Special Education
Laws & News
Across the States
CT: Inclusion for students with disabilities is mission of Connecticut’s 2026 Kid Governor
WTNH
Friday was inauguration day for 2026 kid governor Tessa Hallinan and her cabinet. She was joined by more than 150 fifth-grade students and teachers, as well as local leaders, as she took her oath of office. “Many of you have come to support the kids who are up here right now — who had an idea and took action,” Hallinan said. “To every fifth grader who voted in the statewide election, this experience could not have happened without you. Thank you for making your voices heard by participating in the election.” She was elected on a platform she calls “everybody belongs,” focused on inclusion for students with disabilities.
NE: Tuition breaks fall short, suspending young students moves ahead in Legislature
Nebraska Public Media
Sen. Dave Murman, chair of the Education Committee, is the lead sponsor of a proposal to once again allow schools to suspend students in kindergarten (LB653) through second grade. That practice was prohibited in 2023, unless the student brings a deadly weapon to school. Murman’s proposal would add that students could also be suspended if they engage in violent behavior capable of causing physical harm to another student or school employee. Sen. Jana Hughes supported the proposal, saying schools are reporting increasingly violent behavior, even among the youngest students. Sen. Terrell McKinney tried to stop the bill. McKinney, who’s black, recalled why he sponsored the ban on suspensions three years ago. “At the core of it, when I introduced the bill and I spoke to it, is the school-to-prison pipeline, the disproportionate amount of kids that look like me and others that are being suspended, that is an issue that needed to be addressed,” he said. McKinney faulted schools for not using alternatives to suspension to handle disruptive students.
Sen. Tom Brandt objected to another part of the proposal, which would require school districts, once they accepted a child under the state’s public school choice or option enrollment program, to also accept any siblings, even if the siblings had special education needs requiring an individualized education program.
Senators voted 33-8 to accept both the suspension and option enrollment parts of Murman’s proposal, then gave the bill first-round approval.
TX; Texas increased special education funding. Now, the state has to decide where it will go
Houston Public Media
Texas lawmakers last year increased funding for disabled students after decades of underfunding. Now, the state must figure out what equipment, training, and other services that $250 million will go toward. The Texas Education Agency is surveying professionals who provide special education services to students for detailed information on what they do and how they do it. TEA Deputy Commissioner Kristin McGuire said a portion of House Bill 2, the state’s recent education funding measure, is designed to improve special education delivery by “looking at those special ed services that the child is receiving to determine how can we more efficiently and better cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.” The TEA is asking providers what training and certifications they need, equipment used to help disabled students, and the frequency of services provided, to name just a few elements of special education. These details were never sought before, let alone used to determine funding.
WI: Education has seen unprecedented changes in Trump’s second term
Urban Milwaukee
The day is almost over at Casimir Pulaski High School on Milwaukee’s south side. Most students are packing up their things to leave, but Sarah Lind is still helping a student struggling with her English homework. “So what’s different about these two paragraphs?” Lind asks the freshman student. It takes some time, but together, Lind and the girl figure it out before the last bell. Pulaski is a full-inclusion school, meaning general education and special education students are in the same classrooms. Lind is a special education teacher who moves from classroom to classroom, helping students where needed. It’s a second career for Lind, a former journalist, that almost didn’t happen.
CA: State settles with Sacramento schools over enrollment
The Center Square
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a settlement Friday with the Sacramento City Unified School District following an investigation into enrollment policies that allegedly discriminated against students. The settlement resolves a lawsuit alleging the district violated open enrollment and nondiscrimination laws. “Every student has the right to equal access to a quality public education. That starts with enrollment,” Bonta said in a press release.
In July 2024, the California Department of Justice launched an investigation into whether the Sacramento school district was complying with state enrollment laws designed to ensure equal access to public education. Bonta later concluded that the district’s open enrollment and midyear transfer policies were discriminatory and violated the California Education Code. The investigation found that the district prioritized families based on higher socioeconomic status, creating barriers for disadvantaged students, English learners, and students with disabilities. It further determined that the district unlawfully denied or delayed enrollment for foster youth and students experiencing homelessness.
CT: Report: Problems persist in CT special ed system despite federal compliance
The Register Citizen
Flaws in Connecticut’s special education system are impeding the state’s ability to provide adequate services to students, according to a report released Wednesday by state Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker. Russell-Tucker commissioned the report six months ago amid concerns the state wasn’t doing enough to support students with disabilities. The findings affirmed many of those worries, revealing a system struggling with staffing shortages, arduous data collection software and a widespread lack of confidence in how disputes are resolved. As a result, children may struggle to access the resources they require for a free appropriate public education — a legal standard also known as FAPE.
Andrew Feinstein, an attorney who represents children with disabilities and a founding member of the group Special Education Equity for Kids in Connecticut, called the report “devastating.” “The fundamental problem appears to be that the Bureau of Special Education sees itself primarily as a conduit to transmit district-generated data to the federal Department of Education. It does not see itself as accountable to parents and teachers. The bureau is ineffective in improving results for students,” Feinstein told the board.
FL: As lawmakers fix Florida’s school voucher system, educators, students cope with financial fallout
WLRN
After Juliet Sanomi came to the realization that traditional public school wasn’t the right setting for her son, who has autism, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She started a school where he and others like him would thrive. She began that mission 12 years ago in Plantation. The K-12 private school mostly serves students with special needs — about 85% have intellectual disabilities — with a model focused on strategies that specifically help students with disabilities succeed. ” This is a program to change the life of a child who the system says is impossible,” said Juliet Sanomi, the school’s founder and principal. “They’re now over there doing what the world says they could not do,” Sanomi told WLRN. “This is home to children.”
But the school’s future is at risk. Private school owners, like Sanomi, began facing financial struggles after the state dramatically expanded the school voucher program in 2023 and struggled to pay them in a timely fashion.
FL: Florida proposing school emergency plan for runaway disabled students
islandernews.com
Florida is seeking to ease parents’ concerns by creating a plan for public schools, including forming an emergency search team, if a student with a disability runs away unattended. State Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat from Orange County, filed House Bill 423 for the upcoming Florida Legislative Session, which would require public schools to create a School Staff Assistance for Emergencies (SAFE) Team andan emergency elopement plan for students who leave campuses without administration’s permission. “When it comes to the safety of our children, especially our children with disabilities, these are not partisan issues,” Eskamani said. “Everyone agrees there’s universal support. We just have to really work through the process to actually get this bill to the governor’s desk.”
MD: Maryland is rethinking how it pays for special education
The Baltimore Banner
Maryland’s education department awarded a major contract to the American Institutes for Research, asking the Virginia-based nonprofit to recommend a model that would adequately fund special education. They’ll answer a multipronged question: What is the true cost of teaching children with disabilities in Maryland? And how should that money be parceled out, considering the vastly different needs of each student? The state’s funding formula allocates a set amount of dollars for each student with disabilities, no matter the nature of their needs. Some people argue that this model doesn’t distribute the money fairly. The study, mandated by the legislature, will consider an alternative formula that sets up different levels of funding. Dollars could be distributed depending on the specifics of a student’s disability or the services they need. This model is a more common approach to funding special education across the country.
NY: ‘That is unacceptable’: Lawmaker pushes for new safeguards after shocking school incidents
CBS 6 News
The proposed bill creates enforceable statewide standards and strengthens protections against the use of physical restraint as a behavioral intervention, such as what happened at Lincoln Elementary School in Schenectady. In northern New York, parents of an 8-year-old student who is nonverbal and autistic are suing the Salmon River Central School District for allegedly putting their son inside a wooden box as a form of punishment. In Schenectady, a picture shows a staff member stepping on a second-grader with ADHD as a way to restrain him. These situations are what led Assemblymember Angelo Santabarbara to demand an enforceable statewide standard. “It’s beyond shocking. I mean, you don’t even have the words,” Santabarbara said. The lawmaker says parents did not learn about what happened to their child at school until pictures showed up online. Now, he says, even more parents are concerned that similar incidents are happening to their kids. “It strengthens the oversight, and that’s what’s needed here: more oversight. It requires immediate, same-day notification to the parents or guardians,” Santabarbara said. The bill would also explicitly prohibit the use of enclosure or confinement practices, such as putting a child in a box, which is the main claim in a lawsuit filed against the Salmon River Central School District.