Local opinion: Who is included in your definition of an education?

The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

News of mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education on Friday froze my weekend. For those of us in special education, this isn’t just a staffing change. It signals that disabled individuals’ civil rights are under threat.

For more than two decades, I’ve worked as a speech-language pathologist and educator across the state of Arizona. I serve students who are blind, nonspeaking, and multiply disabled. My training taught me to look at the disabling conditions around the student, rather than their diagnosis, to ensure they were included in our education system. That training, and my livelihood, exist because of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Without that oversight and funding, millions of children each year would have no guaranteed right to a public education.

We tend to forget that before 1975, over a million students with disabilities were routinely excluded or institutionalized. As a society, through IDEA, we agreed that disability rights are civil rights. But when we gut the very agency that enforces those protections, we open the door for individual states to decide who is “worthy” of schooling.

Here in Southern Arizona, this dismantling cannot be separated from race, language, or poverty. When federal support vanishes, it’s not just disabled students who lose access. It’s often students of color, Indigenous students, queer students, multilingual learners, and those from low-income or rural families whose identities intersect with disability.

In Pima County, many schools already operate with limited staff and outdated materials. Special education services are not “extras.” They are the bridge between exclusion and participation. When that bridge weakens, our entire educational system becomes less equitable and less like the society I want to live in.

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Inclusive education does not happen by accident. It happens when teachers, specialists, and families intentionally design environments that honor every way of learning and communicating. It’s when a student using a braillewriter joins classmates in shared writing, or a nonspeaking student uses a communication device to add her idea to a class poem. Those moments show that disability is not a deficit, but another way of being.

I often hear people call special educators “heroes.” We are not heroes. We are highly trained professionals working within structures that make inclusion an uphill climb. The barriers we face include underfunding, staffing shortages, and inaccessible materials. These are also intentional policy and funding choices. And now, with the Department of Education’s capacity gutted, those choices will fall hardest on schools that already serve students at multiple margins.

I keep thinking about last spring at the Tucson Festival of Books, when I met an older man who stopped to talk about public education at my volunteer booth. He told me, kindly but confidently, that schools would “run better” if students with significant disabilities were taught elsewhere. He believed their presence “held other kids back.” We spoke respectfully for twenty minutes until he revealed something deeper. He had never shared a classroom with a disabled peer. His vision of schooling simply didn’t include them. That’s exactly the problem. Segregation still lives quietly in our expectations of who belongs.

If we want strong schools, we must build communities where every child is seen as a learner. Cutting the infrastructure that ensures this doesn’t save money. It costs us our collective humanity.

Do not let this become just another news story. Arizona’s educators need you to act now. Call your representatives today and demand clear, actionable plans to uphold IDEA if federal protections are lost. Insist on policies that protect, not dismantle, inclusive education in our state. The decision is not just about policy. It’s about whether we include all children in our definition of an education.