A leaked proposal that would establish “special education specialty schools” in Houston for a significant change in how and where special education students are taught had several Houston ISD parents of those students alarmed over the weekend.
And Monday many of those parents besieged the district’s central special ed department and their children’s schools but reported that the only official answer they got was that the program would be explained at the end of the school year or into the summer. We put in a request to talk to someone at HISD about it but didn’t hear back from the HISD press office.
According to Meredith Yaker, the mother of three children in HISD one of whom is in special ed, this action by the HISD administration will probably affect just as many children as those who’ve been going to the 12 schools designated for closure in the 2026-27 school year.
The difference, she said, is that no one knew about the special ed plans, which are designed to go into effect as early as next fall.
There is a certain amount of confusion about what those special ed plans mean. Will students be directed to go to different school entirely? Reading the section about whether siblings could be allowed to move with them (doubtful on an as-space-available basis) it appeared so.
But others wondered if it meant the students would be bused to a different location for just part of the day. And if so, wouldn’t they lose valuable instruction time in transit?
The push to mainstream students with disabilities accelerated in the mid-1970s with the call to place each child in the “least restrictive environment.” Limiting special ed kids to only certain schools in the district, seems to go against this, some parents believe.
Jessie Dugan has 6-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. Her son is autistic which inspired her to become an advocate for special education at HISD school board meetings. She says her son has benefitted greatly from his exposure to mainstream classes for part of the school day In fact, it’s been the catalyst for him learning to speak more words.
“General ed time is the reason he can speak. He has gone from completely non-pseaking and from several years of therapy he had improved. But we saw the biggest jump when he had the chance to be in general education with everybody else.”
“This sets back disability rights 30 years,” Dugan said, adding that she and other special ed parents have examples of other school districts doing everything they can to offer more complete services to wherever a special needs child lives. “My fear is like wraparound servies, people are going to lose accessibility to the services needed.” (Under Superintendent Mike Miles’ administration the school-based wraparound services providing clothes and social services to students and their parents have been moved to Sunrise Centers distributed through the district.)
“Where are they planning to deliver his services? Are they in line with his IEP (individualized education program). If they are now taking kids from all sorts of schools and putting them together, will they be able to achieve a small group setting?”
Dugan is also concerned about the possibility of instruction being delivered by a livestreamed virtual teacher. She questioned whether such a teacher would be credentialed and whether that was the best way to teach these students.
Dugan said she and her husband have decided to leave the state at the end of the school year because of HISD’s special ed approach and what she terms the general lack of support for special needs kids from any state agency.
The district says doing this will put the district –which historically and recently does not have a good record of abiding by special ed regulations — in a better position to meet state and federal standards. It touts the advantages of select locations “rather than spread across multiple campuses.” Each campus would have a particular type of special ed classroom.
“My understanding from the grapevine today is that they’re not going to be building new buildings or turning buildings into sped-only campuses,” Yaker said. Rather they’re just going to have one kind of self-contained classroom on campus. It works out fine for you if that campus is near where you live and it happens to have what your kid needs. But there also exists the possibility that what might have been a nearby place to go, might actually now be several schools away. And that’s the dilemma that I’m facing.”
Dugan said she’d heard there was going to be a 10 percent reduction in force among the special ed teachers. However, in its draft proposal the district emphasizes that this is not a way to save money but to better educate students. Teachers at schools identified as specialty special ed campuses will be better able to collaborate with each other it says.
Caps are placed on the number of students in each classroom with presumably the highest functioning special ed student class allowed up to 15 students in a class. Somewhat lower functioning students would be in classes of up to 12 students and those in a Behavior Support Class who need more help in being able to learn in a traditional classroom setting would be in rooms with up to 9 students in them.
There is no committee of special ed parents that HISD includes in its deliberations, leaving concerned parents to organize on their own, Dugan said. It is that network of parents that found out about the plans. “The fact that they’re introducing this with no parent support is very startling.”
Yaker expressed frustration but not surprise about HISD developing this special education plan without input from parents whose children are special ed. “In my experience with the HISD central spec-ed people, family engagement is not what they do.”
