Kids With Disabilities Deserve More During School Closures
/By Lisa Mosko
Speak UP’s Lisa Mosko (wearing a Speak UP T-shirt) says LAUSD can do more for kids with disabilities.
Two weeks ago, when LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner announced that all LAUSD schools would close their doors, I immediately thought about our district’s most vulnerable kids, students with disabilities. As the mother of a student with an Individualized Education Program (IEP), as well as an advocate for students with disabilities in public schools, I needed to find out what LAUSD’s responsibility is for following through with services during school closures. Both the California Department of Education and the United States Department of Education settled any doubts I had immediately: Free & Appropriate Public Education (or FAPE), and all of the services, supports and accommodations that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act guarantees students with disabilities must remain in full effect.
With a sigh of relief, I watched in wonder as Superintendent Beutner quickly set up over 60 grab-and-go food centers and created an emergency fund of $100 million to provide digital devices for students. Additionally, he brokered a deal with Verizon to provide free Wi-Fi to families in need, and inked an agreement with PBS to broadcast educational programming for those families who still remained without digital access. Schools responded quickly to the transition to distance learning, sending home packets with their students on the last day of school, setting up Zoom meetings and using existing general education platforms such as Khan Academy and Clever.com to continue students’ education.
Confident with the knowledge that the federal and state government were not backing down on LAUSD’s obligations to our students with disabilities, I trusted that special education would be perfectly in step with the rest of these sweeping measures. But it wasn’t.
I have spoken to dozens of parents over the past week, and none of them have received any special services since schools closed, not even the services that are very easy to render by video, such as speech therapy, counseling or social skills groups. I checked in with the members of Speak UP’s special education task force, LA Voices Supporting Students with disAbilities, and all of our parent, educator and service provider members had heard the same from other parents, or were actually experiencing the lack of services themselves.
One parent I spoke to has a 6 year old with Down Syndrome, a beaming and eager student thriving with special education supports in a general education classroom. Once school closed, there were no more services. Utterly bereft and confused, this adorable little boy has started having meltdowns and acting out. His mother is supporting him as best she can, but without the therapies that enabled him to thrive at school, she is concerned that he will suffer huge regression.
Another mother I spoke to told me that her severely impacted child on the alternative curriculum for kids with special needs was sent home with no assignment packet at all to work on during school closure. The teacher kindly called her and told her to just read out loud to him while he was home.
Yet another parent I spoke to has called her school over and over again, asking for them to follow through on the services mandated in her child’s IEP, worried that all of the skills her son had worked so hard to master would start to slip. She finally received a response this past Friday from the school and spoke with many of her child’s providers. They were all very apologetic, and all had the same scripted message: “The [special education] ‘department’ asked them to hold off on contacting parents so that they could come to an agreement on how to best support the students.”
Is this really the best that we can do? I realize that school closures were unexpected and that digital learning requires time to get up and running. But if Superintendent Beutner can pen deals with Verizon and PBS, and distribute over 2 million meals to families in need within two weeks’ time, surely the district can also follow through on student’s IEPs. The more I look into it, the more I realize that we already have everything we need to make it happen. Homeschool hybrid programs such as iLEAD pioneered virtual special education services years ago. iLead also vowed to offer compensatory hours over the summer to make up for services such as physical therapy that may not as easily be rendered online. In Manhattan Beach, the district has already moved forward with remote learning for special education online, employing Floreo, a research backed program that uses virtual reality to deliver lesson plans to students on the autism spectrum. There is also Theraplay LA, an occupational therapy practice founded by occupation therapist Marielly Mitchell, who has offered 1:1 sessions to clients via Zoom or Facetime for the past six months and is now finding that they are in very high demand due to Safer at Home mandates. There are also wonderful supplemental trainings available on YouTube for parents in the area of social emotional learning, provided by Maja Watkins, founder of the groundbreaking social skills program Zip Zap Zop Enrichment https://zipzapzopenrichment.com.
Instead of moving forward with services, LAUSD has posted a vague FAQ on its special education page. “Normally, students with disabilities receive direct support from providers,” it says. “Due to social distancing requirements resulting from COVID-19 precautions, delivery of related services will need to be adjusted and adapted to accommodate distance learning opportunities. LAUSD is developing a plan to provide these supports to students.”
Speak UP’s special education task force met by Zoom last week and sent a letter urging LAUSD to act now.
So everyone is waiting for a plan.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard that school administrators are fearful that if they render services such as counseling (a service that requires privacy for the student from their parents) via Zoom, that somehow the district will be held liable for breach of privacy. Or, if a social skills group is held via Zoom, that it will be a breach of confidentiality for the students in that group if a household member of another student sees them. It’s unbelievable to me that this kind of fear may have stalled the rendering of crucial services to our students with disabilities. The work-arounds are obvious. Schools can simply offer parents an opt out, and have them sign a consent form acknowledging these risks when agreeing to receiving virtual services.
There are attempts at the federal level to waive the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act during school closures, but this is totally unacceptable. We can’t leave these kids behind, nor is it necessary.
This weekend, my son connected via Facetime with an old friend of his from New York City who benefits from special education services. I asked his mom if he’d been receiving services from the local neighborhood public school that he attends. Her answer, “Yes, from day one! They sent me an email saying that consenting to online services releases them from confidentiality issues and that I could opt out.” But obviously, this mother wants services for her son and was happy to consent.
I refuse to believe that the New York City Department of Education holds some magical secret that miraculously enables it to immediately switch to online learning for its special education students while LAUSD cannot. What I do believe is that there is someone in NYC who holds the authority, and that individual has decided that it must be done, and therefore it can be done. Speak UP’s own special education task force met by Zoom last week and then emailed a letter last Thursday evening to the LAUSD Board, Superintendent Beutner, and the Directors of Special Education, addressing these issues and urging LAUSD to survey parents and begin delivering virtual services immediately. Nearly a week later, we are still awaiting a response. So who in LAUSD will be the one to step up? Calling all believers in our students with disabilities. Please step up, and do it now. Bring back Free and Appropriate Public Education to our city’s most vulnerable students! Because #spedkidscantwait.
— Lisa Mosko is Speak UP’s Director of Special Education Advocacy
