Perry: Federal firings leave oversight of disabled kids’ education in limbo

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When the federal government shut down in the middle of October, the Trump administration made an unusual — and likely illegal — move: It effectively shut down the Office of Special Education Programs in the U.S. Department of Education. These weren’t furloughs where employees get sent home and later recalled (and paid), but a “reduction in force” (RIF) — in other words, layoffs. A month later, the Senate included anti-RIF language in its agreement to reopen the government, so it looks like the office may be saved. For now.

But parents like me — people whose lives are shaped by federal programs in education, housing, health care and more — have been left pondering a big question: What kind of person hates educating disabled kids enough to fire everyone in charge of making sure states do it well?

The politics and policies of education for disabled children are complicated, featuring a tangle of local (school district), state and federal systems. Landmark legislation in the 1970s and 1980s, especially the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) — originally enacted in 1975 — created a mandate that kids with disabilities receive a “free and appropriate public education,” but IDEA has never been fully funded. This means that the states and school districts are largely responsible for special education, but within boundaries prescribed by federal law, overseen by federal officers and supported through grants and training by federal agencies. Neither the oversight nor the support is happening right now.

When I first heard the news about the firings, my reaction was anger, of course, but not a sense of immediate crisis. I knew that my family — my 18-year-old son is in a transition program, run through the school district, that supports him until he turns 21 — could depend on our good Minnesota government carrying on. That’s true. As with most education, states exert far more influence over the process than the federal government, and so if we have a state that prioritizes education for disabled children, then we’ll be OK.

Minnesota is just one of six states that over the past 11 years has consistently “met requirements” of providing education to disabled children as mandated by federal law. As for next year, though, it’s hard to say, given that the people who check whether we’re meeting requirements may be fired.

And of course, it gets worse. Trump has laid off about 250 people who worked in the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) for the Education Department, according to Mia Ives-Rublee from the Center for American Progress, leaving just four people to defend the civil rights of every student in America. Disability rights fall under civil rights law and the OCR used to play a critical role defending them. Not now. What’s more, certain kinds of school-related services are actually funded through Medicaid. Ives-Rublee said, “A lot of Medicaid dollars go into schools to provide IDEA services,” but because Medicaid has been cut by the Republican Congress, that’s either going to strip funding from schools or from Medicaid recipients in other ways.

The Trump administration argues that it isn’t opposed to supporting IDEA, but instead is just planning to move oversight to Health and Human Services. Ives-Rublee pointed out that “HHS has also lost a lot of people,” and moreover, the law itself requires services to be in the Department of Education. And even if that does happen eventually, no one is exercising oversight right now.

The Minnesota Department of Education, in an emailed statement, told me that the federal layoffs and shutdown were creating uncertainty, but at the moment there had been no disruption in providing education, assessments and ensuring safeguards. They wrote, “MDE is continuing to monitor what is happening at the federal level and to provide updates to special education staff within districts and schools. MDE remains committed to making sure every student, of every race, ability and zip code receives a high-quality education.”

One of the features of living under chaotic authoritarianism is that the pressures are what I think of as “fractal,” a term from geometry describing a shape that looks the same no matter how far you zoom in or zoom out. The same mix of incompetence, malice and corruption impact our lives at the smallest level — like access to the blueberries my son eats — and at the biggest — killing people in boats off Venezuela, threatening Nigeria with war and exacerbating climate change. Each of us experiences this at whatever pressure we face, though fortunately the federal government is not alone in providing the services and infrastructure we require.