For months, and sometimes longer, parents of kids with disabilities say they have waited for the Education Department to make progress on their complaints of bullying or other discrimination.<\/p>\n
Now that the department is offloading civil rights enforcement and special education<\/a>, some parents and advocates warn a process that has largely been stalled since President Donald Trump took office will see only more chaos and roadblocks. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s to the point I don\u2019t even check in anymore with the attorney,\u201d said Nicole May, an Ohio mother. May filed a complaint in spring 2024 with the department\u2019s Office for Civil Rights, alleging her teenage daughter was bullied over her hearing aids and was getting in trouble in class because she couldn\u2019t hear her teachers. More than two years later, the case lacks a resolution.<\/p>\n Under the changes announced Tuesday, the Department of Justice will take over civil rights enforcement in schools, and the Department of Health and Human Services will oversee special education. The moves help fulfill Trump\u2019s campaign promise to dismantle<\/a> the Education Department. Linda McMahon, the education secretary, pitched the changes as a way to get more help<\/a> to families of kids with disabilities.<\/p>\n Advocates said special education doesn\u2019t belong in a health department<\/a>, which usually treats disabilities as conditions to manage, instead of differences in how children learn. The top Republican on the Senate education committee agreed, saying he\u2019d pursue legislation to keep special education out of Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n Some families already are taking discrimination cases elsewhere<\/p>\n For many, though, the response to the announcement was a sigh of resignation.<\/p>\n The Education Department\u2019s civil rights office had long been the last resort for parents who believe their child is facing discrimination at school, with a mandate to review all complaints. Under Trump, the backlog of cases has ballooned, and resolutions have dwindled<\/a>. Increasingly, attorneys say they are turning elsewhere to try to obtain justice for children.<\/p>\n The reaction is a marked change from a year ago, when parents and attorneys were in a panic<\/a> as Education Department staff and attorneys were slashed.<\/p>\n The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services has shrunk by roughly a third since 2024, and the Office for Civil Rights is roughly 40% smaller. Meanwhile, in the Department of Justice, the Education Opportunities Section has shrunk by half, according to estimates provided by Justice Connection, a network of department alumni.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a lot of people are mad, but they are like, \u2018What are we going to do?\u2019\u201d said Emily Harvey, the co-legal director at Disability Justice, formerly Disability Law Colorado, who has watched her cases languish.<\/p>\n When Trump took office, she had a federal complaint pending, alleging some Colorado schools were illegally rejecting enrollment from kids outside their neighborhood boundaries because they had disabilities. Harvey also has a case pending at the Department of Justice, alleging a district south of Denver restrained and secluded disabled students hundreds of times, even though the practice is supposed to be reserved for emergencies.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like they\u2019re probably collecting dust on a virtual shelf somewhere,\u201d Harvey said. <\/p>\n In response to the federal backlog, she helped to push for a new state law<\/a> that expands the types of civil rights cases Colorado education officials can pursue.<\/p>\n States across the U.S. already investigate various special education complaints, including when parents allege schools aren\u2019t following a child\u2019s individualized education program. But the Colorado legislation, signed into law in May,<\/a> allows the state to pursue the types of cases typically handled at the federal level, such as those involving allegations of discrimination and harassment.<\/p>\n Harvey said she didn\u2019t think the federal civil rights office was ever perfect. \u201cBut I think it\u2019s become even less help for people who are trying to resolve issues,\u201d said Harvey, who worked as an Education Department civil rights attorney in 2020 and 2021.<\/p>\n Boston-area special education advocate Craig Haller said he\u2019s heard nothing on a complaint he filed early last year with the Education Department\u2019s Office for Civil Rights. Ever since the Trump administration started dismantling the department, he has leaned more on Massachusetts\u2019s state system for resolving special education matters.<\/p>\n He recently used that system to help a student whose high school didn\u2019t take into account his special education plan when it suspended him.<\/p>\n \u201cI got it fixed for my client,\u201d Haller said. But without the federal Office for Civil Rights, \u201cI can\u2019t get it fixed systematically.\u201d<\/p>\n Department workers say the dismantling has made their jobs harder<\/p>\n While only Congress can close the Education Department, McMahon, a billionaire and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, has signed 10 additional agreements<\/a> to give department functions to other federal agencies. <\/p>\n So far, those agreements have not reduced the number of employees working on specific programs. But the union that represents department workers says staff have run into issues with equipment and access at their new postings.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to describe how inefficient the implementation of the (agreements) has been,\u201d said Rachel Gittleman, the union\u2019s president.<\/p>\n Taken together, the fracturing of programs, enforcement and oversight for disabled students across multiple agencies raised questions of what would fall through the cracks, special education advocates said.<\/p>\n Robyn Linscott, who directs education and family policy at The Arc of the United States, a major disability rights group, recalled attending a three-hour listening session the Education Department hosted in January. Families, educators and advocates described barriers to accessing proper support and services. Although they acknowledged breaks in the system, not a single parent advocated for moving oversight of special education to Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n Still, she isn\u2019t surprised the Trump administration moved the program anyway.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has only been 24 hours, but I think we anticipated this move for over a year,\u201d she said on Wednesday. <\/p>\n In Congress, senators from both sides of the aisle said they would try to stop the move to put special education in Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said he would \u201cpublicly commit\u201d to working with his Democratic colleague, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, on legislative action that would push the administration to change course. Cassidy, who lost a primary election<\/a> this spring and has less than six months left in his Senate term, has personal knowledge of the education challenges faced by kids with disabilities: His wife co-founded a network of charter schools for students with dyslexia.<\/p>\n If special education is moved, he said Wednesday, it should go to the Labor Department. That agency, he said, is better positioned to support people with disabilities as they learn and work.<\/p>\n Ultimately, what matters to parents is whether they can get the services their children need, said Rob Harris, an IEP advocate in Colorado. Families spend an inordinate amount of time navigating systems that should be working together to serve children, but often aren\u2019t. Harris has navigated those systems himself: His 19-year-old daughter is blind.<\/p>\n \u201cFamilies don\u2019t experience the government through organizational charts,\u201d Harris said. \u201cWe experience it through the services our children receive.\u201d<\/p>\n ____<\/p>\n Associated Press writers Bianca V\u00e1zquez Toness and Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.<\/p>\n ____<\/p>\n The Associated Press\u2019 education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards<\/a> for working with philanthropies, a list<\/a> of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For months, and sometimes longer, parents of kids with disabilities say they have waited for the Education Department…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2797,4,450,306609,12,526,306606,451,97,10499,3,306608,111,240098,306607,2798,452,453,795,800],"class_list":["post-710971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-bill-cassidy","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-craig-haller","tag-donald-trump","tag-education","tag-emily-harvey","tag-headlines","tag-health","tag-linda-mcmahon","tag-news","tag-nicole-may","tag-politics","tag-rachel-gittleman","tag-rob-harris","tag-tim-kaine","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-u-s-news","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}