As Trump Shakes Up Oversight of Special Ed, Frustrated DC Parents Want Change

After a year in a small preschool class for children with disabilities, transition into kindergarten was rough for Andrea Jones’ son Kelsey.

He would cry and run off during fire drills. Teachers put his desk in the corner, so he wouldn’t disturb his classmates. They would call her during the day so she could talk him into sitting still. Jones was shocked then that when Kelsey reached first grade, the school said he no longer needed extra support, like a teacher’s aide and a plan to help him control his behavior.

“I’m like, ‘’If there’s not a problem, why were you calling me all these days?’ ” she said. Kelsey, who has autism, went a year without any special education services, and Jones was preparing to sue the District of Columbia’s public school district. The toughest part, she said, was that her experience wasn’t unusual. “If you have 30-plus parents … and they have very similar stories, there is something systemic. They put it on the parents, like this is a one off.”

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Ordeals like hers are why the U.S. Department of Education last month launched a civil rights investigation into the school district. A December report from an independent civil rights committee showed the district has failed to identify and adequately serve thousands of students with disabilities and has one of the highest rates of special education complaints in the nation. This marks the first investigation the Office for Civil Rights launched that didn’t focus on President Donald Trump’s priorities, such as antisemitism on university campuses and transgender students competing on girls’ sports teams.

The district says it will “fully cooperate” with OCR. But the agency’s review is kicking off in the midst of disruption to the federal government’s enforcement of laws protecting students with disabilities. Education Secretary Linda McMahon gutted OCR’s staff, and Trump is attempting to move oversight of special education programs to the Department of Health and Human Services. If the investigation results in a plan for improvement, it’s unclear who would hold the district accountable.

“HHS lacks the expertise needed to administer the [Individuals with Disabilities Act],” said Maria Blaeuer, director of programs and outreach with Advocates for Justice and Education, Inc., a District of Columbia advocacy group. Her testimony informed many of the recommendations in the December report. Moving IDEA to HHS, she said “does nothing to improve services for students with disabilities and it deprives state and local education authorities of the expert advice and support they need.”

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Craig Leen, a civil rights attorney who served on Trump’s transition team, may have played a role in turning the department’s attention to students with disabilities. He is vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ D.C. advisory committee, which issued the report, and he navigated the district’s special education system for his own children.

The report found that the district under-identifies children with disabilities when they are young, which creates delays in students getting the extra help they need. When disagreements arise, the report said, the school district takes a “sue and settle” approach, which favors parents who can afford litigation in order to get services or accommodations for their children.

“That’s not a best practice, obviously,” said Leen, who became involved in disability rights when he was the city attorney for Coral Gables, Florida. “You shouldn’t have to sue to get what you’re entitled to.”

Leen’s daughter Alex, who has autism and an intellectual disability, attended Hardy Middle School in the district, but he didn’t feel she was getting the support she needed to be engaged in class. When he inquired about getting Alex into St. Coletta, a charter school that specializes in serving children with disabilities, an administrator suggested the family file a due process complaint, like a lawsuit.

Transportation — a key focus of the advisory committee’s report — was also a frequent problem.

“Sometimes [the bus] would not arrive at all. Sometimes it would arrive an hour late,” he said. Alex would only wait so long before she got frustrated and wanted to go back to her room. “My daughter needs a very routine schedule. Waiting for an hour for the bus would disrupt the whole day.”

But Leen’s struggles are not uncommon —  as indicated by a class action lawsuit from families over transportation problems last year and a similar case 30 years ago.

One factor contributing to the transportation headaches is that the district doesn’t actually have its own buses and drivers. The Office of the State Superintendent of Education, which oversees both the traditional public school district and more than 120 charter schools, provides no transportation for most of the city’s students. It is responsible only for getting children with disabilities to and from school consistently. Many attend schools far outside their neighborhood, or even in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs, where their needs can be met.

The superintendent’s office told the committee that it has the fleet necessary to cover all the bus routes and has offered incentives to recruit drivers. But parents say the system is still unreliable.

They want GPS tracking for buses, nurses and aides, more vehicles that are wheelchair accessible and better communication — like an app. The committee’s report also pointed to teachers who ultimately quit because they were sometimes stuck at school until 7 p.m. waiting for buses to pick up students.

Santanya Prince-Abdoul, whose 7-year-old son attends school in D.C., started keeping track. She recorded in a notebook over 20 times since fall of 2024 that the bus was late or didn’t arrive.

“I was promised that I would be contacted by a supervisor on various occasions, and no one has ever called me,” she said. “I stopped using the system and started to transport my son to school, which defeated the whole purpose.”

She also clashed with educators over updating his individualized education program with a goal of counting up to 100. The plan still said her son, who has medical issues and seizures, should practice counting to 20.

“Those are the kinds of things that we are having to sit in meetings to negotiate,” she said. “Even with the attorney involved they’re still resisting, they’re still opposing.”

The committee concluded that “chronic underfunding” contributes to the district’s inability to adequately serve students — an issue not unique to D.C. Congress intended for the federal government to cover 40% of states’ special education costs; instead it’s about 14%.

In other ways, D.C. schools are atypical. The district has to depend on Congress to approve its budget every year — an often nerve-wracking process. In most places, a parent dissatisfied with how their district is handling their child’s case can file a state complaint. But D.C.’s state superintendent’s office often refers parents directly to OCR, said Blaeuer, with Advocates for Justice and Education.

“Very often by the time they’re filing with OCR, they’ve given up on solving it for their student this school year,” she said. “They’re hoping to make it better for the following school year and for the other students who come after their child.”

In its statement, the district said it has made “significant investments to strengthen our special education programs, expand inclusive learning opportunities and engage families as partners in their children’s success.”

At a D.C. Council meeting in February, Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee elaborated.

“We have reduced our number of complaints over the last couple of years.” Last year, he said, parents filed 205 due process complaints, but the number has dropped over 60% over the past decade, he told Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. Ferebee added that the district is trying to “enhance” communication with families as a way to resolve problems before educators and parents reach an impasse. “This is something that we will continue to work on.”

But some families are unwilling to wait. At the end of 2023-24 school year, Jones pulled her son out of Miner and enrolled him in Two Rivers Public Charter School, also in D.C.  She cried at her last parent-teacher conference when she realized how far Kelsey, now in third grade, has come.

“My son can now write a story out of his imagination. At Miner, he was regressing, wasn’t even verbal,” she said. “He’s learning how to advocate for himself, like ‘Hey I need a break. My battery is low.’ He’s going to stay there until eighth grade.”