1. On Friday, October 10, the Department of Education fired nearly the entire Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS), including the subdepartments OSEP and RSA. Implications are uncertain. However, more information on the current function of OSERS: OSERS oversees the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) the law that gives disabled kids a right to K-12 public education, and accommodations and specialized instruction through the Individualized Education Program (IEP) process. These laws, and department, were put into place specifically because states were not fulfilling their obligation to educate disabled students, and needed to be compelled to do so.
First, but actually the smaller concern, funding: The federal government pays about 13-40% of IDEA related costs via formula grants on a state by state basis. This is already VERY not enough money. Now there is no one in the office to physically disburse these funds, which, Project 2025 had already planned to do away with, under the guise of “block grants”.
The bigger issue, though, is oversight. At DoEd, OSERS and the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) exist to make sure that students are not being discriminated against on the basis of race, gender, ability, or other protected classes. OSERS specifically exists because before it and IDEA, districts would just say no, we don’t do disabilities. Today, it is often still a fight to get kids the services they need. Districts are cash-strapped, ableist, or both IDEA has a built-in process of escalation that parents can follow to get a school to comply with their kid’s legal rights. This requires OCR and OSERS oversight. Even the state-run offices that take the initial complaints are federally funded via these mechanisms.
IDEA is still law, of course. But less than half of states are fully complying with the law as is, and it’s unclear what these districts–either purposefully noncompliant or cash-strapped– will do when there is no legal oversight or consequences for violating the law.
Those school districts that do routinely provide services are not doing so philanthropically out of the goodness of their hearts, or because they have high moral ideals about inclusion. At the administrative level, these processes exist almost entirely not to get the district sued. Further, private schools are not legally required to accept or accommodate disabled children. The Christian school lobby fought hard against the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act to successfully procure that loophole.
Beyond individual services for K-12 students, OSERS funds/liaises with Gallaudet/NTID, Helen Keller Center for DeafBlind, American Printing House for the Blind, and more. No one is disbursing funding or supporting those. The liaison position is also written into the Education of the Deaf Act, so it is illegal on multiple fronts for them to be fired. Many other training and data collection programs for special education and early intervention also fall under their purview.
The entirety of the office of Rehabilitative Services (RSA) is also gone. This means no oversight, or support for states’ Vocational Rehab programs, which help disabled people transition into the workforce with guidance, funding for secondary coursework and job placement.
2. RFK Jr. embarks on another bizarre anti-Tylenol rant, also linking autism rates to circumcision. It’s a weird mess of conflating correlation and causation, mixing studies, and general nonsense.
1. A judge pauses the DoEd firings, due to government shutdown. The firings, which were not to take affect until December 9th, were declared illegal and paused due to the government shutdown. It’s unlikely that this stay will hold up, given that the courts allowed the firings of DoEd employees over the summer to stand. It’s more likely that this is a semantic argument based on the shutdown itself.
2. Speaker Johnson cancels another week of votes while experts warn that funding for SNAP will run out in November if the government remains closed. Some states, like Pennsylvania, have already announced that SNAP benefits will not be paid next month if the shutdown continues. Experts estimate that millions nationwide will be affected.
Two-thirds of SNAP recipients are the elderly, disabled, and/or children, but food stamps can also be an essential life raft for people working low-paying jobs or experiencing temporary unemployment. Over half of nondisabled SNAP recipients were working, and 75% of nondisabled SNAP recipients had worked at some point in the past year.
3. SCOTUS poised to gut the Voting Rights Act (VCA). The case, currently before the Supreme Court, seeks to further weaken Section 2 of the VCA. The statute currently says that districting maps and other measures that dilute minority voting power can be struck down even without definitive proof of racist intent. Challengers seek to remove this protection.
4. LOCAL: Tennessee center for disabled children sends students home due to lack of funding during shutdown. Students were forced from the Tennessee Rehabilitation Center due to lack of funding from the government shutdown. Footage shows families picking up their crying students on short notice. The center provided vocational education for disabled young adults, and functional training for blind and low vision students.
Likely illegal, the event paints a grim picture of the future for disabled students’ education without IDEA funding or oversight.
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