Chalkbeat

There was a time George Finley Jr. was on the honor roll. After the seventh grader started having epileptic seizures a couple of years ago, he experienced memory loss. Now, he’s far behind where he should be academically. The Detroit Public Schools Community District agreed in November to pay for outside tutoring to help him catch up, records show. That still hasn’t happened, and the school year is near its end. “My son is not progressing,” said his mother, Sheri King. She was close to getting an answer from the district. But the Trump administration gutted the U.S. Department of Education’s workforce weeks later, and the civil rights attorney who was helping facilitate King’s communication with George’s school stopped responding to her emails. His position, along with hundreds of others, was eliminated. With new leadership, the department shuttered more than half of its regional civil rights enforcement offices, which had investigated and resolved complaints for decades. Now, remaining offices must take on the backlog of cases.