Contending with Current Events as Parents of Children with Disabilities in Pennsylvania: How to Protect Your Child’s Access to Education when Access is Under Attack
At the time I am writing this blog post, the United States has inaugurated as its president a person who, in the wake of the collision of American Eagle Flight 5342 and an Army helicopter that killed 67 people and before the investigation into the cause of the collision had even really begun, made the following statements regarding persons with disabilities:
“The FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing. And then it says, FAA says, people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce and they want them in and they want them. . ..
The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website. Can you imagine?
Targeted disabilities are those disabilities at the federal government as a matter of policy, as identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring, the FAA’s website states. They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism all qualify for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country, pouring into a little spot, a little dot on the map, a little runway.”
When challenged on why he would conclude, without evidence, that a policy encouraging the inclusion of qualified individuals with disabilities in the federal workforce contributed in any way to this tragedy, he responded that it was “common sense.”
Just three days earlier, on the 27th of January, the current Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum that purported to freeze the disbursement of all federal grant money. That freeze applied to education funding from the Department of Education to states (which then goes to school districts) under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”). In the following days, some parents here in Pennsylvania received notifications from their school districts reassuring them that there would be no immediate effects from the freeze because special education services had already been funded . . . until April 2025. Two courts have since issued temporary restraining orders halting the freeze. Unfortunately, we do not know how long those orders will apply. Moreover, now that the extragovernmental organization known as the Department of Government Efficiency controls disbursements from the United States Treasury, we also cannot know whether the courts’ orders will be obeyed completely—or at all.
Furthermore, even under the court orders, federal agencies (including the Department of Education, which is responsible for disbursing IDEA funds that provide for special educational services to our children with disabilities) are required to analyze whether the grant monies they are paying out “align” with the current administration’s prohibition on the use of federal monies for programs and initiatives that encourage diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
And on the 31st of January, Representative Tom Massie (R-KY) introduced in the House of Representatives HR-899, which would abolish the Department of Education entirely. The substantive text the bill reads, in its entirety:
“The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2026.”
It has 27 co-sponsors.
In the face of all of this, it would be entirely understandable for parents of children with disabilities in Pennsylvania to feel a sense of defeat and despair. There is so much uncertainty about what could happen next. All that does seem certain is that persons with disabilities, including our children with disabilities, are being attacked with nearly the same vigor with which the executive branch is vilifying and dehumanizing trans persons—particularly trans women.
But our children need us. They need every lawful protection we can muster. So let’s talk about the tools we have available to us, and how to use them.
You are Your Child’s Most Steadfast Support. Take Care of Yourself.
The constant barrage of negative news is disheartening, perhaps most of all because of the thought that because the administration was installed through the typical transfer of power here in America, the actions it takes are presumptively legitimate. And we will likely hear an increasing drumbeat of contrary messages from social media and traditional media as anti-DEIA efforts take hold. But the first thing we must bear in mind, and bear in mind constantly, is that assuming office, even through lawful means, does not give one authority to cross legal boundaries and undermine the rule of law.
Nor does assuming office give one the power to decide who deserves to be counted as fully human. Our children with disabilities deserve to be included in every aspect of our society, including schools and our workforce. They deserve a free, appropriate public education and reasonable accommodations. And their inclusion enriches society by allowing society to learn and grow from them in turn.
Here are the practical steps you can take to take care of yourself.
-
-
When it gets to be hard to block out the negative messages, give yourself permission to disengage from the source of those messages, whether it is traditional media, social media, or people in your social circles.
-
Write down the values that are important to you so that you can review them as reminders.
-
Find communities of parents of children with disabilities who also know that their children deserve inclusion, and that their inclusion is a cause worth fighting for. Connect with them in person and/or by social media and communication apps that have not removed DEI policies (e.g., Signal).
-
When you find a public figure or media outlet that voices support for the fact that children with disabilities deserve a FAPE and inclusion, show support to them so that they can continue in their efforts.
-
Work to Ensure Accuracy, both in What you Represent and How You’re Represented.
It appears that one of the tactics now being used to shield the disruption of education funding for children with disabilities from meaningful scrutiny is to create so much bad news so quickly that the news impossible to follow, which makes it that much to harder discern the truth. Another, concurrent tactic is to employ “alternative facts,” (or, as they are more commonly known, lies) and then to insist over and over again that they are true—for example, claiming that inclusive hiring policies caused a plane crash when they in fact had nothing to do with it. The antidote to these things is the truth, but the truth is persuasive only when one has credibility. So, we must ensure that as we advocate for our children with disabilities, we are relying on valid and accurate sources of information.
Accuracy in What you Represent
How to do that? Parents of children with disabilities should train themselves on how to recognize the various kinds of fake news: Misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. Before posting or reposting a news story, try to ensure that it is reliable. As United States government sources of information about persons with disabilities become less informed, less accurate, and more driven by the administration’s stated goal of exclusion, it will become increasingly important for parents of children with disabilities to be a source of reliable information for one another.
Accuracy in How You’re Represented
Similarly, just as “fairness” in girls’ sports and “safety” in girls’ bathrooms have been coopted for fearmongering to facilitate the dehumanization and persecution of trans and gender diverse persons, we should anticipate that the interests of children with disabilities will be coopted to reduce funding for children with disabilities, make it increasingly inequitable, or eliminate it so that special educational services can be privatized. It is consequently important that we, as parents of children with disabilities, push back against these mis-portrayals of our children, their needs, and their interests. We do that by building the communities and supporting the public voices described above.
Do Not Be Divided. The Interests of Our Children are the Interests of All Children.
The core purpose of the comments made about the Flight 5342 tragedy was that persons with disabilities are less than fully human. That purpose—dehumanization—is the same purpose behind the executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented persons. Dehumanization is the same purpose behind the executive order proclaiming that trans and gender diverse persons, who exist and are valid, do not exist. When implemented at the level of government, dehumanization can combine with societal apathy (or even acceptance) to create horrors that one hopes will never happen here in modern America.
We must therefore stand together—privately, publicly, and in protest—with communities that, like our children with disabilities, are also being targeted. This includes communities of color, LGBTQIA+ persons, and communities of immigrants. Standing together includes asserting that all of us are fully human and fully American. It means not adopting, even subconsciously, the pejorative labels that the administration and its allies places on communities that it wishes to dehumanize. Standing together also includes fighting for each other in the public sphere and coordinating efforts in the courts, the legitimacy of which we must also work to maintain.
Perhaps most importantly, for the good of our children with disabilities, to preserve our ability to protect them, we must preserve the rights that allow us to perform the necessary advocacy. The most fundamental of these are the rights to speak, assemble, and vote. So should we see any efforts to curtail those rights, we must—with equally as much fervor as we would protect our own children from an immediate threat—act to preserve those rights. Because any effort to take those rights away from us means that we could forever lose our ability to advocate for our children, and our children could lose their ability to advocate for themselves.
Stay strong. Take care of yourself and your children. Each of them is fully human, fully valid, and deserves full inclusion in our society. And when you need help, reach out for it from people you know and trust.
The information within this article is not, nor is it intended to be, legal advice. Please consult an attorney for individual advice regarding your personal situation.
