Special Education
Laws & News
Across the States
NH: New Hampshire is underfunding special education, Superior Court judge rules
The Dartmouth
Superior Court Judge David Ruoff in New Hampshire ruled that the state’s special education funding is “constitutionally insufficient” on Aug. 18. Ruoff wrote in his decision that underfunding special education means that “school districts must rely in part on local property tax revenues, assessed at varying rates, to bridge these funding gaps.” As recently as 2024, approximately one in five New Hampshire public school students received special education services, according to New Hampshire School Funding Fairness Project, a group of taxpayers who initiated the lawsuit in 2022. According to government professor and N.H. state Rep. Russell Muirhead, D-Hanover, New Hampshire funds public schools “certainly less” than “most” states in New England, and “a large amount” of that funding comes from local property taxes. This puts an “enormous [tax] burden” on small towns who may have “very large special education expenses.”
In July, the State Supreme Court ruled that the current level of “base adequacy aid” — funding provided to schools per student — is also unconstitutionally low.
NJ: Parents demand special education transparency, reform at school board meeting
Jersey City Times
Tensions ran high at Thursday night’s Jersey City Board of Education meeting as multiple Jersey City Public Schools (JCPS) parents emotionally recounted their negative experiences with the district’s special education department and demanded that it be more transparent and accountable. Three mothers of students with disabilities, Emily Pecot, Tara Tripodi and Jessica Taube, spoke during the public comment period about struggles they faced securing appropriate accommodations for their children. Jersey City accountant and education blogger Brigid D’Souza read the story of a fourth parent who wished to remain anonymous because she is in ongoing litigation with the district. Ward B city council candidate Joel Brooks spoke in support of the parents, who also demanded that the district take specific actions aimed at transparency and reform. Those actions included releasing the results of an independent audit of the special education department that was authorized by the board in June 2023 and revealing why two special education administrators were escorted out of the district’s central office by security last month.
NC: Wake County schools see rise in student restraint cases
Raleigh News & Observer
The Wake County school system has seen a 38% increase in how often students are being physically restrained or locked alone in rooms by school employees. Data presented Tuesday show 1,802 acts of restraint or seclusion were reported to the federal government in the 2024-25 school year — compared to 1,304 times the previous school year. School administrators attributed the surge to more accurate reporting of data, though they also said they want to reduce how often restraint and seclusion are used. “We have created a far more robust strategic way of reporting the data,” Paul Walker, senior director of student due process, told the school board’s student achievement committee. Wake has admitted in the past to under-reporting the data. Wake didn’t report any cases of restraint or seclusion to the federal government in the 2017-18 school year. As part of an August 2023 legal settlement, Wake agreed to change how it handles and reports cases of restraint and seclusion.
NC: Trump admin cancels special ed grant to UNC-CH to train future Pre-K teachers across NC
WUNC
A UNC-Chapel Hill program partnering with a dozen community colleges across the state has lost a federal grant to help train future preschool teachers to better serve students with disabilities. It’s part of the U.S. Department of Education’s crackdown on grants promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. The Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at UNC-Chapel Hill has been running the SCRIPT-NC program since 2011, contributing to special education training for about 10,000 community college students taking classes to pursue work in the child care industry.
UNC-Chapel Hill is planning to appeal the decision.
CA: High-dosage tutoring for 100K Kids: How a district settled a learning loss case
Ed Week
Education equity advocates say they’ve reached “an important milestone” in addressing pandemic-era learning loss after the Los Angeles Unified School District agreed to provide three years of high-dosage tutoring and other remediation services to more than 100,000 of its 390,000 K-12 students. The agreement, which attorneys are calling “one of the largest education class-action settlements in history,” results from a September 2020 case brought by parents who argued the nation’s second-largest school district’s remote learning was inadequate and inequitable. The settlement, announced Sept. 3, awaits approval from the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, but implementation is “already underway,” plaintiffs’ lawyers said.
The agreement is a notable step after parent advocacy groups around the country have called for more urgent action to address the academic fallout of the pandemic. Its focus on general education is unusual because many settlements, civil rights investigations, and lawsuits have focused more specifically on the rights of students with disabilities who had gaps in services, like physical and speech therapies, during the rocky transition to remote learning.
CA: Bill to extend substitute teaching time raises academic concerns
EdSource
California legislation that would double the number of days a substitute can teach a single class could help school districts keep vacant teaching positions filled, but opponents fear it could hurt students academically. Assembly Bill 1224, by Assemblymember Avelino Valencia, D-Anaheim, would reinstate a pandemic-era provision that doubled the time a substitute teacher could stay in one classroom to 60 days. Substitute teachers in special education classes would be able to extend their stay from 20 to 60 days. The bill passed both the Senate and Assembly and is making its way to the governor’s desk.
“The increased flexibility will reduce classroom instability and learning disruptions that affect students with disabilities the most,” said Valencia in his author’s statement. While acknowledging the teacher shortage is serious, leaders of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), which oversees teacher preparation in the state, argued that allowing a substitute teacher with no required preparation to be the sole educator in a classroom for a third of the school year would harm vulnerable students the most. “That is both lowering expectations and differential treatment, which will impact English learners, students with disabilities, and students from low-income families the hardest,” said CTC Chair Marquita Grenot-Scheyer.
FL: School voucher expansion: Mismanagement hits students, parents, schools
WLRN
Last school year, Irene switched her daughter, who has autism, from a public charter school to a private school. Irene planned on paying for the school with the state voucher meant for students with disabilities. “She thrives the best in the setting where it’s maximum 10 children,” Irene said. “Her speech has improved so much. Her math, they’re saying that she’s close to third grade level in math.” The difference in her daughter since she started at the new school has been “night and day.” The enthusiasm was short-lived. When the Florida Department of Education checked enrollment records, the then-kindergartener’s name came up in her old school’s enrollment. The state froze the voucher to prevent duplicating funds to the public and private schools at the same time.
MA: BPS launches new program for adult students with disabilities
Boston Herald
This year BPS is launching a program decades in the making to provide resources for adult students with disabilities heading into the workforce. “The NExT, Navigating Employment and Transition program, is a comprehensive transition program for young adults with disabilities, from ages 18 to 22, who receive services in the Boston Public Schools after they’ve finished four years of high school,” said Marcia Fitzpatrick, BPS Assistant Director of Transition. The program, run out of a newly renovated two-story facility in Roxbury, kicked off at the start of school with 60 students. The district plans to grow the program to 90 students next year and “just going to keep building up until we can house as many students as possible,” Fitzpatrick said.
NJ: New Jersey students in special education stuck in separate classrooms
Hechinger Report
Under federal law, students with disabilities — who once faced widespread, outright exclusion from public schools — have a right to learn alongside peers without disabilities “to the maximum extent” possible. That includes the right to get accommodations and help, like aides, to allow them to stay in the general education classroom. Schools must report crucial benchmarks, including how many students with disabilities are learning in the general education classroom over 80 percent of the time. More than anywhere else in the country, New Jersey students with disabilities fail to reach this threshold, according to federal data. Instead, they spend significant portions of the school day in separate classrooms where parents say they have little to no access to the general curriculum — a practice that can violate their civil rights under federal law.
NY: NYC DOE accused of failing students with special needs, but sometimes not even a court order can help
CBS New York
Harriet Baravick’s son Max has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair to get around, but she says just this week, she’s received phone calls from a DOE-contracted bus company reporting issues. “‘I’m sorry, there’s no bus today. You’ll have to pick your child up,'” she said. “Yesterday morning, it was, ‘Sorry, the bus broke down.'” Sometimes, she’s not even sure how her son will get home from school. Transportation is one of several services that the city’s DOE is mandated to provide students with special needs in the city. Whether they go to public schools or not, it’s state law. When the system fails to do so, parents may file for an impartial hearing, which can result in a court order giving the DOE 35 days to right the wrong.
But according to the organization Advocates for Children, the DOE adheres to the court order less than 10% of the time. “It has guaranteed that it will provide these services to the students to both the state and the federal government, and it simply does not and cannot do so,” said Jesse Cole Cutler, a lawyer who estimates he’s represented 3,000 families in these hearings.