Special Education
Laws & News
Across the States
GA: GA school districts spend hundreds of thousands fighting special education parents in court
WRDR
Georgia school districts are spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on legal battles to fight parents of disabled children over special education evaluations. District records, uncovered by Atlanta News First Investigates, reveal proceedings have more than doubled, costing both families and taxpayers. Seven-year-old Cylus Fears is a third grader in Gwinnett County who is on the autism spectrum. His mother, Teresa Fears, said he has trouble with reading comprehension. “We’re working on assignments, and he’s in tears because he’s not understanding the work,” Fears said. “He was not understanding what he was reading. He was reading just to read, but he wasn’t understanding.” School records show the district knew about Cylus’ autism diagnosis and that he “struggles answering comprehension questions,” according to the records. Fears asked the Gwinnett County School District to place her son on an individualized education program (IEP), a plan tailored to help students with disabilities learn. After meeting with school administrators last year, the district said Cylus didn’t need the IEP and denied Fears’ request for an independent evaluation for a second opinion
NY: Thousands of NYC students with disabilities may not have school buses at beginning of year, nonprofit says
CBS New York
New York City public schools will open their doors to students Thursday to begin a new academic year, but thousands of students with special needs and their families are questioning how they’re going to get there. According to the organization Advocates For Children, an estimated 2,000 city students with disabilities are about to start the school year with no transportation lined up. The organization sent CBS News New York what it says is a letter the Department of Education sent to school leaders in August. “Due to a shortage of available school bus vendors and increased transportation needs, some yellow bus routes may not have a vendor available to operate the route at the start of the school year,” it reads, in part
TX: Texas has a new plan to better include young children with disabilities in classrooms
KERA News
Texas is trying to do a better job of including young children with disabilities in classrooms alongside their peers. Federal law already requires schools to educate children with disabilities alongside children without disabilities whenever appropriate. But that doesn’t always happen in preschool and childcare classrooms, and a new state plan is trying to understand why, and what Texas can do about it. The Texas Early Childhood Inclusion Plan for 2026–2030 was developed jointly by the Texas Education Agency, Texas Health and Human Services Commission and Texas Workforce Commission. In a bi-partisan effort, state lawmakers directed the agencies during the last legislative session to identify barriers to inclusion and recommend ways to address them. More than 1,200 families, educators, childcare providers and others participated in a statewide survey. More than half pointed to a shortage of trained specialists — including special education teachers, occupational therapists and speech therapists — as one barrier to inclusion. The plan calls for more teacher training, smaller classes and better coordination among programs. It also asks the state to explore additional funding and financial incentives to recruit and retain early childhood educators and specialists
CA: Their children couldn’t tell them what happened. Now some California parents want cameras in classrooms
EdSource
Brittney Camacho was in disbelief after she received the call from the Visalia Police Department in Tulare County in September 2025. An officer told her something that her children could not — that they may have been the victim of physical abuse. The alleged suspect? Her children’s teacher. “I would never have assumed that was happening at the school,” she said. “I was in shock.” The allegations prompted Camacho and other Visalia Unified parents to push for cameras in special education classrooms, arguing they could protect students who may be unable to tell their parents what happens at school. Parents in Bakersfield, about 80 miles south of Visalia, mounted a similar effort. Parents’ concerns in two Central Valley school systems have raised a broader question: Should California schools be required to record classrooms serving students with significant disabilities?
CT: State working to fix Connecticut’s ‘broken’ special education funding system
News 8
Comptroller Sean Scanlon said Connecticut’s underlying system for special education is “truly broken” in a budget surplus update Tuesday, highlighting staffing shortages, rising rates of out-of-district and out-of-state placements, and strains on district resources. Districts K-12 spent $3.3 billion on special education in the 2024-2025 school year, including transportation, teacher and aide staffing, and supplies and equipment. Spending depends on the intensity of student needs, and extra costs can run as high as $200,000 per year for one student. Nearly one-in-five Connecticut public school students now qualify for an individualized education program, which is substantially more than in the past, the comptroller said. “While state funding for education has increased, the underlying system is truly broken,” the state comptroller said. “The good news is that, whether through the Citizens’ Assembly I’m working with or the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission, there is real momentum to finally replace this broken system with the true, structural change we need to reform how education is funded in Connecticut.” Connecticut and Rhode Island are the only states that don’t use a weighted system for allocating special education resources.
TX: 25K Texas school voucher recipients opted out. Here’s why.
Houston Chronicle
Marissa Gonzalez was one of the first parents in Texas to receive funding from the state’s $1 billion private school voucher program. Her two children have dyslexia, and their family income is below 500% of the poverty level, putting them in the lottery’s top priority group. It also meant that her children were eligible to receive more funding than most applicants. But when Gonzalez received $31,000 in voucher funding for her children, she had to turn it down, joining the 24% of recipients who haven’t used their voucher funding — including both families who opted out and those who have not decided yet. The user rate has puzzled leaders of the Texas Education Freedom Account program, who are trying to figure out why some families have outright rejected it or haven’t used thousands of dollars for their children’s education.
Families in Texas who opted out of the funding were often those who did not apply to private school in time and therefore did not have confirmed enrollment by the July 15 deadline. Others had enrollment offers, but tuition was still too expensive even with the subsidy. Some, like Gonzalez, couldn’t find a private school in their area that fit their needs, which proved especially difficult for families with children with disabilities. “Once I started pricing the private schools, I was like, ‘Okay, well, this will cover most of it, if not all of it,” Gonzalez said. “But I couldn’t find a school.”…
Note: Requires subscription.
NV: Advocates push for more staffing, safety measures in special education classrooms
News 3
Special education classrooms face unique challenges every day, and there’s a renewed push to improve safety for students and staff. These classrooms have some of the most vulnerable students and, in some cases, behavioral challenges. There’s now a call for more staff and more training, all while staying focused on learning. “Nobody deserves to be spit on, peed on, bit, kicked, anything, hair pulled, anything like that,” said Misty Olmos, Nevada State Education Association Special Education Committee chair. Olmos is advocating for the safety of support professionals in special education classrooms and the students they serve every day.
TN: Should Tennessee fully fund special education pre-K programs?
Chattanooga Times Free Press
A top committee of Tennessee educators wants lawmakers to include special education prekindergarten students in the state’s public school funding formula. The recommendation follows pleas from school boards and superintendents who say they’ve been saddled with the price tag of an unfunded mandate because federal and state laws require local school districts to serve students with disabilities as young as 3. “The problem is, they’ve legally compelled us to serve kids for whom they’re not proportionally funding us,” said Bob Nardo, the executive director at the Libertas School, a Memphis charter school, during a TISA Review Committee meeting this month…
WI: Low pay and outbursts: why WI schools face critical special ed staff shortage
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
As the number of K-12 students in Wisconsin slowly dwindles, there’s one group of students that’s been growing for decades: children with special education needs. Since the 2005-06 school year, the number of students needing additional support in the classroom has increased by about 5,000 students, or 4%, while the overall student population has decreased by nearly 10%, according to data from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. That increase is driven primarily by students with significant autism or developmental delays, two populations that, combined, have grown by over 23,000 students in the past 20 years. The increase has trickle-down effects, starting with the staff who work most closely with them. Under federal special education law, students with disabilities are entitled to public education that meets their needs. Schools must provide this education in the “least restrictive environment,” where students are in a regular education classroom for as much time as possible while still learning effectively. School staff workers called special education paraprofessionals help make that possible.
FL: Cursive writing and autism-specific teacher training among new laws for the new school year
Florida Phoenix
As Florida students settle back into their desks, there are a few new laws on the books, including required testing of cursive writing and providing teachers more training to work with students with autism. Take a look at which Florida education laws the Legislature and governor approved this spring to go into effect over the summer: HB 851: This law requires school districts to develop training for “autism-specific professional learning” annually for instructional personnel and administrators working in schools. The training must include academic instruction, behavioral support, communication strategies, and inclusive practices for students with autism…