As the federal government announces plans to cut spending in the Department of Education, civil rights agencies and special education programs risk losing important funding.

Special day class students enjoy their recess time at Dolores Huerta Elementary in San Francisco, Calif. Credit: Alice Kazakov

By Alice Kazakov

Julia Stone, special education program specialist at KIPP Northern California Public Schools, says she is scared for the future of education. At Stone’s last regional team meeting, lawyers told the school to get rid of the DEI mission statement page on their website, or risk losing federal funding. The schools already need to make $2.5 million in cuts this coming year, and they’ll need to look at where to make cuts in special education soon.

Just within the first 100 days of his inauguration, President Donald Trump along with his administration announced plans to slash the Department of Education, which he described as inefficient. Special education staff and disability rights agencies across California say that students with disabilities will be those most affected by change.

Trump plans to move all special education related duties to the Department of Health and Human Services, with all enforcement and civil rights decisions being directed to the Justice Department. Some, like Stone, worry about special education being managed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. She believes that his speech on April 16 on rising rates of autism, calling the increase an epidemic and stating that autism is caused by environmental factors or vaccines, is greatly damaging to people with disabilities.

Certain laws like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which legally mandates states to give students with disabilities accessible, equitable education, will be protected. Despite this, teachers and civil rights groups question what special education would look like if the states had to be more self-sustaining in terms of funding.

Under the IDEA, which currently serves more than 8 million students nationwide as of 2023, states receive grants to help fund special education and early intervention programs. These grants are additionally allocated to teacher credential programs, research institutes and other agencies that work to improve and strengthen the state’s systems for individuals with disabilities.

Allegra Fischer, a senior policy attorney at Disability Rights California (DRC), worries that without a fully enforced and funded IDEA, students will lose out on essential services they were once fully entitled to.

“IDEA requires schools that are receiving federal funding to make sure that they are providing a free and appropriate public education for each unique individual student, and that that's done in the least restrictive environment,” Fischer said. “That's what we want, ultimately- at least maintain the level of enforcement and services that are currently in place in California.”

Fischer worries about the future of the grants that support special education in schools. Especially when it comes to two proposed changes: block granting and private school vouchers.

Block granting is a specific amount of funding given to the state with less regulation as to how it is spent. In the context of cutting excessive spending in the DOE, states would be receiving less funding and with no direction as to how it should be spent. New education savings plans would incentivize parents to use federal funds to enroll their students in private schools.

“In both of those scenarios, students with disabilities lose out,” Fischer said. “Private schools are not bound by the same disability protections and requirements. They often either outright exclude students for disabilities, or if they do include them, they don't serve them well. They don't have the systems in place to be able to serve students with disabilities in an inclusive way.”

Fischer additionally serves as the head of the Youth Practice Group at DRC. Her day-to-day includes policy advocacy, but also legal representation for families looking to sue school districts. Some lawsuits that arise are for not providing students the services mandated by their Individualized Education Plans and for discrimination.

“The Department of Education has an Office of Civil Rights which serves an investigative function, as well as enforcement of our civil rights laws,” Fischer said. “Even prior to the new administration, they were understaffed and were taking quite a while to respond to complaints of discrimination in our schools. Now it appears that all enforcement activity has been stopped, except for direct disability discrimination.”

This is problematic, according to Fischer, because individuals could have many intersecting identities and different types of discrimination they can be impacted by.

“Of course, we want them to continue investigating the disability discrimination, but we want that to be in conjunction with all of the other civil rights protections that people are entitled to,” Fischer said.

Agencies like the California State Council on Developmental Disabilities are now putting an emphasis on educating families on their given rights and how to navigate certain systems like healthcare and legislatures.

Chris Arroyo is the deputy director of policy and public affairs at the SCDD, a state agency that does everything from legal advocacy, representation, research, to collaboration with key policy makers. Arroyo says that although the agency is funded by the federal department, their main job is to serve the public first and push for systemic change by collaborating with the state.

Arroyo plays a large role in what he describes as “technical assistance”, or answering people’s questions and hosting workshops to train families on how systems function.

There are typically two questions, according to Arroyo. “What is needed? I've been denied a service, how can I get what I need? The other kind of questions are what I think of in terms of legal questions,” Arroyo said. “We're not attorneys, but we know the law, and we educate people about the law. So those questions tend to be, what are the obligations of a service? What does the law say about this and that?”

Arroyo says that with the incoming wave of changes proposed by the Trump administration, he is gearing up to provide more of this technical assistance to people feeling lost and confused.

A specific example he provided is the discourse around Medicaid cuts, something that has not been yet confirmed by President Trump or his administration but has been discussed as generating unnecessary expenses.

Arroyo said as soon as his team heard the news they developed presentations and training focused on Medicaid, and what it means for those living with a disability. The team focused on what the proposal meant, what services could be impacted, who would be affected and most importantly they asked families to share their stories.

“As an organization, we're not permitted to engage in lobbying. That's actually forbidden,” Arroyo explained. “We cannot tell people to vote and we can't tell them what position to take. In creating systemic change, we want to make sure people understand what advocacy opportunities exist for them to be involved.”

According to Arroyo, the agency is essentially giving people the tools they need to take action and engage in advocacy on a systematic basis.

Since the agency is federally funded but works with the state government, Arroyo emphasizes their unique role to be as collaborative as possible as well as prop up and improve the work of other agencies in the system.

“There are plenty of other folks out there who are doing more confrontational advocacy and they have a role for any movement to move forward. History has shown us you need both,” Arroyo said. “You need people on the inside and you need people on the outside pushing [the system].

Julia Stone is working to push for higher pay and accessible training programs for both general education and special education teachers. She is worried about what funding might look like in the next few years.

“We're clearly not paying teachers enough as they should be paid,” she said. “There's a huge increase in students with disabilities and a huge increase in behavior and trauma. Teaching is so different than it used to be.”

Stone believes that California is the most equipped state to handle any changes in funding and research for students with disabilities. However, Stone emphasizes that education as a whole is vulnerable across the country and most schools don’t know how to proceed.

In a time of great uncertainty, schools may have to adapt and look at other avenues to function sustainably. Special education programs and low-income schools are already overwhelmed by persistent staff shortages and increasing enrollment rates.

“We have to kind of play along, which is really shitty and creates tough decisions,” Stone concludes. “It's ultimately going to impact our Title One schools and especially the kids who need it the most, and it's going to continue to exacerbate these issues.”

“We need an emphasis on education, especially special education,” Stone concludes. “Our priorities as a society should focus more on education.”

Home

About

Special education staff and state agencies brace for swift changes