Last week The Arc of King County, an advocacy group for special needs students and adults, sent out a call for action. The state of Washington is receiving $52.7 million in federal funding under the American Rescue Plan Act to help special needs children recover from the COVID school closures.  It looks, however, like state superintendent Chris Reykdal might have other plans for the money.

He sent out a public survey listing other ways the special needs funds could be used. Arc parents are understandably upset about Reykdal’s survey because it does not include funding for recovery and compensatory services for special needs children. In other words, it does not propose to spend funds for special needs children on children with special needs.

Instead, he proposes a list of favored bureaucratic projects, like “equity and anti-racist training,” “inclusionary practices,” “trauma-informed practices,” “social and emotional learning,” all aspects of the controversial and highly unpopular Critical Race Theory program.

Here’s Reykdal’s survey:

The superintendent says he won’t accept any further public input after May 21st.

In desperation, Arc parents are asking people to write in “recovery and compensatory services” at the end of the survey.  As a policy researcher long familiar with public survey data, I know write-in campaigns face an uphill road, because the sponsor of the survey controls all the options.

Still, Arc parents have a strong case.  They explain:

“Recovery services” are for students who are not making progress, and “compensatory services” must be provided when a child’s services are not being delivered as promised. 

“Many children with IEPs [Individual Education Plans] have not made progress, and many did not receive services that they should have.  Based on reports we are hearing, many IEP teams are NOT engaging with families about recovery, or are telling families that funds are not available.”

This finding is correct.  My research finds that many school district officials have denied special needs children services they have a legal right to receive.  As a result of this neglect, some children have fallen far behind in their learning.

Congress intended that state school officials spend American Rescue Plan dollars on helping special needs children recover from the learning they lost when the governor closed the schools.

Congress certainly did not intend that parents of special needs children beg for these federal dollars as “Other- Write Ins,” under a tight deadline on some concocted state survey.  The policy issue is straight forward – Washington state officials should use the $52.7 million in federal special needs funding on direct “recovery and compensatory services” for the benefit of special needs children who have been particularly harmed by long-term school closures.

An additional benefit is that simply spending the funds directly to help special needs children would help restore some of the trust the public has lost in our elected officials, who seem to be endlessly engaged in parlor games that hide how public education funding is actually spent.