New Hampshire disability community rallies against federal cuts to special education

By William Skipworth / New Hampshire Bulletin

Angelina Leo, an Exeter High School senior, said that without the special education services she received throughout her time in school, she wouldn’t even be able to speak.

Leo, who has physical and learning disabilities, sees herself as an example of why special education works. She can now read and write. She also has siblings who have benefited from special education. That’s why when she heard about cuts and changes to the federal Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, she was “peeved.”

“And then I was scared,” she said Monday at a demonstration in Concord opposing the changes. “Because what does that mean for me going into college, and what does that mean for my younger siblings, some of which need more help than I needed?”

Earlier this month, the Trump administration laid off 466 employees within the Department of Education office responsible for ensuring states are complying with the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The layoffs at the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, which administers roughly $15 billion in federal special education funding, are the latest in a series of cuts to the Department of Education that President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon say is part of their promise to return education policy and governance to the states. Ultimately, the administration says it hopes to shutter the Department of Education entirely.

Leo said that in elementary school, her teachers told her mother she’d never graduate high school. Now, she’s on pace to graduate and hopes to attend a community college for a few years before going to the University of New Hampshire to study biomedical engineering. She would like to one day create mobility and accessibility devices for people with disabilities.

Louis Esposito, executive director of ABLE NH, the disability rights organization that organized the rally, said IDEA exists because the states weren’t doing their job to begin with.

“Kids were excluded from the classrooms,” he said. “They weren’t even allowed to go to school. And now we’re just going to trust the states to do a good job with it.”

Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have publicly discussed moving special education into the Department of Health and Human Services, a move ABLE NH opposes. Esposito worries that’ll treat special education “like a medical factory.”

“Students with disabilities are students,” he said. “They’re not just people with disabilities. They are students first.”