Georgiana Kalman’s phone doesn’t stop ringing nowadays. A special education attorney in Los Angeles, Kalman currently represents 60 families in Southern California with complaints that their children didn’t receive services they were entitled to when schools closed in the spring.
“I can only imagine the bottleneck of litigation that is coming,” Kalman said. “I have clients to this day who have not heard from their teachers or their service providers.”
Because of the abrupt switch to remote learning when COVID-19 swept the country, districts nationwide have struggled to follow through with the services students are required by law to receive. It was made even harder by the fact that individualized education programs, or IEPs, that determine services for each special education student were never meant to be delivered virtually. These services might range from extra tutoring or speech therapy to extensive, one-on-one assistance for students with severe and complex health needs.
In Los Angeles, Jabril Scott, who is entering kindergarten this fall, is supposed to receive speech, occupational and physical therapy. But “for the first month [of school closures], we didn’t hear anything from any therapist at all,” said his mother, Noel Scott.
When a therapist eventually contacted the family, they sent links to handouts for at-home activities. “It was just really silly,” Scott said.
Survey results released in May showed that almost 40 percent of parents whose children typically receive individual support in school did not get those services during school closures. Those with IEPs were also twice as likely to be doing little to no remote learning, and were just as likely to say that distance learning was going poorly.
Before schools closed, Jabril, who has Down syndrome, was also supposed to receive a device that helps him communicate. But when Noel Scott asked about it, she was told the office where the device was kept was locked. With schools in Los Angeles remaining closed for the beginning of the year, she’s not very hopeful that remote services will improve.
“Especially if we’re going to be doing online distance learning, there has to be a lot of engagement for him to participate in that,” she said.
Special education students “struggled the most,” Mississippi State Superintendent Carey Wright said recently in a call with reporters. She added that her department has “heard from parents who did not feel that their children received what they should.”
Special education families across the country have stories like the Scott's this year. But whether districts provided services for students with special needs during school closures also varied tremendously and depended on a range of factors, including agreements negotiated with unions, if districts already had one-to-one device programs, and teachers’ own family circumstances.
Some districts and regional education agencies that provide special education services say they are already being sued, and they expect litigation costs to further strain budgets when many are already facing cuts. Their reports come as the Senate is considering another pandemic relief bill that leading Republicans have said should include liability protections.
But John Eisenberg, executive director of the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, said that across the board, states have not yet seen a flood of lawsuits. While some districts might be receiving more complaints based on how responsive schools were to families during the school closures, the majority of complaints “get resolved with a phone call,” he said.
Even so, at least two cases have received attention so far. And with a growing number of districts announcing they will remain closed for the start of the school year, the issues prompting complaints could continue into the coming year.
In New York City, a disability rights attorney has signed 200 parents from 10 states onto a case seeking to reopen schools 'so' students can receive in-person services. With a radio advertising campaign, he’s seeking more families to join. And in Hawaii, a lawsuit aims to make it easier for districts to make up for the special education services students didn’t receive during the closures.
The reopening debate is spurring additional litigation — both in states that are aggressively reopening schools and those that are not. In Florida, education groups have sued over Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s order to reopen schools, leaving many special education families conflicted.
Parents “know that their children need specially designed instruction delivered in the classroom,” said Ann Siegel, the director of advocacy, education and outreach for Disability Rights Florida. But in other cases, she said, virtual instruction was more individualized and positive.
In California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has issued restrictions stating which schools can reopen, a conservative group filed a lawsuit last week, arguing that students with disabilities are among those hurt the most by distance learning.
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