Three of Christina Pedraza’s nine kids have special needs, with diagnoses of autism and ADHD. All three are children of color who attend Antioch Unified School district. Pedraza recalls the challenges of one of her children before his individual education plan (IEP), a document that spells out the accommodations he is entitled to at school, was put in place. Before his IEP he spent 70 percent of his time excluded from the classroom for behavioral issues, she said. After his IEP, whenever his counselor would notice his behavior change, he would give him a few minutes to step away and draw. The accommodations resulted in big strides in his academic performance, she said.
Looming federal cuts threaten the support that changed the school experience for Pedraza’s kids. California faces cuts of almost $1 billion from the Trump administration. Cuts to Title I funding, which provides financial assistance to schools and districts serving a high percentage of low-income students, will have a significant impact on school districts like Antioch. Federal funding made up 10%, about $28 million, of the school district’s revenue in the 2021-2022 school year. Even the smallest federal cuts could force schools to cut critical programs or lay off a significant number of staff.
The cuts were a part of Trump’s signature campaign promises. Trump and many conservatives argue that education should be managed at the state and local districts, not by the federal government. In March, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said that the cuts “reflect the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents and teachers.” Neither the federal or state departments of education responded to multiple interview requests.
Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, said the danger of Trump’s approach is his multi-front strategy. “If they just went after special education or just Title 1, the states could come back with a concentrated form of legal resistance,” Fuller said. “But if you start cutting 120 different grants and jobs and programs, it’s just death by a hundred cuts.”
Research has shown that Latino children are disproportionately represented in special education generally and in California. Slightly more than 58% of students with special education needs in the state are Hispanic, according to KidsData. In Alameda County, 41.5% of special education students are Latino; in Contra Costa County it’s 39.4%.
Fuller says the impact of such federal education cuts will fall hard on working-class Latino families. “You would see classroom aides laid off,” he said. “You would see after-school programs shrinking. You’d see the slowing of expansion of pre-K. You would see overcrowded classrooms,” Fuller said. “It’s a pretty direct hit.
Pedraza worries about her children losing their long list of services, which include occupational therapy and counseling once a week to address behavioral issues, remedial reading and classroom aides to support them during test-taking. She’s especially worried about her son with the drawing accommodation: “Will he continue to have these supports? What will happen if not?” she asked.
Left in the dark
Natalie Tovani Walchuk is the Vice President of Local Impact at GO Public Schools, a nonprofit advocating for equitable public education for historically underserved students. She works in West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD), which receives about $31 million in funding from the federal government. Her work focuses on building the capacity of parents—especially special education and Spanish-speaking families—to navigate the school system.
She said that supporting families can be life-changing for special education students, even if it simply means accommodations for extra time on testing or adjusting classroom settings to let the child access learning in a meaningful way.
“There’s already more need than there is capacity today,” Walchuk said. “All of these programs and services will open doors for a child’s life that give them lots of options when they exit into the world.” Closing those doors, she added, means “we have decided that their life is not worth fighting for.”
Helping Spanish-speaking parents of children with special needs navigate the bewildering school bureaucracy is a big part of her job, Walchuk said. “In every district that we talk with and work with persistently, we hear [from] families who are not given adequate and full access in their home language.” She’s seen a lack of translation services, and schools relying on an older child or the child with special needs to translate, all of which are a violation of every child’s right to a free and appropriate public education.
The federal office that protected the rights of children with special needs was already slashed by the Trump administration earlier this year. The Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education served as a safeguard to ensure that all children received the free and public education they’re entitled to under federal law. Until this year, twelve regional offices nationwide handled thousands of cases every year.
This changed in March, when the San Francisco office closed following mass layoffs at the Department of Education ordered by the Trump administration. Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, New York and Philadelphia offices also closed. Now, all west coast cases are handled by the Seattle office, which has a third of the workforce of the San Francisco office. All told, the seven closed OCR offices oversaw half of the nation’s states, leaving nearly 60,000 public schools and more than 30 million K-12 students in limbo about how civil rights complaints will be managed.
Office of Civil Rights attorney Jessica Plitt remembers talking to a client over the phone a few months ago and assuring them that she was going to be there every step of the way in their case. That afternoon, she received an email. Her job would end on March 21, just days later.
Pitt said she barely had a week to make transitions with her 100-plus caseload, to inform them of her leave, what the next steps of their case would be and who would be handling it. “They felt like they finally had someone in their corner who wasn’t a typical government person,” Plit said. “Someone they could call or they could email at any time and I would respond.”
Preparing for cuts
Contra Costa County Superintendent Lynn Mackey said the proposed cuts are a clear attack on vulnerable students. At the beginning of the Trump administration, her office began analyzing each school district’s budget to prepare for federal funding cuts. Mackey wants to assure students and families that the county will continue to follow their mission to serve every single student, regardless of their status or disabilities.
“We all have a plan. We all have a mission. And we are going to continue with that plan and mission,” Mackey said.
Kelsey Krausen, who is the Director of Strategic Resource Allocation and Systems Planning at WestEd, said that school districts must do scenario planning for budget cuts to prepare for whatever the Trump administration throws their way.
“Being able to forward plan for that is really important, so that they can make sure that they can continue to invest in those programs and services that are really making the biggest difference for students,” Krausen said. “Because at the end of all of this, this is about ensuring that students have the resources that they need to be successful.”
