Maybe you saw the Trump administration just quietly gutted the office that oversees special education services and funding.

Maybe you didn’t. There’s a lot to keep track of right now.

All but a handful of staff were laid off from the Department of Education’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which oversees programs that support students with disabilities and ensures states comply with the landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, widely known as IDEA.

For five decades, IDEA has required states to provide special education services for children from birth to age 21, guaranteeing children with disabilities the right to a free and appropriate public education.

“Before the law was passed,” NPR reported, “those children were often refused admission to schools, including public schools, or warehoused in substandard facilities where they learned little and enjoyed few rights.”

Maybe you know someone who will be directly impacted by the cuts. Maybe you love someone who will be directly impacted by the cuts. Maybe you are someone who will be directly impacted by the cuts.

I would argue we all are.

There are 7.5 million children with disabilities in the United States. When you chip away at their ability to access education, you chip away at the full promise of our country. You chip away at Horace Mann’s noble ideal of education as the great equalizer. You chip away at our potential, our productivity and, importantly, our moral character.

But we are not all impacted equally.

Jim Schneider’s 9-year-old son was diagnosed with autism, dyslexia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, making him eligible for an individualized education program, or IEP, a legal contract between a school and a family outlining a student’s specific educational needs as well as the supports and services the student will receive.

For Schneider’s son, that means he receives occupational therapy at school and extra help with reading. It means he can wear headphones during tests.

“Not to overstate it,” Schneider told me, “but I feel like it’s meant everything for him.”

Schneider, who lives in Colorado, has written and spoken beautifully about his son on social media and on his podcast, “A Pessimist's Guide to Optimism.” I called him when I read about the cuts. He was eager to talk about his son, whose name he preferred to keep private, and the transformative impact of his specialized education.

“When he was first diagnosed, he didn’t talk to a lot of people outside our immediate family,” Schneider said. “He would play alongside other kids, but never with them. He wasn’t able to focus on a particular task or engage in group settings. Now he participates in class. He gives presentations. He has friends he talks and plays with.”

On both an education and social level, Schneider said, his son is progressing alongside his classmates.

“One of his teachers described him as ‘extremely genuine,’” Schneider said. “He’s just a really fun guy.”

His teachers joke that he’s the mayor of the school. Blanche, the school’s service dog, is his biggest fan.

“I will say, I was terrified to even get our son assessed at the time,” Schneider said. “What I would say now is that it taught us this was never about, ‘My son has a problem. How do we solve it?’ It’s, ‘How do we better understand who he is and how do we foster his growth?’”

Schneider worries that without federal oversight and funding, schools will no longer direct resources toward students like his son.

“I also worry about this larger societal trend of moving away from supporting and trying to bring people who are neurodivergent or have a disability of any kind into society, rather than trying to marginalize them,” he said.

This particular administration seems determined to push as many folks as possible to the margins. Historically, however, Republican presidents have championed policies and programs that support students with disabilities.

“Education for people with disabilities goes hand in hand with conservative ideals,” Eric Garcia, senior Washington correspondent and bureau chief for The Independent, wrote in a recent opinion piece for MSNBC. “Having people with disabilities integrated into larger society is a way to reduce the chance that they have to depend on the government.”

Presidents Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush all signed legislation protecting the rights of students with disabilities, Garcia noted.

“Republicans used to understand that special education isn’t just something nice to have,” he wrote. “It isn’t charity. It is a right.… The administration’s decision to remove almost all personnel for the special education office is not just a betrayal of students with disabilities. It also is the final nail in the coffin for Republican support of the idea that people with disabilities can and should access public education so that they can empower themselves and live a fulfilling life.”

It’s also a betrayal of our humanity.

“I want to see a world — not just for my son, but for everybody who is neurodivergent or has a disability — that accepts them and allows them to be who they are,” he continued. “That doesn’t see them as other. That doesn’t take away their human value. There’s good for everybody in that.”

©2025 Tribune News Service. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.