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At Founders Memorial School in Essex, Tammy Carroll’s daughter, Addison, received meticulously designed supports to help her learn. A digital modulation system connected a microphone worn by her teacher to her hearing aid. She saw a speech-language pathologist several times a week. A one-on-one aide stayed by her side all day.
Staff would also regularly take the 9-year-old out to new places in the community, so that she could practice using her white cane to navigate in unfamiliar spaces. Addison is already legally blind, but her vision is getting progressively worse, and she will soon lose it completely.
But with schools closed to in-person instruction because of the pandemic, it’s unclear how, or if, many of these services can be replicated remotely.
“We need her to learn all these super basic things that preschoolers know. About how to keep themselves safe. To identify where the road is and not to walk into it. So it’s particularly scary that that can’t happen,” Carroll said.
The dismissal of schools has interrupted the carefully designed daily routines of thousands of special needs students and their families, and will likely disrupt long-term statewide plans to reform special education. The circumstances have led advocates to push the state to be generous with expanded programming after the crisis ends, to try to make up for the impact on students.
Special education services are mandated by the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which requires school districts to provide students with disabilities accommodations that ensure equal access to learning opportunities. Outside of Vermont, many districts worried that adapting remote learning to certain special education plans couldn’t be done, and so canceled school completely in order to avoid falling out of compliance with the law.
Vermont never went that route. And while the $2 trillion federal stimulus package passed in the wake of the crisis gives U.S. Education Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos the authority to ask Congress to waive certain parts of the IDEA, at least one Vermont advocacy organization isn’t too worried the state will exploit federal flexibility.
“I think that Vermont would be very likely to stand behind its commitment to educate kids with disabilities. I don’t see the Agency (of Education), the Legislature, or governor saying we’re going to waive the rights of kids or parents,” said Marilyn Mahusky, a staff attorney at Vermont Legal Aid’s Disability Law Project.
Instead, she said the organization is mostly concerned about the practical capacities of different school districts. Some appear to be smoothly rolling out accommodations. Others less so.
“What this situation has highlighted is what we already know – which is that there’s inequity in our educational systems. And this is just exacerbating that,” she said.
Across the United States, over 55 million children have been sent home as schools shut down to help stem the spread of the coronavirus. But if homeschooling is a tall order for most working parents, it can be absolutely overwhelming for those whose children have special needs — and may even require some parents to give up their jobs.
Carroll works — as does her husband — and Addison is not their only child. The couple also have a 7-year-old and a 17-year-old, both of whom also have disabilities.
Carroll repeatedly said that school employees were doing their best to provide whatever services were possible in the current context. But it still isn’t enough.
“It’s an impossible situation. This isn’t negligence on their part. But it’s not what the kids need either. And it’s absolutely not manageable,” she said.
Kirsten Murphy, the executive director of the Vermont Developmental Disabilities Council, said she’s particularly worried about families like the Carrolls, who have medically vulnerable children. She’s also concerned about children that require significant behavioral support, as well as families juggling the twin stressors of poverty and disability.
Because caring for children with profound special needs will require some people to quit their jobs, the Disability Law Project is also asking the state to expand its child care program for essential workers to include care for children with particularly acute special needs. The Developmental Disabilities Council is also working with the state to offer financial relief by directing Medicaid dollars that once paid for in-home services that can no longer be delivered to families directly.
Advocates are also urging school officials to direct as much money as possible from the federal relief package to special education, and in particular to compensatory services or extended year programming that will help make up whatever ground is lost while schools are closed.
“We know there’s going to be regression. And the (Agency of Education) needs to have the resources and the generosity to have much more extensive, extended year programming so that kids can regain some of the skills during the summer,” Murphy said.
Whatever money is made available, Murphy said it’s important the Agency of Education tell school districts as quickly as possible.
“Funding is not supposed to drive services. But let’s face it — that’s an important piece,” she said.
Even in normal times, special education is a fraught part of the education system. The paperwork is notoriously complicated. Accomodations can be expensive, or difficult to staff appropriately. And parents and schools are often at odds about what children need.
Pam Isham, whose 11-year-old son Charlie has Down syndrome, said it can take a long time for parents to successfully advocate for their children.
“So it was like, we’ve finally got that mastered. And yeah, now, the pandemic. And it feels like everybody has a clean slate again,” the Colchester mother said. “We’re all kind of like, right back at zero.”
A lack of reliable internet in certain areas of the state — or a family’s inability to pay for a connection — is already complicating attempts to deliver regular education. For families with special needs, who badly need access to specialized coaching and supports, the problem is a compounding one.
“I implore the Legislature to find a way to get internet access to remote areas of Vermont as soon as humanly possible,” Erin Maguire, director of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion for the Essex-Westford School District, told lawmakers in late March. “This would make a huge difference for our students.”
In Fairfax, Jennifer Osgood, whose 6-year-old, Lily, has Down syndrome, said she’s just trying to stay positive. She credited her school district with “doing an awesome job given the circumstances.”
Osgood usually works as a paraeducator at the middle school, but, since it’s been closed, she’s been able to stay home with her daughter. She thinks Lily is getting most of what she needs, but she acknowledges hers is not a universal opinion. In Facebook groups for parents of special needs children, many of her peers are angry at their schools.
“Parents are really upset about, well what about physical therapy, and what about speech therapy, and what about occupational therapy?” she said. “And I guess from the get-go, I just set really realistic expectations. She’s not going to get physical therapy. She’s not going to get occupational therapy. Because people are not going to be able to come to our house.”
And as the spread of Covid-19 upends the lives of thousands of individual families, it is also poised to disrupt the state’s efforts to reform the system.
The epidemic is likely to see lawmakers to once again delay the rollout of Act 173, a massive overhaul to how Vermont funds and delivers special education services. Legislators already pushed its implementation date off by a year in the last session after several school groups argued the state just wasn’t ready.
Vermont was still in the process of writing the regulations that will accompany the law, which transitions the state to a block grant system for funding special education, when the coronavirus epidemic came to Vermont. Disability advocates now appear unanimous in wanting the law delayed again, and the Agency of Education, which has resisted earlier calls to postpone its rollout, recently endorsed an additional delay given the pandemic’s manifold disruptions on schools.
The House Education Committee is at work on language to delay the reform. Its chair, Rep. Kate Webb, D-Shelburne, said it made sense to postpone once again. School districts, she said, still needed additional inservice and coaching to make the necessary changes in practice, staffing and scheduling needed to implement the law correctly.
“This will need more time and focus. Right now, time and focus is fully consumed educating students in the midst of a state emergency,” she said.
