville — reported 51 incidents of seclusion to the IDOE. But they could not provide the state with any records of those incidents.

Similarly, South Side Elementary School — part of the East Noble School Corporation located north of Fort Wayne — reported 40 incidents of restraint and 76 incidents of seclusion that year, but they could not provide the department with a single incident report.

Members of the state’s Commission on Seclusion and Restraint expressed concern about the lack of records to IDOE staff.

“We had heard from a couple of different schools across the three years that it was a product of one person kept the records, that person was no longer with the school and nobody could find or access those records,” said Stephen Balko, an IDOE employee and chair of the commission.

Kim Dodson, a commission member and CEO of the Arc of Indiana — an advocacy organization for people with disabilities — told WFYI she wasn’t satisfied with that explanation.

In the 2021-22 audit, officials at three unnamed schools told the state they were missing records. And employees at another school submitted incident reports that did not match the data that was reported to the department.

In the audit for the 2022-23 school year, five of the 27 schools audited by the IDOE failed to submit documents that aligned with what they reported to the state. The IDOE did not identify the five schools.

But the audit shows that Harrison Parkway Elementary School — part of the Hamilton Southeastern School Corporation — reported 244 seclusion incidents and 205 restraints to the IDOE for the 2022-23 school year. The school submitted only 255 incident reports to the state.

DATABASE: Students secluded and restrained in Indiana schools

Rachel Deaton, a commission member and director of training and legislation for the Autism Society of Indiana, expressed concern that children had been secluded and restrained hundreds of times at one elementary school.

“That’s an incredible number there,” Deaton said. “Why do they have such a huge number? And how is it compared to other schools? I would think that that would have to be looked into a little bit more.”

The audits did not address hundreds of schools that reported zero incidents of restraint and seclusion; only schools that reported at least one were considered for the review.

Commission member Nicole Hicks said she continues to doubt the veracity of this data.

“I still think that there is… a miss in whatever way of getting schools to understand the need to capture this data, and to report it correctly,” she said. “I do think that these numbers are not accurate. Still.”

More training for schools, more state review

Commission members agreed that local school administrators need additional training on what constitutes a seclusion or a restraint, and their obligation to report these incidents to the state. Balko said the department would look into training resources and whether the commission could create a model form that schools could use to document these incidents.

Balko and other members also agreed that they need to meet more often than the statutory requirement of once per year.

“I’m not saying we’re starting over. But it does seem like we’ve hit a low point in awareness of all this, the process,” Hicks said. “And it would be nice to just revamp that.”

Since WFYI published its investigation, several state lawmakers have called for solutions and increased accountability for schools.

In an interview after the commission meeting, Dodson said she’s pushing for legislation to clarify the state definition of seclusion and restraint and ban the use of these practices in any situation other than a real emergency.

“We also need to make sure that [schools] have the tools to be more proactive in helping students not get to the point that they’re doing something that the school feels they need to be secluded or restrained,” Dodson said.

Contact WFYI education reporter Lee V. Gaines at lgaines@wfyi.org. Follow on Twitter: @LeeVGaines.

NYC school bus strike could disrupt start of year, Chancellor Banks warns

2023-08-11T15:53:36+00:00

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A school bus driver strike could disrupt the beginning of the school year, Chancellor David Banks warned parent leaders this week.

“We’re currently negotiating with the [Amalgamated Transit Union] around buses and there’s some real concerns around a potential bus strike,” Banks told members of his parent advisory council on Thursday.

“Certainly hopeful that we can avoid it, but just wanted to start to plant a seed to let people know about the possibility,” he added. “You’ll hear more in the coming days.”

A school bus strike would disproportionately affect the city’s youngest students as well as students with disabilities. Banks said a strike could affect between 85,000 and 150,000 students.

Carolyn Rinaldi, the chief of staff for Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents many school bus drivers, said the union had no comment. A recent union newsletter indicated that workers at a handful of school bus companies that contract with the city overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike.

“The Union is fighting to get back what members previously had and everything they lost,” officials wrote in the newsletter. “A fair contract for all senior and new members is the answer to making school bus a career again.”

The city’s yellow buses have often been the source of angst among families. The school bus system especially falters at the beginning of the year, and families routinely complain of late or no-show buses, which contribute to chronic absenteeism as working families may struggle to make other transportation arrangements. More recently, parents reported that buses without air conditioning topped 100 degrees.

A bus strike would represent a disruption far beyond the glitches that parents often experience during the opening weeks of a typical school year. And it would come just as schools are regaining their footing after years of pandemic-related disruptions.

Banks said parents would have “clear direction” on alternative transportation options in the event of a strike.

Education department spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said the city’s contingency plans include giving students MetroCards and “reimbursement for use of alternative transportation.” In some cases, he said, it could include “free ride-share.”

City officials have previously used ride-share services to help fill transportation gaps at no cost to families. But those services typically require that caregivers accompany their children to and from school, which can be hard for working parents.

“These negotiations are unlike most involving the city because they are between bus companies, who contract with the DOE, and their employees, who are not city employees,” Styer added. “The city encourages the parties to remain at the bargaining table until they reach a voluntary agreement.”

The city contracts with more than 50 bus companies who crisscross the city on about 9,000 routes. It’s not clear how many routes a strike would affect.

New York City’s school bus drivers last went on strike in January 2013 over job protection issues, pushing for senior drivers to get priority over newcomers. Roughly 8,000 drivers walked off the job for a month, according to reports. Since then some bus companies have voted to authorize strikes, including in 2016 and 2020, but ultimately reached agreements before taking any labor actions.

The city’s school bus system has faced serious disruptions since the pandemic when thousands of drivers were furloughed after school buildings shut down. Officials have since warned about driver shortages and have also acknowledged challenges getting drivers back on the job.

“They were laid off, in a worldwide pandemic, with no wages, no pension contributions, and, above all else, no health care,” Kevin Moran, the education department’s chief school operations officer, previously said. “And so when we talk about the driver shortage and trying to bring people back into the system, we have a fair bit of work to do to re-establish trust.”

Randi Levine, the policy director at Advocates for Children, said the organization is “deeply concerned about the impact of a potential bus strike.”

“Many students with disabilities, as well as students living in shelter, and students in foster care, rely on school bus service to get to school and we want to ensure they have a way of getting to school from the first day,” she said.

Parent leaders also expressed worry about a possible strike.

“Parents are watching these negotiations because the transportation of our children depends on having a stable workforce,” Sara Catalinotto, founder of Parents to Improve School Transportation, wrote in a text message.

If the bus companies “don’t make moves to restore the living standards of drivers and attendants, our families will keep having delays and hardship.”

Amy Zimmer contributed.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado lawmaker wants to ban seclusion rooms in schools as Denver investigation continues

2023-08-08T00:14:42+00:00

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A Colorado lawmaker wants to ban the use of seclusion rooms in schools statewide in the wake of allegations that a well-regarded Denver middle school maintained a room that locked from the outside where children having behavioral issues were left alone.

“Our students are here to receive a high-quality education, and they deserve not to be incarcerated,” said state Rep. Regina English, a Colorado Springs Democrat who also serves on the Harrison School District 2 board. “So these seclusion rooms, that’s going to be a no-go across the state of Colorado.”

Meanwhile, a district investigation continues into the use of a seclusion room at McAuliffe International School, the same school where longtime principal Kurt Dennis was fired earlier this summer after speaking with 9 News about safety concerns. Interim Principal Micah Klaver also has been placed on paid administrative leave, district officials confirmed.

State law allows educators to shut students inside of rooms, a practice known as seclusion, in certain extreme situations, but Denver district policy bans these rooms. Many Denver schools have what the district calls de-escalation rooms. District policy requires that an adult remain in the room with a student and that the door remain unlocked.

Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero said the district would retrain all staff at McAuliffe International School on district policy and appropriate de-escalation techniques before students return to classrooms later this month.

Dennis was fired after he spoke publicly about being required to keep a student accused of attempted murder in class instead of moving him to online classes or an alternative school. Many parents have rallied to Dennis’ cause and demanded that he be reinstated, and some Denver educators said his firing is having a chilling effect on other school leaders and teachers.

District officials said Dennis was fired not because he criticized the district publicly but because he shared personal information about a student. His termination letter also noted a number of accusations that he treated students with disabilities unfairly.

Last week, Denver school board members Auon’tai Anderson and Scott Esserman said an anonymous whistleblower who works at the school told them about the seclusion room, known among staff as an “incarceration room,” and shared pictures of walls with holes punched in them and an exterior lock on the door. They said staff described children being dragged kicking and screaming into the room and being left there alone for long periods of time.

Anderson said the district is aware of three students locked in the room, all of them Black. Fighting back emotion, school board member Michelle Quattlebaum said students should never be placed in conditions that “mimic incarceration.”

David Lane, Dennis’ attorney, told the Denver Post last week that Dennis did place a lock on the door in an effort to keep both students and staff safe and that he removed the lock when district officials told him to. Lane said Dennis never received any guidance about use of the seclusion room.

Anderson said Monday he does not know the identity of the whistleblower and that person is not cooperating with investigators because they fear retaliation if their identity is discovered. However, other McAuliffe staff are cooperating, he said, and the investigation is moving forward.

The Denver principals union has filed a grievance on behalf of multiple school leaders related to how the district is handling the investigation, with elected officials bringing forward the complaint and holding press conferences before the investigation is concluded.

“We are concerned that the current public discourse is not only having a deleterious impact on the school communities but possible severe reputational harm for multiple leaders,” reads the grievance letter from the Denver School Leaders Association, which also notes that district policies call for confidentiality around personnel matters and for employees accused of wrong-doing to have access to a fair process.

Colorado law allows children to be placed in seclusion rooms if they’re a danger to themselves or others.

Advocates have long criticized the practice as profoundly traumatic for children and counterproductive to teaching children better coping skills. The children who are placed in these rooms often have been through traumatic events or have disabilities that affect how they regulate emotions. Advocates argue that with better training and different attitudes, classroom teachers and aides can head off challenging behavior before it turns into a crisis.

Pam Bisceglia, executive director of Advocacy Denver, which supports students with disabilities and their families, said she has filed many complaints over the years regarding McAuliffe, and the district has promised to train staff before, yet she has seen little change in the culture. She has asked the Colorado Department of Education to do its own investigation into the seclusion room at McAuliffe.

Bisceglia said she has seen rooms in other Denver schools with soft lighting, bean bag chairs, and pillows where students can calm down. But on a tour of a district-run facility school in a suburban district, she saw a child locked in a room, crying, while an adult watched, silent, through a small window.

“When they showed us the room, you could tell how tall the tallest student was because the paint was scratched from that point down,” she said.

A new law passed last year requires that seclusion rooms have a window or other way for an adult to keep eyes on the child and that the room be a dedicated space free from hazards. Schools can no longer lock children in broom closets or offices.

A 2020 Chalkbeat investigation found a wide range of practices among Colorado districts and limited state oversight. Districts were essentially policing themselves, and parents were sometimes kept in the dark about what happened to their children. Since then, lawmakers have added new reporting requirements alongside the seclusion room regulations. And the Colorado Department of Education gained new enforcement authority for when its investigators find violations.

School districts argued against these regulations, saying they didn’t want to overburden special education staff with even more paperwork and that seclusion rooms were used as a last resort but an important one to keep all children safe.

English, who is Black, said she was “appalled and disgusted” to learn of the allegations, especially because the children involved “look like me.” In districts around the state, Black children are also more likely to be suspended, expelled, ticketed, and arrested when compared with their white peers.

“They are not caged animals, and I will not allow them to be treated as such,” English said.

Bisceglia said she supports a statewide ban because students should have the same protections around the state and because it would represent a clear statement of values.

Bret Miles, executive director of the Colorado Association of School Executives, said he wants to work closely with lawmakers to explain the “incredible burden” that principals have to keep all students safe, as well as the different circumstances and resources districts experience.

English said she was willing to work with school districts to make sure legislation allows for dedicated rooms where students can calm down or not hurt themselves or others. But she would not “backpedal” on banning seclusion rooms. She noted that Colorado banned corporal punishment this year.

“When these things take place,” she said, “there needs to be an adult in that room with them, not just locking a child up and saying, ‘Figure it out, cry yourself to sleep.’ That’s a no-go.”

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Some NYC school bus temperatures rose to over 100 degrees amid heat wave, parents say

2023-08-03T18:05:31+00:00

Brooklyn mom Anjeanette Stokes noticed a few times last month that her daughter came home from summer school sweating and exhausted.

At first, Stokes attributed her daughter’s occasional overheated condition to the especially hot weather, but then her bus driver called last month and said their vehicle had no air conditioning. With few summer options options close to their Bay Ridge home, her daughter, an 8-year-old with Down syndrome, rides a yellow school bus for about an hour from P.S. 130 in Kensington each afternoon.

As an intense heat wave struck New York City last week, Stokes said she pulled her daughter out of school one day out of concern about the bus conditions. On another, her husband took their daughter to and from school using the city’s public buses, which are air conditioned. (Ordinarily, they take her to school only in the morning, as their pick up time is too early, Stokes said.)

“It made me really nervous that she was getting so overheated,” Stokes said.

School bus temperatures during the summer months have long been the subject of complaints, persisting in recent years as New York City has seen record levels of heat. Last week, as temperatures spiked to over 90 degrees, advocates say the heat became even more severe inside of school buses.

Roughly 47,000 students are riding yellow school buses this summer, according to Education Department officials. The buses primarily serve children with disabilities or those in temporary housing.

Under city law, air conditioning on school buses is required for students with disabilities whose individualized education programs, or IEPs, specify it for health reasons — a policy that has frustrated other families still concerned about the effect that heat could have on their children. City Council passed an amendment to the law in June to include all students with disabilities by 2035, the same year by which New York City plans to convert to a fleet of entirely electric school buses.

In the meantime, the extreme heat has led some parents, like Stokes, to face a difficult choice: Pull their kids out of summer programs on hot days, or risk potential health concerns. The issue became even more prevalent last week, said Rima Izquierdo, a Bronx parent and advocate, as city officials urged New Yorkers to remain cool and hydrated amid a National Weather Service excessive heat warning.

“I have parents texting me pictures of the NYC warnings being like, ‘What do I do with my kid?’” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Do what you need to do. Do what you need to do — because if something happens to your kid, you gotta live with that.’”

Izquierdo said her kids have come home dripping with sweat every summer for more than a decade.

As a PTA president at P176X in Co-op City, a District 75 school serving children with disabilities, Izquierdo now conducts bus temperature checks at the campus every year, including a trip last week that found temperatures on some buses reached more than 100 degrees. Multiple buses they inspected did not have working air conditioning, said Tom Sheppard, a member of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy who accompanied Izquierdo that day.

One bus, Sheppard said, had an internal temperature of roughly 110 degrees.

Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle said more than 90% of buses used for summer transportation are equipped with air conditioning.

“Any student who is mandated to have air conditioning on their school bus is transported on a bus equipped with air conditioning,” she said in an email.

“Access to air conditioning on buses will be a priority as we move forward,” she added.

Sheppard said the city should take steps to ensure every bus has air conditioning during the summer, adding if even 10% lack air conditioning, it could pose health concerns.

“If we’ve got thousands of buses on the road, that means we’ve got hundreds of hot ones,” he said. “That’s a lot of opportunity for our young people to have heat related issues.”

Some complaints get traction

Sara Catalinotto, founder of Parents to Improve School Transportation, said some parents have had success advocating for their students to get onto buses with air conditioning, but added not all parents know where to go or that an IEP can include an air conditioned bus.

“A lot of parents don’t know their rights. They don’t know these channels of communication,” she said. “And really, it should be prevented. It shouldn’t really have to be such a struggle.”

Education Department officials said they address cases where air conditioning is not required by an IEP on an individual basis, and place air conditioned buses on routes wherever possible.

Stokes, the Bay Ridge parent, complained to the Education Department’s Office of Pupil Transportation, or OPT, early last week. The situation was resolved by Friday, and her daughter now has a bus with air conditioning. But she remains shocked it is only required for students whose IEPs mandate it, especially when it didn’t come up in any of her daughter’s IEP meetings.

“To me, that’s like saying, you need to have access to a water fountain on your IEP,” she said.

And while Izquierdo, too, said she’s been able to resolve some individual cases through contacting OPT, she expressed frustration with the long timeline toward a broader change. Each summer, she said, her phone rings non-stop with concerns from parents at her school. She worries that little will change before the new law goes into effect in 2035.

“It shouldn’t take 12 years,” she said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

8,000 Chicago Public Schools students won’t have bus service on first day of school, district says

2023-07-31T23:43:11+00:00

More than 8,000 Chicago Public Schools students will not have bus service on the first day of class on Aug. 21, a problem the district blames on an ongoing bus driver shortage.

With only half of the 1,300 drivers needed to transport students who require bus service, Chicago said it will instead prioritize transportation for students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness. Both groups are legally required to receive transportation to school.

For some students with disabilities, bus service is a requirement on their Individualized Education Programs. More than 7,100 such students have signed up for bus service so far, officials said. (Siblings of students with disabilities can still receive bus service if they attend the same school.)

This is the third year in a row in which the return to class has been marred by transportation woes that have left thousands of students without transportation or with long commutes. The district, which contracts with outside companies to provide transportation, has attributed bus service snarls in previous years to nationwide driver shortages.

In an effort to help fix ongoing transportation problems, the district in March approved a $4 million contract with Education Logistics Inc., known as EduLog, to schedule bus routes, determine start times for summer school and assign bus vendors during the school year. The contract is set to run through June 30, 2026.

This year, in the face of continued bus service troubles, the district will instead offer Ventra cards to general education students and one companion, such as a parent, “for as long as they are without school bus transportation,” according to a news release from Chicago. These families may have the option to get bus service “at some point” in the school year but the timing for that is not yet clear, said Charles Mayfield, chief operating officer for Chicago Public Schools.

Last year, Chicago provided bus service to 17,275 children, or about 5% of students.

“There’s been a nationwide shortage, and I think that is not an easy thing for any K-12 [district] right now,” Mayfield said Monday in an interview with Chalkbeat. “Even if you Google search bus driver shortage, you get a number of school districts that have the same issue that we’re having today and they are making adjustments similar to where we are, to try to provide alternatives.”

As of Friday, the district said it could guarantee bus service on the first day of school for students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness, after Chicago twice extended a sign-up deadline this summer, Mayfield said. But it can’t guarantee immediate service for families who sign up now. The district is required to link those families to bus service within two weeks of their request for transportation.

As an alternative, CPS is offering families of students with disabilities and those in temporary housing up to $500 in monthly stipends to cover transportation costs. So far, 3,000 students have chosen this option, officials said.

The continuing transportation issues have Chicago parent Laurie Viets bracing for yet another chaotic start to the school year. Two of her three children have district-provided bus service written into their Individualized Education Programs.

This year, she said the district has been more proactive since parents have raised concerns about bus services issues over the past few years. Over the summer, Viets received a couple of phone calls from the district asking if she would like to take the $500 stipend, but she declined. She said she prefers that the district provide bus service for her children.

Viets only learned the district had yet to figure out routes for students when she talked to a district representative last week.

“I have no hopes at all that transportation will show up,” said Viets. “I’ve got three kids, three separate schools in three different parts of the city. We’re going to be scrambling to get the two that need transportation to school because I guarantee we will not have transport on that first day.”

It is a familiar scenario for Viets – last year, she said she couldn’t get transportation for one of her children for about six weeks – and for thousands of other CPS families.

In the 2021-22 school year, when students returned to classrooms after COVID shuttered buildings, the district did not have bus services for 2,100 students on the first day of classes. At the time, the district provided families with $1,000 to help with transportation and even reached out to ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft for support.

At the start of the next school year, the district was able to route 15,000 Chicago Public Schools students to classes but hundreds of students with disabilities dealt with long commute times. At the time, the district reported that 365 students with disabilities had to deal with commute times of 90 minutes or longer and could not arrange transportation for 1,200 students.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Federal judge orders NYC to fix special education service and payment delays

2023-07-19T21:56:41+00:00

This is part of an ongoing collaborative series between Chalkbeat and THE CITY investigating learning differences, special education, and other education challenges in city schools.

A Manhattan federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Department of Education to take 40 specific steps to address decades-old delays in providing special education services to families who have won legal battles to secure them.

This includes a mandate that the department assign additional staffers within six months to address the thousands of cases that are currently overdue.

When parents of students with disabilities believe their child is not getting the supportive services they’re entitled to, they can file a complaint that leads to a hearing in front of an administrative judge, known as an impartial hearing officer.

Advocates and eight parents of kids with disabilities sued the department in federal court two decades ago because families were often forced to wait months to obtain services or payments for special education services even after they were awarded them in administrative hearings.

Those services can include transportation to and from school, physical therapy, and tuition payments to private schools when families can demonstrate the district can’t properly serve their children in a public school.

Over the years those delays have stretched for months or even years, forcing parents to forgo crucial services or pay for them out of their own pocket — which can be untenable for some families. Those with means sometimes take extreme measures, such as taking out second mortgages on their homes.

While the original lawsuit was settled in 2007, the case has continued for more than a decade longer because of the education department’s inability to meet the settlement terms, which require that it speed up services and payments considerably.

Wednesday’s order is the latest move, with the most detailed remedy to date, for fixing the issue. Many of the steps delineated by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska require the education department to act within three to six months, while a number extend beyond a year.

“We are here today to take a massive step toward getting families reimbursed for the costs of services,” Preska said during a court hearing on Wednesday. She referred to the changes required by her order as a “wholesale streamlining of the payment system.”

The ruling also requires the Education Department to set up a hotline from which parents can get updates on the status of their complaints seeking special education services for their children, and to set up a mobile app that allows providers of services to enter their hours worked by phone — rather than through a paper invoice that’s required currently.

“It’s huge and very impactful for students — especially the families that don’t have the resources to put money out and essentially give the DOE a loan until the DOE pays them back,” said Rebecca Shore, the litigation director at the group Advocates for Children, which filed the federal lawsuit in 2003. “Parents, families and students have been harmed because of the DOE’s failure for decades to timely implement [hearing officers’] orders.”

City officials said on Wednesday that they support the changes mandated by the court order. In an unusual move, schools Chancellor David Banks attended Wednesday’s court hearing, shaking Preska’s hand and posing for photographs. Though he did not take questions from reporters, he released a written statement after the order was issued.

“The new requirements are stringent because we, too, believe that change is long overdue,” Banks said. “While case volume and challenges increased over the past decade, we are moving aggressively to set a new course.”

Banks’ statement is notable because he previously cast doubt about the legitimacy of the complaint process, arguing that families have tried to “game this system,” referring to reimbursements for private special education that have ballooned to nearly $1 billion. Education officials later walked those comments back.

Delays are commonplace

Unless hearing officers set different timelines, the education department has 35 days to implement orders for services or payments, under a prior settlement in the federal lawsuit reached in 2007.

That agreement sought to push the education department to comply with the required timelines in more than 90% of the cases, and required the department to pay for an independent auditor to monitor its performance.

The education department utterly failed to meet that standard. The latest numbers supplied by that auditor, covering January to April 2022, show that the department met the deadlines for enacting orders for special education services in just 5.8% of cases, and met payment deadlines in just 2.3% of orders.

There were about 2,800 orders for services and nearly 4,000 orders for payment issued by hearing officers during that three-month quarter. It was the auditor’s 51st report since the settlement, which has come with a price tag for the Department of Education of over $25 million.

Wednesday’s ruling followed the installation of a special master in 2021 to analyze the Department of Education’s challenges in complying with hearing officer decisions in a timely manner, and it mandates most of his recommendations for addressing them.

Earlier this year, special master David Irwin, of Thru Consulting LLC, found that the education department office responsible for ensuring services are provided or payments made is operating with severely outdated methods and technology.

This includes using handwritten forms, paper-based invoices, and relying on “heavy” levels of data entry that involve “simply copying text from one place to another.”

“These outdated processes require more human staff time as the volume of cases increases,” Irwin wrote in a summary of his findings in March. “This is essentially the root cause of backlogs and delays.”

David Irwin worked as a federally appointed special master who recommended the changes ordered on Wednesday.

Irwin also pointed to staffing shortages that are exacerbated by the laborious need for manual data entry and by the administration’s unwillingness to make the positions more desirable by allowing staffers the flexibility to work from home.

“Simply put, kids are not getting services because there are not enough qualified staff to support this work, and the regular means of attracting and retaining staff has not worked,” he wrote.

John Farago, a hearing officer who adjudicates special education cases, said he’s skeptical the court order will transform the process. The problem, he argues, is more systemic and can’t be fixed with a series of technological and workflow changes.

“The culture of the district is to resist its obligation to pay providers,” he said, noting that culture extends to the department responsible for issuing payments to providers and private schools that receive tuition reimbursements from the city.

One solution, he said, could be to take the responsibility for breaking down hearing officers’ orders into specific payments and services out of the education department’s hands and giving it to an independent entity.

“What’s wrong with the order in my view is that it treats a large deep systemic problem as though it’s a series of small technical problems,” Farago added. “When you’re being eaten alive by piranhas it’s a mistake to focus on them individually.”

Irwin, the court appointed special master who came up with the recommendations adopted in the court order, said the education department “hardly pushed back” on any of his recommendations.

It will take time to see results, Irwin said, adding that he hopes that within a year a much larger share of services and payments are delivered within the required timeframe. He suggested that the main reason the education department has struggled to meet the legal timelines is that they have not understood what reforms are needed to fix the process.

“I’m an optimist,” he said. “This order tells them exactly what they need to do.”

Long-running ‘crisis’

But the court order does not address a much larger issue: The entire process disproportionately benefits families with time, resources, and access to legal help. Some families may simply go without services rather than facing a daunting bureaucratic system.

And the order focuses on the final phase of the complaint process, even as many other elements of it have been in crisis for years because of an explosion in cases. The number of complaints filed grew by the thousands between 2014 and 2018, according to a report commissioned by the New York State Education Department in 2019 — which found there were also too few hearing officers and too little space to handle the flood of cases.

At one point in 2019 there were just nine hearing officers on rotation to hear nearly 10,000 cases, and a single hearing officer had more than 1,700 cases on his plate.

The COVID-19 pandemic’s interruption to instruction made things even worse for many special education students, particularly those who relied on in-person services or whose disabilities made remote learning all but impossible.

In early 2021, the special master was appointed to get to the bottom of the education department’s difficulties in implementing the orders of hearing officers.

By the end of 2021, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio put the hearing process under the umbrella of the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings — a shift away from a contracted system that struggled for years to identify enough willing and knowledgeable hearing officers.

In the last school year under de Blasio, parents and attorneys filed nearly 18,000 requests for impartial hearings, according to The New York Times — almost double the number from 2018.

Shore, the attorney at Advocates for Children, said what’s significant about Wednesday’s order is the level of detail in the mandated action steps and the requirement that the Department of Education provide regular updates to the court about its progress.

“Those steps must be taken,” she said. “This is an actual order with teeth.”

Still, any fixes will be too late for many families, including the students involved in the original lawsuit who have since aged out of the public school system.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Yoav Gonen is a reporter for THE CITY. Contact Yoav at ygonen@thecity.nyc.

Newark mothers of students with disabilities push through school year challenges

2023-06-26T10:00:00+00:00

At the beginning of this school year, Lisa Flores worried that her 7-year-old son would not get the support he needed at Newark’s Dr. William H. Horton Elementary School.

Eli, who has a speech delay, was just going into second grade and needed services that seemed slow to come.

Veronica Searles was concerned for her son, too. Deion Searles has ADHD and anxiety and receives special education services — but as classes began in Newark Public Schools last September, transportation issues threatened to keep him from even getting to school.

The two mothers and the barriers their children have to overcome show some of the challenges faced by the roughly 6,400 students with disabilities who attend Newark Public Schools. They are among the district’s most vulnerable — and have been some of the students hardest hit by the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Newark expects the number of students with disabilities to grow next year as the students in need of special education services are rising year over year across the country.

In the fall, as classes kicked off, Newark parents of students with disabilities said their children needed more support after some missed out on specialized instruction or therapy sessions that were difficult to provide during remote learning. Others were continuing to push for compensatory services, a legal right students in New Jersey and across the country have for making up instruction or services they might have missed during the pandemic.

Nine months later, parents like Flores and Searles say they are looking forward to next year, despite looming concerns about their child’s physical and educational progress and available resources.

Parents push for more educational support post-pandemic

Eli, who has been at Horton Elementary since kindergarten, will start third grade in the fall. He still struggles with speaking and is below grade level, his progress derailed after the district switched to remote learning in the spring of 2020.

That prompted Lisa Flores, a mother of two, to become a full-time advocate for her child by pressing the district for compensatory education. In January, Eli began receiving additional one-hour speech sessions four times a week before school, which Flores said she is thankful for but has not yet yielded improvements in her son’s speech.

Eli is a rising third grader at Horton Elementary with a speech delay. He enjoys playing baseball on his time off.

“I don’t think it was good enough to catch him up to where he needed to be,” Flores said. “But it was good for him.”

This year, the district hired at least six speech-language specialists and contracted with outside service providers to bring additional support in occupational, physical, and speech therapy for its students. But as the district works to help students catch up, parents like Flores continue to push for more.

Flores has an ongoing compensatory education case after filing a complaint with the state’s office of special education in October. She hopes Eli can receive more make-up services to improve his regression in speech, an effect of remote learning during the pandemic, Flores said.

In the meantime, she is happy to see her son become more involved in other activities like baseball where he is learning to be “a big kid” and relate with other children.

“I see him speaking up more for himself and I’m just really proud of him,” Flores added. “That’s what I’m looking forward to [next year]. Just watching him mature more and be able to advocate for himself.”

Newark mothers push for more support for their children

Newark Public Schools has a long history of struggling to implement programs and support for its students with disabilities. In 2012, the state began monitoring the district following the settlement of a class action lawsuit that accused the district and state special education department of not evaluating students for special education services or providing resources in a timely manner.

Last summer, district officials were ordered to take corrective action by Nov. 1, 2022 after the New Jersey Department of Education found that the district failed to meet six federal responsibilities for students with disabilities.

The state also found problems with reporting in education plans, notifying parents of meetings, and missing meetings with parents and students with disabilities as part of responsibilities mandated under the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA).

The district’s office of special education said in November 2022 that it corrected its problems by providing additional training to its child study team members on the missed areas.

But throughout the school year, many parents like Searles have had to turn for help to outside organizations, such as Nassan’s Place, a Newark community group providing support and activities for autistic children and their families.

The founder, Nadine Wright-Arbubakrr, is also the parent of 18-year-old Nassan, a Newark Public Schools student who has autism and is nonverbal, and is the inspiration behind Nassan’s Place.

Like Searles, Wright-Arbubakrr has worked to get her son the services he needs at his school, New Jersey Regional Day.

She is happy with the staff and teachers at the school but found it alarming that her son could not attend the after-school program because there wasn’t a nurse on-site during that time.

“Now going into the 2023-2024 school year,” Wright-Arbubakrr asked, “ will my son be denied an after-school program because he has a seizure disorder?”

Other mothers, like Rashae Phillips, have had a hard time getting services for their kids in charter schools.

Phillips is the mother of a rising seventh grader at KIPP BOLD Academy. Under her son’s IEP, he must receive occupational therapy due to ADHD and ADD. But Philips has struggled this year in finding additional support at her child’s school and isn’t sure if he’ll continue his education there next year.

She does not want him to attend the city’s public school system and is prepared to travel outside of the district to get him the support he needs.

“It’s just frustrating to me because of these things that I’ve been fighting to get for years,” Phillips said.

High school students with disabilities rely on district support

For Veronica Searles, the start of this school year was expensive, as she had to spend $80 on Lyfts to get her son, Deion, to and from school during the first two days of classes after the bus never picked him up.

Deion, now a rising freshman at the Newark School of Data Science & Information Technology, refuses to travel in the district’s yellow buses due to an incident in fifth grade where the bus didn’t bring him home until 8:30 p.m., his mother said.

The South Ward family is on a tight income and as Deion enters his first year of high school this fall, Searles hopes she can rely on the district’s transportation services to get him to campus.

The district contracts with busing companies that provide transportation in minivans or smaller buses, which Deion prefers to ride in. Under federal law, students with disabilities must be provided with transportation under their Individualized Education Programs.

Deion is a rising freshman at the Newark School of Data Science & Information Technology.

“My only concern is that he’s getting older and the only thing he wants to do is what the other kids do and I’m not confident enough that he can travel by himself,” Searles said.

Despite some of the challenges their children have faced this year, Flores and Searles say they are proud of the struggles their sons have overcome and celebrate the small victories in their lives.

In April, Deion asked the principal at his former school, Camden Street School, if he could organize an autism awareness event. He is also involved in helping other students in Nassan’s Place and participates in activities year-round.

Deion completed his last year of middle school with good grades, his mother said, and worked hard to be accepted into the high school he wanted to attend.

She offered this wish for next year: “I just pray that he’d meet wonderful kids and have a good experience, learn a lot, and find out more about himself and be more independent.”

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

New York wants to revamp how schools are evaluated. Here’s what could change for now.

2023-06-22T16:45:25+00:00

How does the state determine whether schools are doing well or if they are struggling and need extra support?

Before the pandemic, state officials relied on standardized tests and high school Regents exams to figure out how well students were doing, along with other factors, such as graduation rates. But the public health crisis paused state testing and affected school performance metrics in other ways.

Now, education department officials are seeking a new, temporary evaluation system for the next two school years, with the hopes of creating something more permanent for the 2025-26 school year.

If a school is found to be struggling, it is required to develop an improvement plan that must be approved by local and state officials. Schools that don’t make progress for five years could face state takeover or closure — but it’s a route that state officials rarely took even before developing the current accountability system, which is meant to be less punitive for schools.

In the short term, over the next two years, state officials want to exclude certain science and social studies exams, as well as measures for student growth and college and career readiness, when deciding which schools need improvement. These changes are necessary, officials say, because schools are still missing a trove of data, such as enough student participation in state tests, because of the pandemic.

Already, the conversation is sparking some controversy. Some groups focused on education reform believe the move represents a step backward just as schools need more help as they recover from the pandemic. Other observers believe the state’s proposed plan is reasonable.

Ultimately, the federal government must sign off on these proposed changes, since the state’s accountability system is required by federal law and is written into New York’s federally required Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, plan.

“They’re doing a decent job of balancing what’s of interest in the state and the federal ESSA requirements, and incorporating all the instability and uncertainty that came with the slowdown of testing during the pandemic,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Teachers College and an expert in testing.

But Education-Trust New York, an advocacy organization focused on equity issues, worried that several of the proposed changes could mean masking “bright spots and disparities,” according to their written public feedback to the state.

“I think these next two school years are incredibly important for kids coming out of the pandemic,” said Jeff Smink, the group’s deputy director, in an interview with Chalkbeat. “We have to both give them all the support they need but also hold them to high standards, and I just don’t feel like we’re doing that right now.”

What metrics would still be used?

Under the state’s proposal, schools will still be measured on English language proficiency (based on a state language exam for English learners), graduation rates, how well students are doing in core subjects based on Regents and state test scores, and chronic absenteeism. In New York City, chronic absenteeism has been a pressing issue, with 41% of students last school year absent for at least 10 school days.

What do state officials want to ditch (for now)?

The state wants to put a pause on measuring academic progress based on certain goals for student scores on state English and math tests.

State officials say they want to update these goals — first set in the 2017-18 school year — before they use them to determine whether schools are struggling.

The state’s proposed plan would also pause the use of “Measures of Interim Progress,” which more broadly measures whether schools are meeting goals for academics and other things, like their graduation rates.

For elementary and middle schools, officials want to pause how they’ve been measuring student growth, largely because of the lack of testing data. Typically, they calculated student growth using three years of testing data, but the pandemic caused big disruptions: For example, just one in five New York City children took state exams in the 2020-21 school year, when most children chose to learn from home.

For high schools, officials won’t consider college, career, and civic readiness metrics, which include advanced coursework or extra credentials in specialized jobs-based courses. That’s because the pandemic may have hampered students’ access to some of these programs or courses, officials said. They also worried that the pandemic’s impact on learning may have caused students to perform worse academically than they otherwise would have, such as on AP exams.

What will the state do with data, even if it’s not being used to evaluate schools?

State officials still plan to provide all of this data to schools for “informational purposes only” for the next two school years, they said.

Why do state officials want to exclude elementary school science exams and high school social studies assessments?

Science tests would be excluded because the state has changed who must take those exams. Traditionally, students in fourth and eighth grades take the state science test. However, only eighth graders took the test this school year, as the state prepares to offer the exam next year to fifth graders instead of fourth graders. That means they won’t be able to compare results equitably across elementary and middle schools that have different grade configurations.

Fifth graders will take the exam next spring. Asked why those scores won’t be taken into account for the 2024-25 school year, a spokesperson said that it allows districts to have “consistency and predictability” for now, as they attempt to rebuild the accountability system.

While calling it a “logical” move, Ed-Trust argued that excluding science tests “undermines the importance of science education” and worried schools will have less reason to focus on it. The organization suggested that the state should instead work with local districts to “ensure a smooth transition” to the new science assessments without entirely removing it as one way to measure student performance.

On the high school level, officials want to pause using social studies tests because of multiple exam cancellations in recent years. The state looks at cohorts of students, such as the graduating class of 2023, when considering how they performed on these tests, namely the Regents exams for Global History and Geography and U.S. History and Government.

But students who will graduate this year couldn’t take Regents exams in 2021, when they were in 10th grade, because of the pandemic. U.S. History and Government exams were also canceled last year, when these students were juniors, in the wake of a mass shooting in Buffalo, with the state education department claiming there was material on the exam that could “compound student trauma.”

State officials have emphasized that this plan “in no way diminishes” the importance of science or social studies instruction.

How will schools be labeled if they need support?

The lowest performing schools are known as schools in need of Comprehensive Support and Improvement, or CSI. But the state won’t list new CSI schools until the 2025-26 school year because they identified a group of such schools this year under a tweaked system, and that process only happens every three years, officials said.

A total of 139 New York City schools were identified this year as in need of some level of improvement, with 83% of them listed as CSI schools, according to state data.

However, New York will identify schools for Targeted Support and Intervention, or TSI, next year, which must happen annually per federal law. Those are schools that aren’t meeting goals set for specific student groups, such as by race, economic status, and those with disabilities.

In one recent — and perhaps confusing — change, schools that are meeting or exceeding their goals are no longer called “Schools in Good Standing” and instead are now labeled by the state as schools identified for Local Support and Improvement, or LSI.

What will happen for the 2025-26 school year?

State officials plan to revamp the accountability system for the 2025-26 school year after collecting feedback from the public. The new plan will also incorporate any changes to the state’s graduation requirements, which could come as soon as the end of this year. The education department is rethinking the role of Regents exams in graduation, among other considerations.

Pallas said that the plan for the 2025-26 school year and beyond would still have to meet federal ESSA requirements and earn the buy-in of school district leaders — meaning that it likely won’t be “a dramatic break from the past.”

“It’s gotta be something that feels progressive but also comfortable,” Pallas said.

Thomas Wilburn contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC often segregates students with significant disabilities. This new school aims to change that.

2023-06-20T16:41:26+00:00

Outfitted with paper chef hats, a group of students at Brooklyn’s P.S. 958 were getting ready on a recent afternoon to launch a mock restaurant, wiggling on the classroom carpet in anticipation of their first wave of customers.

The students had been preparing since February, touring their surrounding Sunset Park neighborhood to learn what types of food were most prevalent before settling on a Mexican theme. The 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds also studied different roles within a restaurant — including chef, host, server, and manager — before assuming one of those positions themselves.

It was no traditional end-of-year project for the school, which is wrapping up its inaugural year. As the students scampered to their stations and loaded up plastic trays of popcorn and water, the moment represented a test of the new school’s unusual mission: to serve any student in the surrounding neighborhood — ranging from typically developing children to those with more significant disabilities — and meaningfully integrate them in classrooms and other activities whenever possible.

All of the mock restaurant’s customers, who soon began trickling in, were students with autism from a neighboring classroom whose needs would have otherwise landed them in a separate school for students with more complex disabilities.

All city elementary schools are required to accommodate students with disabilities, but some 26,000 children attend District 75 programs, a citywide network of schools that exclusively serve students with more serious needs. Inconsistent or inadequate special education services have also helped drive thousands of additional families to private schools with tuition financed by the city, which involves a complex legal process that favors those with time and resources.

P.S. 958, however, is trying to keep children who may have higher needs closer to home, something a group of caregivers in Sunset Park have long pushed for. The school’s mission is in line with an effort by schools Chancellor David Banks to expand programs designed to include students with disabilities alongside their typically developing peers, part of a push to keep families from exploring private options.

P.S. 958 is wrapping up its first school year — serving 3- and 4-year-olds in prekindergarten, as well as kindergarten, in its own gleaming new building on Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue. It will gradually expand to fifth grade in the coming years.

About half the school’s students have disabilities, more than double the citywide rate. A majority of the school’s students come from the surrounding neighborhood, and the school prioritizes local applicants in its admissions process, officials said, though some local parents said they hope the city does more to get the word out.

Emily Shapiro, the principal of P.S. 958, spent 20 years working in District 75, starting as a paraprofessional right out of high school. Those schools often provide crucial support that traditional elementary schools don’t offer, she said. But the students who attend often have to travel far outside their neighborhoods, which can make it difficult to forge bonds with other children in the neighborhood and attend after-school programs, and it can lead to lost instructional time thanks to the city’s notoriously unreliable yellow bus system.

“Once the kids leave the school building, they don’t see each other at the playground, or at the grocery store. Parents aren’t building relationships,” Shapiro said, adding that siblings typically can’t attend school together if one of them is placed in District 75. “The idea of being able to go to school in your neighborhood, that’s the number one most important piece of all of this.”

A new model for integrating students of all abilities

One way the school is working to include a more diverse group of students is by hosting programs that are more typically found in schools that only cater to students with disabilities. P.S. 958, for instance, is the first elementary school outside District 75 to host an AIMS program, short for Acquisition, Integrated Services, Meaningful Communication, and Social Skills.

The AIMS program is designed for students with autism who have significant behavioral, communication, or social delays. It involves small group instruction and a bevy of dedicated staff, including a certified behavior specialist, special education teacher, speech teacher, and paraprofessional.

In a traditional District 75 program, those students might have more limited contact with their typically developing peers. At P.S. 958, they were the first set of customers to test out the mock restaurant their classmates next door were setting up.

As they filtered into the classroom, the AIMS students largely needed assistance from classroom aides and iPads with picture-to-speech software to communicate snack orders. But the interactions let them practice conveying their needs, and the students running the restaurant were also learning how to work with peers who may not pick up on typical social cues, such as making eye contact.

P.S. 958 is starting small, enrolling 59 students in its first year — including six in the AIMS classroom. As the school grows to serve students from 3-K through fifth grade in the coming years, the school plans to grow the AIMS program, too.

To be sure, some District 75 schools, which often share buildings with other schools, also give students opportunities to interact with their typically developing peers, such as shared physical education classes or sports teams.

But frequent opportunities for meaningful inclusion are rare, especially when it comes to academics, according to educators and advocates. There are often signals that inclusion isn’t a priority: District 75 students can be forced to use separate entrances to school buildings or may struggle with equal access to school facilities.

There can also be downsides to segregating children with more intensive needs. Some families and educators say those programs can be chaotic or may represent little more than holding grounds, especially for children with more intense emotional or behavioral issues. Still, it can be difficult to tease out the impact of inclusive classrooms and it may not always be effective for students with disabilities to learn in general education classrooms.

Some observers said the P.S. 958 model is promising and stressed that the city should do more to get the word out about schools that have inclusion programs.

“What you really want is [P.S.] 958’s everywhere,” said Jenn Choi, an advocate who helps families navigate the city’s special education system, noting that meaningful inclusion is rare.

“Inclusive doesn’t mean ‘I let you in here.’ Inclusive means ‘I’m going to help you when you’re here,’” she said. “I don’t hear that message very often.”

P.S. 958 Principal Emily Shapiro.

So far, about 15% of students enrolled at P.S. 958 likely were initially recommended for more restrictive settings than what the school offered — such as those with very small class sizes and intensive support that can be offered through District 75. And while Shapiro said the school is not yet equipped to handle any student who might want to enroll, they’ve had success working with families who were initially slated for more specialized programs but wanted to give P.S. 958 a shot.

Commitment to inclusion runs throughout the school

Fahyolah Antoine, a special education teacher who helped plan the mock restaurant project, said she’s been impressed with the school’s commitment to inclusion. “What I really appreciate is how special education is put on the forefront, rather than the backburner,” she said. “Sometimes it can just feel like it doesn’t get the attention it needs and deserves.”

For example, students from the AIMS program may participate in academic programs with their peers in other classrooms. In one instance, the school placed a less verbal student in a classroom with more verbal students for phonics — lessons that teach children the relationships between sounds and letters.

“Because the other students are saying, ‘A-Apple-Ah,’ and using their voice, he’s starting to do it,” Shapiro said. “Putting him in a classroom with other peer models, who are using those skills is more motivating, I think, than having a speech therapist sitting next to you” practicing the same lesson.

Staff are also intentional about grouping students of different ability levels for other activities, like recess and music. Students also do not sit with their regular classes during lunch, giving students of a wider range of ability levels the chance to interact with each other.

Parent Ivelisse Castro said those types of interactions have been a big help for her daughter, Chloe. The 3-year-old, who has a learning disability, struggled to coordinate her movements without falling down, and she often screamed or whined rather than using words to articulate her feelings.

P.S. 958 parent Ivelisse Castro and her daughter, Chloe.

In Chloe’s pre-K classroom, which includes children with and without disabilities, “she’s picking up habits from them, how to express herself better, how to speak better,” Castro said. “She can have a conversation with you now — it’s an amazing feeling.” She was relieved to find a school that could meet Chloe’s needs just down the block from her home.

The school also makes time for service providers such as speech and occupational therapists to regularly consult with teachers. Through a creative scheduling arrangement, therapists conference with educators multiple times a week, eventually discussing each of the school’s students — including those without disabilities.

They’ve collaborated on issues such as deploying adaptive seating for students who struggle to focus in traditional classroom chairs. (The school also has a dedicated space where students with sensory issues can receive extra help.)

“In other schools, there isn’t structured time for this,” said Cara Kantrowitz, an occupational therapist. “Here, it’s built into everyone’s schedule.”

A P.S. 958 student played the role of “manager” in their mock restaurant.

Back at the mock restaurant, the mood at times resembled the frenetic energy of a professional kitchen, as one child was momentarily overwhelmed with orders.

“I need servers! I need servers!” he shouted. “I need their popcorn!” With plenty of adults on hand to keep students on track, the popcorn orders made their way back to the tables on small paper plates.

Antoine, the special education teacher, noted that the students running the mock restaurant also include a mix of students with and without disabilities. The teachers worked to let students tap into their strengths and interests in deciding what roles to take on.

After students had a chance for seconds, it was time for the next class period. As a handful students from the AIMS classroom filed out, the children running the mock restaurant offered a sendoff.

“Thank you — come again!”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago parents, advocates call for transparency in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s school board picks

2023-06-16T19:26:03+00:00

A group of Chicago parents and advocacy organizations are urging the mayor’s office to keep the public better informed about upcoming appointments to the city’s Board of Education.

In a Wednesday letter, the advocates, who are primarily focused on education and disability justice, asked the mayor’s office to do an open call for members, increase transparency around the qualifications for selection, and outline the administration’s goals for the composition of the school board. Along with the letter, the group also asked to meet with the mayor.

Four of seven current school board terms are set to expire on June 30, but Mayor Brandon Johnson could replace all of them like his predecessors did. He will be the last mayor to appoint members of the school board before Chicagoans get the chance to vote for their school board members.

In 2024, the board will expand from seven to 21 people — a much larger school governing body compared to other major cities — with the mayor appointing the school board president and 10 of those seats. By 2027, the board will be fully-elected.

Until then, said Miriam Bhimani, Johnson should live up to his campaign promise to “stand for the people.”

“Standing for the people means that you need to trust and respect the deep reservoirs of experience and knowledge that families have in a city, and you do that by being transparent,” said Bhimani, a researcher for one of the letter’s signees, FOIA Bakery, which focuses on transparency.

In a statement to Chalkbeat, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said that “As a Chicago Public Schools parent and former educator who fought for an elected representative school board, Mayor Johnson is a partner to many of these individuals and organizations seeking education justice. He sees them, he hears them, and he will ensure that appointments to the Chicago Board of Education reflect the principles they value.”

While on the campaign trail, Johnson told Chalkbeat that in the transition to an elected board, “We need candidates who are deeply invested and knowledgeable from the communities served to have a fair chance to win races to influence the education of their children.”

In a press conference last week, Chalkbeat also asked Johnson when he planned to appoint school board members.

“We’re going through a process now where we are reviewing those who are currently on the board, and those who ultimately align with our vision,” Johnson said. He also said his deputy mayor for education Jen Johnson is working with him on appointing school board members.

Advocates say they want that vision to be more clearly defined and communicated to the public. Bhimani said the administration has stayed “opaque” about the process so far.

“What does the CPS board do and why do they do it? We really need the answer to that question from this administration,” Bhimani said. “What are the metrics of success and who are they doing it for? Are they there for the taxpayers? Are they there for children in the system?”

The letter sent Wednesday listed priorities for experience and expertise that board members should have, including in bilingual education, undocumented students, unhoused students, students who are incarcerated, and students with disabilities.

Terri Smith, a parent advocate who has a daughter with hearing loss, said she wants board members who have expertise and personal experience with students with disabilities.

“Unless you consciously decide how you want to comprise the board, then all you’re doing is hunting and pecking for solutions to things and hoping that you come up with the right one,” said Smith, who signed the letter. “Even if you do research, it’s still taking more time than it should if you had a content expert right there on the board.”

Cassie Creswell, director of Illinois Families for Public Schools, also stressed experience with students with disabilities as a priority. She said that’s especially important after a state investigation found Chicago Public Schools did not fully train staff on use of restraint and seclusion, which put students with disabilities particularly at risk. An April letter from the Illinois State Board of Education outlined violations, including untrained staff using outlawed methods of restraint.

Chicago Public Schools said in a statement that top district and Board of Education leadership has been “transparent about the need for improved systems, strategies, and services” to support students with disabilities, and that the district will “remain committed” to working with ISBE, parents and advocacy groups to develop improvements.

Creswell said that before the transition to elections, the appointed school board must be prepared to address this issue.

“There is a backlog of things to deal with that are extremely urgent right now – the district’s recognition status with the state being at stake because of unresolved special education issues that involve literally life and death matters for children,” Creswell said. “These board appointments, that’s who we’re legally putting in charge of addressing this, so it really matters.”

Creswell said transparency in the appointment process is not only crucial for the upcoming vacancies but for the transition to a hybrid and then fully elected board. She wants meetings to be more accessible. Currently, the board meets during weekday working hours in the Loop, which Creswell said prevents many people from attending.

Smith also said this is a time to set precedents.

“When elections happen, we want people to feel that it’s important to come forward and say ‘I’m electable because I bring this to the table, not just because I’m rah rah or I have a political affiliation.”

Max Lubbers is an intern for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Max at mlubbers@chalkbeat.org

Chicago special education chief steps down amid reports that the district violated state law governing restraint, timeout

2023-06-09T17:46:54+00:00

Stephanie Jones, the chief of Chicago Public Schools’ special education department, left the district on Friday, amid criticism for her role in the district’s failure to fix violations involving the use of physical restraint and timeout on students.

Jones’ leadership has faced scrutiny from the district’s teachers union, parents, and advocates for students with disabilities over concerns about high staff turnover on her team, recovery services for students during the COVID-19 pandemic, and other issues.

The Chicago Teachers Union’s governing body passed a vote of no confidence in Jones in late May and called on the district to fire her for “dismal failures to protect the district’s most vulnerable students, continued violation of special education laws and the creation of a toxic workplace.”

Chicago named Richard Smith as interim chief while the district conducts a nationwide search for a new department lead, according to a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Smith is a former CPS school principal, chief network officer, and chief officer for the Office of Special Education and Supports (now known as the Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services).

This week, Chalkbeat Chicago reported that Chicago Public Schools is under watch by the Illinois State Board of Education because the district has been violating state laws governing the use of restraint and timeout in classrooms.

In a letter dated April 18, the state board cited Jones for not properly fulfilling her role as the designated official responsible for restraint and timeout policies and incidents. The official is supposed to maintain a copy of records, be notified of every incident by the end of the school day on which it occurred, and receive documentation or any evaluation of any incident that exceeds 15 minutes of physical restraint or 30 minutes for timeout.

Jones told the state board on Dec. 23, 2022 that she had delegated the responsibility to another person on her team but that person left in March 2023. Without anyone monitoring restraint and timeout incidents across the city’s public schools, the state said the district was not in compliance with state law.

“We sincerely thank Dr. Jones for her commitment to serving students in Chicago with diverse learning needs, and we wish her well in her future endeavors,” a spokesperson for Chicago said in a statement on Friday.

Earlier in the week, at a Wednesday press conference, CEO Pedro Martinez said in response to a question about the state’s restraint and timeout concerns that improving services for students with disabilities is a top priority for his administration. He vowed that the district will meet all state requirements around training and compliance with restraint rules before the start of the school year in August.

He noted that the district is increasing funding for disability services by $100 million in the next school year’s budget and said schools will staff more teachers and aides working with students with disabilities.

“This is an area that has been a challenge in our district for the last two decades,” he said. “But we’re going to fix it.”

At the Wednesday event, Martinez sidestepped a question about who will be held accountable for the restraint issues.

In recent months, Jones has emerged as a candidate for leadership jobs in other districts, including Kalamazoo Public Schools in Michigan, where she was named finalist for the superintendent position. Another candidate was selected for that role.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.