Education Week

Jennifer Donelli has served since 2020 as executive director of Parents Reaching Out, a nonprofit organization designated and partially funded by the federal government since the early 1980s as New Mexico’s “parent training and information center” for special education. Every state, by law, has at least one. Donelli estimates she and her team of four full-time and six part-time staffers help hundreds of families a year: answering questions on the phone, shipping resources to their homes, even driving hours for home visits. But since President Donald Trump took office, Donelli’s job has gotten tougher. Some Hispanic families—including U.S. citizens and undocumented immigrants—fear that sharing details about their circumstances could put them at heightened risk of deportation. Meanwhile, a routine application for the federal government to reauthorize the organization’s longstanding annual grant of $250,000 has become a months-long ordeal with no end in sight.