Many schools will hold classes this summer for students who have
fallen behind academically after a year of remote learning.
-One, two, three.
-If we know general education children are suffering, then there’s
no doubt in our minds that students with disabilities are struggling even
more.
During Covid, special education students lost many of the services
they are entitled to under federal law.
Those rights were hard won 50 years ago by parents whose
children were often denied the right to go to school at all.
-Like a face.
Look at Montana.
-Wait, wait, wait.
Let me see.
-My two children, they both have IEPs, which stands for
Individualized Education Plan, which calls for them to receive
speech and language therapy, occupational therapy,
physical therapy and a one-to-one teacher.
I’m 27 years old.
I live in Staten Island.
I'm a single mother to two children.
Jazmiah’s nine, and my son, Jasiel, is five.
The education system currently is – is failing them.
-It’s not as easy as it should be for parents to be able to get what they
need for their children in regard to special education services.
Pre-Covid, um, there were constant stories from parents.
A lot of times children were being taught under a
stairwell, or in a makeshift closet that wound up having to be made
into a classroom.
Vasquez says her daughter, who has special needs, has not received
the full complement of services she requires.
-We've been suffering long before the pandemic.
I fought to try to get my daughter placed in a
state-approved school.
She attended briefly.
And you know, then the pandemic happened.
The origins of the special education system, which today serves the
needs of children with mild to profound disabilities, date back 50
years when parents fought to ensure their children would get a
chance to attend public school.
-Many kids with disabilities in New York City, but around the country,
were not in public school.
The message was very clear: You can’t
learn like other kids because you’re different.
It was a time when children were routinely barred from attending
public school with their peers on the basis of IQ.
Thousands ended up being locked away in so-called
“state schools”...
[Shouting]
...massive residential institutions
like Pennhurst, outside Philadelphia.
-Pennhurst opened in 1908 for the care and support of people with
what is now intellectual disability.
In those days, the term was
“feeble-minded.”
And so society provided a way for families to put
their children, thinking it was like a boarding school, a place that was
safe, and they would learn when they couldn’t learn in public school
very easily.
Nobody knew how to teach kids who were different.
Then, in July 1968, for five straight nights on local television in
Philadelphia, a reporter named Bill Baldini showed families, and the
public, what was really happening to children inside Pennhurst.
-The horrible and almost inhumane conditions that prevail at Pennhurst.
The children, as they are all called, who are rotting in their cages, cribs
and beds can thank society for their dreadful plight.
-It brought into people’s living rooms what we had never seen
before.
Stuff that was so hidden from society.
-We ship them 25 miles out of town to a state-operated institution and
forget them while they decay from neglect.
-There could be 50 men or 50 women in a big room, mostly
naked, absolutely uncontrolled, hitting each other, self-stimulating,
feces, naked.
I think that broke the dam in American culture.
No more could we all say, we didn’t know.
-I was horrified as a young mom.
I thought that could be somebody I love.
Audrey Coccia watched the reports on TV and remembers thinking
about the fate of her youngest daughter, Gina.
-My daughter was born with significant disabilities, uh, mostly
intellectual, developmental.
She was five before she walked.
Um, and she also, she didn’t chew until
she was about 11 or 12.
Gina was not considered trainable or educable.
And so therefore, she was not eligible to go to school.
State officials urged her to put Gina in Pennhurst, the only way the state
would pay for her training.
Coccia refused and kept her at home.
-You know, once Bill Baldini did the thing on TV, I knew that’s not
somewhere she was going to go.
And if I could help, I was going to help other people get out of there.
-There is no reason in this day and age with federal funds available for
such a place to exist.
Outraged by what they saw, parent groups wanted to file a lawsuit
either to close Pennhurst or fix it.
Their attorney, Thomas Gilhool, proposed a different strategy: sue
for the right to go to school.
-Because that’s the number one reason why children get sent to
Pennhurst, because they’re not allowed in public schools.
The 1971 case ended with a landmark decree giving all children
with disabilities the right to a free public education, a right codified in
federal law since 1975.
-All of a sudden, we have this court case that says there are kids out
there who are going to be going to public school and they have a right
to go to public school.
Now, let’s educate them.
Now it doesn’t mean the kid is going to be put into
general ed or that the kids are going to get chemistry and physics.
They’re supposed to start almost with a blank state.
It’s not an autistic kid.
It’s not an emotionally disturbed kid.
It’s not a kid with an intellectual disability.
It’s a kid.
The decree meant Gina Coccia was finally allowed to enroll in public
school.
Her mother Audrey became active in the disability rights
movement that closed Pennhurst and institutions like it.
-Many of the organizations, parent-generated, parent-run, laid
the foundation that exists to this day ensuring that kids receive an
appropriate education.
Today, schools are required by law to provide services to children with
all levels of needs, at a cost of tens of billions a year.
But the pandemic highlighted chronic problems.
There is a shortage of trained teachers
and students with disabilities who are low income, or students of
color, often have fewer services available to them.
-We have to unpack and address educational racism.
These children are the ones that wind up getting
suspended.
These young people are the ones that lose interest in
learning, if we don’t do things the right way.
And Lisa Vasquez is still unsure what her children’s education will
look like when in-person learning resumes this fall.
-All the odds are stacked against us.
I have to wake up every day and fight, and if it’s going to take
me the rest of my life to achieve justice, then so be it.