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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.
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.
