On October 10, 2025, the Trump administration laid off 466 employees in the federal Department of Education, including eliminating almost everyone at the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). This is called a Reduction in Force (RIF), and the administration intends that this will go into effect in December 2025. A federal judge has intervened to halt these lay-offs, but we don’t know what will happen next. Education Week has provided information about what has happened. So what does this mean for families and schools?
A. There are not enough staff at OSEP (perhaps less than five individuals) to administer the $15 billion dollars in grants that flow to the states. The states did receive the most recent IDEA funding in October. However, the next round of funding isn’t set to go out until July 2026, so who knows what will happen by then. Even if money is not impacted, we need to make sure the money is being spent on children with disabilities.
B. There are not enough staff at OSEP to ensure that states are spending the IDEA funds as required by law.
C. There are not enough OSEP staff to field questions from advocates, state education agencies, school staff, parents to help ensure the law is followed. Aside from responding to daily calls, OSEP has provided more than 100 guidance letters just since 2019. (I was not able to quickly find data from all the years before that.)
As an advocate, I use OSEP guidance letters daily to help resolve disagreements between families and school teams that would otherwise likely escalate to complaints and due process hearings. Rather than having to wait months or longer to obtain needed support for children, we have been able to resolve disagreements in a matter of minutes.
D. The Office of Civil Rights does not have enough staff to investigate discrimination complaints against students with disabilities. There had been 12 offices throughout the country to do this, and the staff were still overwhelmed and could take months or even years to complete investigations. The Trump administration reduced the number of offices to five and is now trying to reduce them to two. OCR has issued hundreds of findings a year to ensure that children with disabilities can attend school without discrimination.
Currently, I am working with a family (who has given me permission to share their story) whose district is discriminating against their child who has epilepsy. The school district is refusing to provide transportation to school in a way that is safe for the child. The child’s medical providers have said that the child requires an adult on the van to administer a simple nasal spray if the child has a seizure that is longer than three minutes. Instead, the district has insists that, in the event of a seizure, the driver should pull over and wait for an ambulance to arrive, which could take far longer than three minutes, resulting in a risk for brain damage to the child. The family agrees that an ambulance should be called in that situation, but the nasal spray needs to be administered at the three-minute mark. The district continues to refuse to do this, even though this means that the child does not have access to the same transportation to school that the child’s peers without disabilities have. Unfortunately, this type of discrimination is not unusual, and we continue to need staff at OCR to investigate and intervene.
E. So what does this mean for IDEA (the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and Section 504 (a federal civil rights act that applies to public schools)? Does my child still have an IEP or 504 plan? Nothing in these laws have changed. Districts are still required to implement IDEA and Section 504, and children still have the right to a Free and Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), special education, and accommodations through IEPs and Section 504.
F. It’s important to note that IDEA requires that many of its functions be overseen and enacted by the U.S. Department of Education. The U.S. Department of Education cannot be dismantled without an act of Congress.
G. Historically, protecting the rights of children with disabilities in education has been a bipartisan effort. Congress has taken no action to change IDEA or Section 504.
H. Some claim that, with the government shut-down, we are seeing what will happen with the permanent closure of the U.S. Department of Education and that, to date, this has had little impact on children, who continue to go to school. This is simply untrue. The lack of access to technical assistance from OSEP and OCR is causing increased confusion, and ultimately, states and local districts may choose to not support the right to a Free and Appropriate Public Education for our students with disabilities.
Can’t we rely on the states and local districts to just do the right thing? At this point, no. If that were true, most special education advocates and attorneys would be out of a job (something I would celebrate) and would have to find other civil rights work to pursue. For better or worse, most of us have more business than we can handle. Why is that? Districts and states are often more focused on budgets than on meeting the requirements of IDEA and Section 504.
Yes, it is expensive to educate students with disabilities in a way that will adequately prepare them for further education, employment, and independent living. However, this is a critical investment. When FAPE is provided, in most cases, the result is the development of independent tax-payers with fulfilling lives, rather than individuals with disabilities who are unemployed, under-employed, incarcerated, etc. To date, states and local districts are often not meeting the needs of students, and it is only because of the protection of IDEA and Section 504–and the guardrails provided by the U.S. Department of Education staff–that parents are able to ensure that at least some of our students with disabilities have their needs met. Could we use MORE staff and support from the U.S. Department of Education? Of course. But for now, I would be thrilled to at least keep the valuable support that these dedicated, non-partisan employees have provided.
I. What about the possibility of moving IDEA oversight to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)? HHS staff do not have the expertise in special education to successfully oversee IDEA. It required over 1,000 hours of professional development, years of mentorship from IDEA experts, and years of navigating special education on behalf of children for me to fully understand the rights and protections that exist for students with disabilities. This isn’t something that you can learn from a YouTube video. Staff at OSEP and OCR have the expertise to oversee IDEA and Section 504. HHS, which has also been decimated in size, does not have this background.
J. What can I do to help? Write your members of Congress–even if you know they agree with you–to demonstrate overwhelming support for the role of the U.S. Department of Education and the critical importance of IDEA and Section 504. Continue to call and write to OSEP to ask for guidance, even if there is no one to respond. Continue to file complaints with OCR, even if there is no one there to respond. Make it clear that these staff are needed to support the educational and civil rights of students with disabilities.
