I Can't Sit Back Any Longer

This piece isn't necessarily to be overtly critical to any political party. So please let me emphasize this in the beginning by saying- this is me as a concerned parent for all special needs families here in the state of Washington as well as the Greater United States. This is my view point and does not directly reflect the views of the school district my children are actively enrolled in at this time.

As President Trump resumes office next week January 20th, 2025 there's clearly a mixed bag of emotions. Many are excited and hope that there's change. Others are obviously terrified, and worried. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, President Trump is vowing several polarizing topics of his 180 day agenda of when he gets into office. This is specifically geared towards accomplishing all his "promises" affectively of what he wanted to fix on the campaign trail.

However one of the things that he mentioned and keeps mentioning, that I don't think is being actually talked about enough is the active conversation around the dismantling of the Department of Education (DOE). Now before we go further- I want to emphasize that I fall in the Moderate Left Leaning Category. This is to give transparency to this story, and why I am actively working with Senators here in Washington State at this time.

For those who don't believe that it won't happen, here's the article from Education Weekly showing that it has been introduced. Senator Mark Rounds from South Dakota introduced the legislation as of late November. Meaning this is already on the table waiting to be looked at this time.

To understand the magnitude of this issue, I feel it is important to break down what the Department of Education physically does for the education system here in the United States for those who live abroad and are not familiar with our government.

So the federal government spent money on education and developed education policies going back to the 19th century. But it didn't become a standalone agency until 1980, when it split off from the US department of health, education, and welfare. President Jimmy Carter advocated for the creation of the department to fulfill a campaign promise to the National Education Association.

The Department of Education which I'm going to abbreviate as DOE going forward created several safeguards and functions for children across the US, but specifically provides funding for K-12 education. This includes special education programs, affecting children like mine. It offers Head Start programs required for early intervention programs, for kids being identified with disabilities such as autism, down syndrome, and other various special needs. But it guarantees non discrimination rights as students in the public education system.

This also provides schools with Title 1 funding (meaning your district is 48% or more in students that actively are in poverty) government grants. FASFA funding for college etc. There's a lot that the department does, and what the incoming administration wants to do is dismantle this education system, and send the education back to the states. Allowing the states to decide what curriculum to teach, including allowing public schools to be taught religion in history. This is currently already happening in Oklahoma, and Texas is incentivizing schools to actively have Bibles in their classrooms. This violates the separation of church and state laws we have in the United States.

There's other things they do, but specifically the way this works is that the DOE transfers the money from the federal government and distributes it to the states. From there the Senators at the state level distribute the funds to the districts, which then distributes it to the various schools and education programs. What's troubling right now is this- if they dismantle the DOE special needs kids are no longer going to be protected for their rights to an education. Those rights will be stripped if they remove the DOE, because the DOE enforces children to have protections.This can look like not being able to accommodate IEP (individualized education plans), no regulations on having to enforce the rules.

But as of right now what's even more troubling is that in all 50 states, even though they give this funding not one state has a law in place requiring that the schools fund special education K-12. Meaning that the funds that are provided and granted to each state, it's up to the school district to allocate them accordingly, but there's no law that requires it to be in the budget. This causes special education programs across the US to be severely underfunded and often times allows these kids to slip through the cracks. It's all voluntary right now.

At the district level both my children, as well as thousands of children across the United States receive services like occupational and speech therapy. These services have been provided by the district, as well as para educator support for my youngest son who's non verbal and needs full time assistance at school to meet his educational/academic needs one on one. Because this funding is in a massive deficit this year already for the 2025-2026 school year specifically by 16 million for my school district alone many para educator jobs are being threatened.

This will decrease the quality of care and education that my sons will be receiving as well as thousands of others across the United States. It doesn't matter if you are Red or Blue this affects every family who has special needs kids who receive services in the public school system. Most private schools I have talked to told me that they would refer me to my pediatricians office to have them send me out to the community to receive the same services, but companies like United Health Care have recently been outed for knowingly denying services like ABA, Occupational, and Speech therapy services. Especially if you are on Medicaid, which many students who are attending public school are on some form of Medicaid for medical insurance.

This is the article above. But essentially if these services were no longer allowed in school, it would seriously limit critical care for special needs kids in the system, and place a huge burden on our already very broken health care system. So what can we do about this? Because obviously this is way above my pay grade, but so many of us are sounding the alarms both in and out of the school system in my area.

Essentially me being the nosey person I am, I talked to the Superintendent and the School Board President where my children attend. Both said it's out of our hands. And if you want something done you have to go above us. So I decided to take action into my own hands and I am currently working with Senator Lisa Wellman's office here in Washington State.

Being prior service Navy I look at everything like a Chain of Command situation, but this felt warranted to go all the way up to the big guys. Working with Senator Lisa Wellman, my one goal in 2025 is to use our story for good. I am currently and actively requesting help with her office to create a law or piece of legislation that would essentially guarantee funding for adequate special needs programs.

What This Would Entail:

• It's not increasing funding, no levies etc. This would specifically force the districts to allocate a specific percentage of what they are getting at an annual level to these programs.
• It would guarantee paras in schools and that critical services like speech, occupational therapy, ABA, etc. would be paid for within that budget.
• Allow the schools to access critical tools to help the exploding epidemic of autism cases and increase access to school social workers, counselors.
• Have funding for guaranteed nursing staff at ALL schools to help with care of students.

If this gets passed at the top level, Washington State would be the first state in the entire country's history to guarantee Special Education funding. Allowing the state to be a safe haven for families who actively need resources for kids with various disabilities. So regardless of if things change in the United States, the schools in Washington State would still be able to help kids with disabilities not get left behind.

Now please understand- I'm not a politician, I don't plan to be. I am a single mom with two kids on the spectrum who is seeing first hand the impacts of what will happen if something isn't done to protect the most vulnerable. This is in the earliest stages so nothing is physically in motion, but my goal for 2025 is to make sure my kids have a fighting chance and secure funding for the next school year and the future generations to come. Parents of kids with special needs constantly have to fight the system, and if I can do something to help I'm going to do my best.

The hope at the end of this, if it passes and comes to fruition would be other states to create copy cat laws with similar metrics. So kids in other states could be afforded the same rights. There's a lot of work to do, but I'm so glad my therapist encouraged me to make the call. I'm really lucky that Senator Wellman and several people who are on the Education Committee have education backgrounds so they are very aware of what's at stake here. They need people like me who are passionate about this to step up.

I would encourage you if you want to talk to your local representatives, their offices are super easy to connect with! They listened to my concerns, and actively gave me emails, and phone numbers to call. The best part was they are super responsive, and now I'm getting to work on a literal piece of history. Again nothing is guaranteed yet, but at least I am doing my part. I'll keep you all updated as we move along in this process, but how exciting is it to think I could be apart of the reason history is made for generations to come here in Washington State.

"Nothing is impossible to a determined woman." -Louisa May Alcott

Or in this instance- Just a single mom to two special boys, who saw a problem and decided enough was enough and is doing something about it.