Special Education
Laws & News
Across the States
DE: Delaware Dept. of Ed settles discrimination lawsuit involving incarcerated students with disabilities
Delaware Public Media
The Delaware Department of Education settled a federal lawsuit alleging incarcerated students with disabilities weren’t provided required services. The U.S. District Court approved a consent decree requiring Delaware’s Ed. Department to implement revised programs and ensure students receive special education services. Delaware’s Community Legal Aid Society partnered with Terris, Pravlik & Millian on the lawsuit filed in May 2024 against DDOE’s Adult and Prison Education Resources Workgroup. TPM attorney Todd Gluckman said the state made no meaningful headway after receiving reports of violations. “The students will start receiving the education that they need, and this is particularly critical because people in jails and prisons have disabilities at a much greater rate than the general population,” Gluckman said. “And a lot of these students had not been receiving needed special education for years.”
MI: Lawsuit, investigation target Mississippi’s special education failures
SPLC
E.J. and her mother are plaintiffs in a 2024 Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuit, Jamison et al. v. Greenville Public School District, and the other children are at the center of an ongoing SPLC investigation into the state’s longstanding practice of denying students with disabilities — disproportionately children of color — of a free and appropriate public education (FAPE), which is mandated under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). “While school systems in other states are fraught with the same inadequate screenings and evaluations and provision of services that begin for children as toddlers, Mississippi is unique in that it has the least resources for children with special needs, blatantly discriminates against them, and outright refuses to comply with federal special education mandates,” said Julian Miller, senior supervising attorney for the SPLC’s Democracy: Education and Youth litigation team. Miller is also the lead counsel for the lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Mississippi, Greenville Division, against the Greenville Public School District in October 2024 and is pending. It alleges that the district wrongfully denied SPED services to E.J. for dyslexia, the nation’s most common learning disability. In what may become a related lawsuit, the SPLC is investigating the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) Office of Special Education for failing to investigate and resolve state complaints alleging violations of the IDEA
MT: Montana court blocks education savings accounts for students with special needs
Montana Free Press
A district court judge on Monday blocked Montana’s education savings account program for students with disabilities, ruling in favor of two Montana nonprofits that claimed that lawmakers did not fund the program when they created it. House Bill 393, the Students with Special Needs Equal Opportunity Act, passed by lawmakers in 2023, created Montana’s first education savings account (ESA) program. It allows parents of students with disabilities to redirect their child’s per-pupil school funding that normally goes to a public school district into an account administered by the Office of Public Instruction, the state agency that oversees K-12 schools.
The lawsuit was filed by two Montana nonprofits, the Montana Quality Education Coalition and Disability Rights Montana. They maintained that the bill required families to waive significant educational rights in exchange for funding that often would not cover basic needs. It was against the state, governor, OPI, the state superintendent of public instruction, and the lawmaker who carried the bill. In a press release Tuesday, MQEC Executive Director Doug Reisig said that “taking money from public schools for vouchers without clear limits on how much and where that money will be spent is unconstitutional, pure and simple.” Tal Goldin, advocacy director for Disability Rights Montana, added, “HB 393 was a lose-lose for students with disabilities.”
WI: Dems propose bill to restore Wisconsin special education funding rates
Wisconsin public school districts would receive the full special education reimbursement rate lawmakers pledged in the state budget under a new bill from Democratic legislators. The proposal comes after school districts learned they will receive a lower reimbursement rate for special education costs this year than anticipated. In an email sent to school officials Nov. 17, the Department of Public Instruction said the state will reimburse school districts at an initial rate of 35% of their special education costs from last school year – down from the rate specified in the current state budget. Under a compromise with Republican leaders, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers included in the state budget a 42% reimbursement rate this year and 45% next year. The previous rate was around 32%. A new bill authored by Rep. Angelina Cruz, D-Racine, and Sen. Jeff Smith, D-Brunswick, would require the state to pay for special education costs at the full rates set in the budget – known as a sum sufficient appropriation – rather than capping reimbursements when total claims exceed the budgeted amount.
AZ: Federal cuts leave many Arizona special education students without oversight
KOLD.COM
“It’s really important that some outside agency like OCR comes in — someone outside the school district can come in and see what’s going on,” said Dr. Diana Newmark, University of Arizona Education Advocacy Clinic Director. Then the Trump Administration started firing staff to cut down on government spending. Newmark said she stopped getting through. “It’s really difficult to know how to navigate enforcement areas when we’re not sure if anyone’s going to pick up the phone,” Newmark said.
Advocates are calling on Arizona’s Department of Education to step up. “What we’re concerned about is do we have the capacity, the will, and the foundation to do it?” said Champions for Kids co-founder Karla Phillips-Krivickas. But State Superintendent Tom Horne said he supports the federal cuts. “We monitor schools and help them. The federal government monitors us, so you’ve got two agencies doing what one agency can do,” Horne said.
CA: California students with disabilities fear cuts after trump’s policy changes
KQED
Sleep is a rare commodity at Lindsay Crain’s house. Most nights, she and her husband are up dozens of times, tending to their daughter’s seizures. The 16-year-old flails her arms, thrashes, and kicks — sometimes for hours. But these days, that’s not the only thing keeping Crain awake. The Culver City mother worries about how President Donald Trump’s myriad budget cuts could strip their daughter of services she needs to go to school, live at home, and enjoy a degree of independence that would have been impossible a generation ago. “Every family I know is terrified right now,” Crain said. “We still have to live our everyday lives, which are challenging enough, but now it feels like our kids’ futures are at stake.” Trump’s budget includes nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, which funds a wide swath of services to disabled children, including speech, occupational, and physical therapy, wheelchairs, in-home aides, and medical care. All children with physical, developmental, or cognitive disabilities – in California, nearly 1 million – receive at least some services through Medicaid.
MA: Creem files legislation for database to monitor quality of special education in districts
Newton Beacon
A proposed bill on Beacon Hill sponsored by Newton’s state senator would require the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to publish more detailed student data each year, with a particular focus on special education access. Filed by Sen. Cynthia Creem, the measure would require school districts to report exactly which special education services students receive, allowing the state to identify disparities in how support is delivered. It would also require the state to make this information easily searchable and cross-tabulated by race, gender, disability type, socioeconomic status, English-learner status, and homelessness to give families and policymakers a clearer picture of inequities across districts and individual schools. “S.317 ensures that families, educators, and the state finally have clear, transparent data to better identify problematic demographic patterns in our education system,” Creem said in an interview. “Better data will help support earlier interventions and assist policymakers in creating more tailored and targeted policy solutions.”
MI: Michigan fails its students with disabilities, first-ever report finds
AP News
When Michigan officials this year lauded a record-high 82.8% high school graduation rate in 2024, special education advocates pointed out a vastly different outcome: only 61% of students with disabilities graduated. That is one of several metrics showing what students with disabilities are up against in Michigan: They score below their peers in Michigan and across the nation in several areas, according to the first-ever Michigan Special Education Benchmarks Report released Wednesday by the Autism Alliance of Michigan. The group found 77% of disabled students are secluded or restrained, 40% miss more than 18 or more days of school per year, and 60% of their parents report their schools do not “facilitate meaningful involvement.” The report is a call for more funding and inclusion in Michigan, noting that state and federal money covers 44% of special education costs, forcing local districts to cover the remainder. “Students with disabilities can be educated, can be contributors to society,” said Heather Eckner, director of statewide education with the Autism Alliance of Michigan. “But if our public school system, where the majority of them are educated, is not fulfilling their obligation to prepare them for future education and prepare them for independent living, then we are not doing our jobs to get them to be ready to be citizens in our state.”
WI: Rep. Cruz: Introduces “Keep Our Promise” on special education reimbursement
WisPolitics
Representative Angelina Cruz (D–Racine), a long-time public school teacher, introduced legislation today to hold the state accountable for meeting the special education reimbursement levels promised in the current budget. The “Keep Our Promise on Special Education Reimbursement Act” guarantees sum-sufficient funding for 42% of eligible special education costs in the current school year and 45% in 2026–27. “Imagine your employer choosing to pay you for less than half of the work you’ve done,” said Rep. Cruz. “That’s the position we’re putting our public schools in. This level of reimbursement is not what our schools want or need, and it’s not what our children with disabilities deserve. At the very least, we must keep our promise. If Republicans were serious about providing 42% and 45% reimbursement this biennium, they now have the opportunity to prove it.” Underfunding special education reimbursement — even below promised levels — is not new, but this budget cycle drew significant public attention to the issue. On November 17, the Department of Public Instruction announced that reimbursement from November through March will be just 35%, a serious blow to already struggling public school districts.
COPAA Provides Letter of Support for Shifting Burden of Proof in Massachusetts
COPAA urged the Massachusetts legislature to enact H.4217, which would restore the burden of proof in special education due process hearings to school districts in order to ensure that students with disabilities and their families have meaningful access to due process. “These students and their families deserve a fair hearing system that does not disadvantage them simply because they lack the resources of a public school district. By ensuring that districts bear the burden of proving their own educational decisions are appropriate, H.4217 levels the playing field, promotes high-quality IEP development, reduces unnecessary litigation, ensures hearings focus on substantive appropriateness rather than procedural inequities, and aligns Massachusetts with other states that have enacted similar protections,” according to the letter of support signed by COPAA CEO Denise Marshall and Director of State Policy Chris Roe.