Letter: Alachua County’s students with disabilities deserve better — and our Members of Congress should say so
Letter to the editor
Representative Cammack and Senators Scott and Moody should publicly oppose any effort to dismantle or hollow out the U.S. Department of Education. For students with disabilities in our state, this is not an abstract political debate — it is about whether legally protected services will continue to exist.
Florida public schools serve nearly 450,000 students with disabilities. According to the National Education Association, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has provided more than $800 million in federal dollars each year to Florida’s schools, supporting special education services such as specialized instruction, therapies, and accommodations in the districts they represent. While $800 million is significant, it is only a fraction of what Congress promised. The federal government committed to fund 40 percent of the excess cost of special education but has never exceeded 13 percent. The resulting IDEA funding gap in Florida exceeds $1 billion — a shortfall that falls on state and local budgets, and ultimately on students and families. Weakening the Department of Education would place even these inadequate supports at risk.
Last year marked the 50th anniversary of IDEA, a law enacted because states failed to educate children with disabilities equitably on their own. Federal oversight was not optional then, and it is not optional now. Rolling it back would reverse decades of progress and force families to fight once again for rights that are already settled law. Even if the funding itself exists on paper, without the Department to administer it and enforce protections, delivery of services and students’ legal rights would be in jeopardy.
Disability Rights Florida joined over 450 disability and civil rights organizations in opposing the Trump Administration’s plans to restructure agencies that serve people with disabilities. The American Association of People with Disabilities and Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund have warned that without the Department actively enforcing civil rights, disabled students face being ignored, segregated, and even abused at school. Proposals to move the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice would strip education-specific civil rights enforcement from the only agency with the expertise to handle it. AAPD has warned that no other agency has the personnel or knowledge to oversee the education laws that protect students with disabilities — and the damage is already visible: the Office for Civil Rights has closed seven of its twelve regional offices and dismissed 90 percent of discrimination complaints without review. Similarly the Arc has warned moving IDEA services to the Department of Health and Human Services would send the message that students with disabilities are patients to be managed rather than students with potential to be fulfilled.
President Trump does not have the legal authority to abolish a cabinet-level agency that Congress created. Yet his Administration is already gutting the Department’s capacity — firing staff, closing regional offices, and dismissing civil rights complaints without review. Only Congress can stop this. Our members of Congress have a constitutional duty to act as a check on the executive branch and defend the laws Congress has passed. Failure to do so puts students’ education and protections at risk. Silence or acquiescence is not neutrality — it is complicity.
Sincerely,
Vijay Vasudevan, PhD, MPH
Gainesville, FL
The opinions expressed by letter or opinion writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AlachuaChronicle.com. Assertions of facts in letters are similarly the responsibility of the author. Letters may be submitted to info@alachuachronicle.com and are published at the discretion of the editor.
The Federal Govt doesn’t need to be in the weeds of state education programs. Pass the money to the states and let them manage the issue.
Congress probably got wind of the enormous fraud on the taxpayers, committed by Dem sheLLCs, NGOs and Dem campaign coffers in places like Minnesota, California and many other Blue states.
Address those concerns before complaining you can’t pay off your PhD diploma sooner.
Thank you for standing up for children that need assistance. Enough with the foreign regime change campaigns abroad and violence. Let’s focus on our own problems like the national school and achievement crisis. Congress needs to take a stand. If not them out.
Your letter shows why the DOE should be abolished. It is ineffective. Return control to the states without all the ineffective bureaucratic control.
We’re not talkjing about unfunded mandates here, but the unwillingness of some states to take care of their neediest even when granted funding of federal tax dollars – not state money – for specific purposes, like Medicaid, SNAP, and those the writer highlights. The current lap dog Congress does nothing to protect or repeal – do one or the other, deadbeats – these programs while their failed business owner ruler does whatever he wants.