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Getting Special Education Students What They Need to Succeed

  Commentary: Gaining access to education is a complex, constant, and frustrating challenge for students with developmental disabilities and their families and has only become harder in the midst of the ongoing global pandemic.

 

All too often Individual Education Plans (IEP) intended to be tailored to the unique needs of a particular student are instead generic or not adhered to by teachers and school administrators, yet the process to address those concerns is complex, time consuming, and typically fails to get the job done.

 

To benefit from the same educational opportunities available to most students, those with developmental disabilities, their parents, guardians, and advocates, must figure out a complicated and unresponsive system of bureaucratic, legal, and policy hurdles by themselves.

 

Take for example the almost 100 pages of rights and procedures that are supposed to help students and their families navigate their own way through the system. These documents are almost impossible to understand without legal expertise in special education law. See, for example,https://webnew.ped.state.nm.us/bureaus/special-education/laws-rules-guidance.

 

In one recent case, a student whose IEP was designed to build their focused attentionup tofive minutes of screen time at a stretch was required to use a computer for several hours each day. Yet when their parents requested something so simple as access to the class schedule to help their child prepare for the coming day, that reasonable request was denied. The only way for the parent to resolve the matter was to engage in a weeks-long formal process that cost thousands of dollars. The result? The parent was too exhausted to start that process, and the student continues to miss many hours of classroom instruction.

 

This system starts in the classroom as it should, but all too often ends in the courtroom – in many cases dragging on for years during which a youth is left to flounder, their opportunities lost and their potential unrealized.

The Special Education Ombuds Bill (House Bill 222) addresses the issue by designating a champion to help students with developmental disabilities achieve the equity in education they deserve. It does so by creating a Special Education Ombuds within the Developmental Disabilities Planning Council to work directly with students, parents, guardians, and advocates to help them engage with their school districts and develop adaptive solutions to meet the unique needs of children with developmental disabilities. The Ombuds would oversee placement and training of volunteer Ombuds in every school district.

 

The Special Education Ombuds Bill received unanimous support from the House Education Committee and next moves to the House Appropriations Committee for considerations. To help this bill become law and ensure the basic right of equitable access to education for New Mexico’s children with developmental disabilities, please contact members of the Appropriations Committee and urge them to support this important bill for our children.

 

Representative Liz Thomson