Public schools are required \u2013 to the maximum extent appropriate \u2013 to ensure that children with disabilities are educated alongside their nondisabled peers and to follow specific procedures when making placement decisions about how and where children with disabilities are educated. Today, the U.S. Department of Education\u2019s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened an investigation into the Houston Independent School District (the District) in Houston, Texas to determine whether the District violates Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act by not following these requirements, and are thereby discriminating against students with disabilities. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The District is allegedly centralizing certain special education services and proposing to separate students with disabilities from the larger student population beginning in the 2026-27 school year, despite parental concerns that their children should be in general education classrooms where their social skills improve more significantly around their peers. Parents have also expressed concerns that longer transportation times to the proposed specialty schools would be challenging for children with medical and behavioral needs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSchools cannot exclude students with disabilities simply because of their disability status. Placement decisions must be made individually, based on each student\u2019s needs, rather than by blanket policies that segregate students by disability category,\u201d said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey. \u201cThe allegations described here are alarming. The Trump Administration will fully investigate this situation and fight to ensure every child with a disability receives the education and support guaranteed under the law.\u201d<\/p>\n
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (1973) and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) prohibit recipients of federal financial assistance from discriminating on the basis of disability. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Public schools are required \u2013 to the maximum extent appropriate \u2013 to ensure that children with disabilities are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-286606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}