Politics
Education Department staff cuts could limit options for families of kids with disabilities
For parents of kids with disabilities, advocating for their child can be complicated, time-consuming — and expensive.
Changes at the Education Department are likely to make the process even more difficult, advocates for kids with disabilities say.
When a parent believes their child is not receiving proper services or school accommodations for a disability, they can seek remedies from their district. They can file complaints with their state, arguing the child’s rights have been taken away without due process of law, or even pursue litigation in state or federal courts.
Those processes often involve multiple sessions with hearing officers who are not required to be experts in disability law. Legal fees can cost tens of thousands of dollars for a single case. Legal aid and other advocacy organizations that can provide free assistance often have more demand for their services than they can meet.
But filing a complaint with the Education Department has long been an option for families who can’t afford a lawyer. They begin by filling out the Office for Civil Rights’ online form, documenting the alleged instances of discrimination. From there, the agency’s staff is supposed to investigate the complaint, often interviewing school district employees and examining district policies for broader possible violations.
“It’s known and has the weight of the federal government behind it,” said Dan Stewart, managing attorney for education and employment at the National Disability Rights Network. “The process, the complaint portal, as well as the processing manual are all in public, and it does not require or typically involve lawyers.”
That option seems increasingly out of reach, advocates say.
Under President Donald Trump, the Education Department’s staff has been cut approximately in half — including in the Office for Civil Rights, whose attorneys are charged with investigating complaints of discrimination against kids with disabilities. The staff has been directed to prioritize antisemitism cases. More than 20,000 pending cases — including those related to kids with disabilities, historically the largest share of the office’s work — largely sat idle for weeks after Trump took office. A freeze on processing the cases was lifted early this month, but advocates question whether the department can make progress on them with a smaller staff.
“The reduction in force is simply an evisceration of the Office for Civil Rights’ investigatory authority and responsibility,” Stewart said. “There’s no way that I can see that OCR can keep up with the backlog or with the incoming complaints.”
A federal lawsuit filed Friday challenges the layoffs at the Office for Civil Rights, saying they decimated the office’s ability to process and investigate complaints.
While the OCR process was not perfect, reducing the office’s investigative staff will only worsen the challenges families face when seeking support for their kids, said Nikki Carter, an advocate for kids with disabilities and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
“It makes them feel hopeless and helpless,” Carter said. “By reducing the number of employees to handle cases, by putting stipulations on certain cases, it only makes it feel intensified.”
Education Department officials insist the staff reductions will not affect civil rights investigations and the layoffs were “strategic decisions.”
In her state of Alabama, Carter said families face an uphill battle to finding legal representation.
“They don’t have the money for an attorney,” she said. “Or the representation they’re getting is not the representation they feel like will be best for their child.”
Even if families can afford the high costs, a limited number of attorneys have the expertise to take on disability discrimination cases. Programs that offer free representation often have limited capacity.
If the backlog of cases increases at the federal Office for Civil Rights, families may lose faith in how quickly the department will investigate their complaints, Stewart said. That may drive them to alternate pathways, such as filing state complaints.
But state and local agencies haven’t always had the capacity or understanding to handle education disability complaints, Stewart said, since those cases so often went to the U.S. Education Department.
“They might not have the infrastructure or the knowledge or the staffing to take on the influx of cases,” Stewart said.
In a separate federal lawsuit filed Thursday, Democratic attorneys general argued the staff reductions at the Education Department may embolden school districts to ignore complaints of discrimination or harassment.
“Students with current complaints will likely see no meaningful resolution, with cases backlogged due to the shortage of employees to resolve them,” the lawsuit said. “Students facing discrimination, sexual harassment or sexual assault will lose a critical avenue to report their case.”
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A battle of David versus Goliath has emerged in response to a bill filed in the House and Senate which is supported by the Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR).
The bill (SB 1656) proposes amendments to Florida Statute 651 which are intended to reform the law that governs continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs), especially provisions intended to give the OIR new tools to deal with CCRC bankruptcies.
Insurance Commissioner Mike Yaworsky has gone on record criticizing a major continuing care provider association because some of its members have pressured retirement home residents to oppose provisions of the bill that are supported by Florida Life Care Residents Association (FLiCRA), the association made up of 13,000 residents of retirement communities across Florida.
The Commissioner communicated in writing to LeadingAge Southeast that he found the association was engaging in “unacceptable and unproductive behavior.”
Hank Keith, who is CEO of Westminster Communities of Florida, has also come under fire from Westminster retirement community residents across the state, after he wrote to residents personally several times urging them to launch a letter-writing campaign to urge legislators to oppose the OIR bill.
In his letters to residents Keith claimed that the OIR bill would lead to “significant increases in monthly costs” for residents and would “reduce charitable impact.”
FLiCRA Executive Director Bennett Napier says FLiCRA “supports specific provisions in the bills centered around new and improved definitions, additional financial transparency and protection of resident financial interests.”
“Like other stakeholders, FLiCRA wants to ensure the Florida CCRC marketplace is stable and able to grow to meet consumer demand.” Napier said. “We appreciate that a number of owner/operators of Florida CCRCs chose not to engage their residents in letter writing against the House and Senate bills that are likely to be amended during the committee process.”
Some Westminster residents believe their friends and neighbors may have been misled into signing the form letters that Westminster management provided to them.
One such resident is former Rep. Marjorie Turnbull, who lives at Westminster Oaks in Tallahassee. After receiving communication from Westminster that included a pitch from Keith criticizing the bill, sample letters, and contact information for legislators, Turnbull fired back a response asking Westminster to withdraw the request.
“I was perturbed by the email asking Westminster Oaks residents to contact their legislators regarding a bill that has not been explained to us in detail prior to this request,” Turnbull said. “Without more detailed information and a like statement from FLiCRA, which solicits resident input prior to taking a position, I would suggest that any resident, who sends such a letter to a legislator, may not be acting in his/her own best interest.”
“It would be wise (for Westminster) to retract the request until we receive more information,” she concluded.
It appears Westminster instructed managers at all 12 of its Florida CCRC locations to distribute the Keith communication to residents.
At the Sandhill Cove Senior Living Community in Palm City, local management took it a step further and made a presentation to the community at both the February and March “Cup of Joe” monthly gatherings.
Sandhill Cove resident Pete Morrisey said the presentations came without any advance notice. “At the end of the meetings they said there were form letters they could give to people,” Morrisey said.
Morrisey said he agrees with Turnbull that the tactics of Westminster and some other owner/operators surely led some residents to sign form letters without fully knowing what they were opposing.
The OIR bill is scheduled to be taken up by the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee on Monday.
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Politics
AOC raises a ruckus over two Florida Democrats in Congressional races use her material without permission
Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, David Hogg, warned Democratic candidates to back off using unauthorized material.
Two Florida Democrats with long-shot campaigns for U.S. Congressional seats are taking heat from a national leader of the party for the unauthorized use of material in their advertisements.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also known as AOC in political pop culture, is the U.S. Representative for New York’s 14th Congressional District, is taking Gay Valimont and Josh Weil to task. Valimont is seeking Florida’s 1st Congressional District seat that was held by Matt Gaetz in the Panhandle until he resigned in November after President Donald Trump nominated Gaetz for U.S. Attorney General. Gaetz resigned his Congressional seat but then withdrew his name from the nomination after he had resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives.
Weil is running for Florida’s 6th U.S. Congressional District in and surrounding the Space Coast and as recent as Friday his Republican competitor Randy Fine called for his arrest because one of his campaign workers was distributing campaign flyers on a stolen bicycle. That congressional seat is up for a special election April 1 after Republican Michael Waltz vacated it to become National Security Advisor for Trump.
Ocasio-Cortez in a social media post on the X platform this weekend said neither Valimont or Weil had permission to take excerpts from the New York Democrat’s Instagram speech that lasted 92 minutes recorded in February. The two Florida Democrats were using Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram address to raise funds for their campaigns in the Sunshine State.
“Fyi this is being run as an ad without my consent. I’m not personally involved in any races right now,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an X post dated Saturday.
David Hogg, the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee has gotten involved in the inner-party flap. Hogg, who is from Florida and one of the survivors of the school shooting in Parkland in 2018, said he has advised the Florida Democrats to back off.
“The campaign hasn’t been approving this type of content – it’s this consultant who’s running this without anyone’s consent,” Hogg said in an X post, adding he has sent a cease-and-desist order to the political fundraising consultants on the campaign.
Hogg singled out fundraising advisor Jackson McMillan for the unauthorized use of the the Ocasio-Cortez material.
“I’m done dealing with these a**holes and it’s time they start being called out. Everyone says f*** the consultants but won’t name names. Jackson is one of many,” Hogg said in his X post.
While Valimont is the up for the special election in April 1 for the vacant Gaetz seat, the favorite to win the seat is current Florida Chief Executive Officer Jimmy Patronis.
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