Devon Price, a 15-year-old boy with autism, has attended the largest school district in North Carolina for 10 years, but he cannot read or write. His twin sister, Danielle, who is also autistic, was bullied by classmates and became suicidal.
Under federal law, public schools must provide children with disabilities a “free appropriate public education,” to give them the same opportunity to learn as other kids.
The twins’ mother, Emma Miller, and tens of thousands of other parents in the U.S. have elevated complaints to the Education Department alleging that schools and states have ignored mistreatment of their children. Those complaints are in limbo as President Donald Trump’s administration has set about dismantling the federal agency.
Trump once mocked a reporter with a disability. Earlier this year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s inaccurate remarks about people with autism were criticized as perpetuating offensive stereotypes.
Now people like Miller are worried their children will be left behind.
“I want justice for my twins, and to sound the alarm so other special needs children are not suffering or being deprived,” said Miller, 53, who lives with her twins in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
The Education Department, which was created in 1979 and helps oversee schools and colleges in the U.S., has the authority to protect students from discrimination based on race, sex, religion, or disability. Its Office for Civil Rights investigates allegations at schools and negotiates corrective actions.
As the school year begins, families throughout the country are unsure what authority will be left to intervene on their behalf if the office is shuttered, said Hannah Russell, an advocate who works with parents in North Carolina trying to obtain educational services for their children with disabilities.
“Without the Department of Education there is no accountability,” said Russell, a former special education teacher. “Everybody is scared.”
Miller described her twins as her “miracle babies” who survived despite each weighing 1 pound at birth. Danielle Price spent the first five months of her life in a neonatal intensive care unit, and her brother, Devon, the first seven months.
She has spent years fighting for them, repeatedly taking on local and state school officials. But even when she notched victories, she said, her children did not get the help they were promised.
Miller said her children are high-functioning and verbal. She said they could have thrived academically if the school system had given them proper services.
“My children have suffered,” Miller wrote in a complaint she filed in September 2024. “The most vulnerable group of children [is] being denied a basic education.”
‘Unusual and Unprecedented’
Miller says her daughter began to self-harm after classmates teased and tormented her and staff secluded her away from her bullies. The Wake County Public School System assigned Devon to a classroom with an instructional assistant who was not a licensed teacher, a violation of policy, according to state documents.
Last year, Miller filed a complaint against Wake County schools with the federal Office for Civil Rights. She alleged the district did not reevaluate her kids to determine their special education needs, did not respond for months to her records requests, and retaliated against her by wrongly withdrawing the twins from the school district.
Wake County schools violated policy when staff did not address the effects of bullying on Danielle, says an April 2024 letter from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
The school system’s education plan for Danielle “was not appropriate considering the student’s unmet social-emotional needs, which resulted in the student’s increased anxiety,” the letter says.
State officials concluded in June 2024 that the school system failed to develop, review, and revise an education plan for Devon, assigned him to a teacher assistant instead of a licensed teacher, and did not provide technology that could help him learn, according to documents.
While the decisions validated Miller’s concerns, she said that the district continues to violate her children’s rights and that the state is now ignoring her pleas for help.
“No one is taking responsibility,” she told KFF Health News. “It has been a nightmare.”
But after she appealed to the federal government last year, the Education Department sent her a letter in March saying it would not look into the complaint.
For decades, parents and advocates for people with disabilities have said the system makes it difficult for them to win against school districts, because the process is often time-consuming, confusing, and, if a family hires a lawyer, expensive. Now they say families could soon face even bigger hurdles.
On March 11, the day the Education Department sent Miller’s denial letter, the agency announced it was firing nearly half its 4,133 employees. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the move was “a significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.”
Officials shuttered seven of the 12 regional offices of the agency’s Office for Civil Rights, leaving a skeleton staff to investigate thousands of complaints filed each year, according to attorneys and advocates for the disabled.
Trump, acting on a campaign promise to shrink the federal government, later signed an executive order to eliminate the Education Department, which he said had failed children and built a bloated bureaucracy.
The president instructed officials to “return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
Parents and advocacy groups say that would allow local authorities to police themselves at a time when schools remain racially segregated, some selective colleges accept male applicants at higher rates than female applicants, and students with disabilities are struggling to recover academically from the covid pandemic, more so than their peers. Also, they note, the federal laws protecting disabled and disadvantaged children emerged because of state-level failures.
Under North Carolina law, children with disabilities should be reevaluated by schools every three years to help determine their individual needs. But Miller said Wake County officials for nearly a decade refused her requests to have her kids reevaluated. She said it finally happened in late 2024.
“I never expected getting an education for my children would be such a problem,” Miller said.
The Education Law Center, the NAACP, and other advocacy groups have sued to stop Trump’s plans, alleging the changes are illegal and pose a threat to the education of students from vulnerable groups. Some 20 states and the District of Columbia sued to halt the plan, but the Supreme Court ruled in July that the Trump administration could move ahead while the case proceeded through the courts.
Russell said she has heard North Carolina school districts are promising to provide accommodations for students with disabilities, such as extra time on tests.
But families who cannot afford to hire an attorney could find themselves at a disadvantage when disagreements arise over services that cost districts more money, Russell said.
The Trump administration has decimated the Office for Civil Rights’ ability to properly investigate a backlog of thousands of complaints, said Robert Kim, who leads the Education Law Center.
The office reported receiving nearly 23,000 complaints in fiscal 2024, the highest number ever. About 8,400, or 37%, involved allegations of disability discrimination.
Black children and those with disabilities may suffer the worst consequences, since they disproportionately face harsh discipline at school, including physical restraint and isolation in seclusion rooms, Kim said.
The Education Department says children with disabilities make up 14% of students but 75% of those secluded and 81% of those physically restrained.
Black children constitute about 15% of students but 42% of those who are mechanically restrained using a device or equipment.
“Something unusual and unprecedented is happening,” Kim said about what he sees as a shift in the federal government’s responsibility to keep children safe and provide a high-quality education.
The Education Department’s press office declined an interview request for this story in an unsigned email that was copied to agency officials Madison Biedermann, Savannah Newhouse, Julie Hartman, and Ellen Keast.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not respond to a request for comment.
In a July statement, McMahon said her agency is performing all of its duties: “We will carry out the reduction in force to promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most — to students, parents, and teachers.”
‘Nothing but Problems’
Danielle and Devon Price entered 10th grade at Wake Forest High School in August. Their mother said she is uncertain what will happen to them.
Danielle wants to go to college, but her math skills are at a fourth-grade level, school records show.
Like many youths with autism, Danielle struggles with changes in routine, and her mother said she became despondent when school officials repeatedly changed her classes to keep her away from a boy who bullied her. Soon after that, Danielle started to self-harm, Miller said, adding that her daughter receives intensive therapy.
“It has been nothing but problems” with Wake County schools, she said. “It is like no one cares.”
Wake County school officials declined to answer questions about Miller’s complaints, citing privacy laws.
In a written statement, district spokesperson Matthew Dees said that “the school district has worked hard to reach agreement with Ms. Miller on many issues” and remedied complaints that were substantiated.
“The district disputes the remaining allegations in the various complaints she has raised, including the many accusations against various staff,” Dees added.
Under federal law, parents have 180 days from the time of the last alleged violation to file a complaint with the Education Department. Miller submitted her complaint Sept. 12, 2024, exactly 180 days after she says her twins were last denied a “free appropriate public education.”
But the Office for Civil Rights said that was too late. Officials declined to waive the time limit for Miller, who had asked for an exception, according to its March denial letter.
She said she spent months fighting with Wake County school officials and did not turn to federal government sooner because she hoped she could resolve the issues locally.
Miller fears for her children’s future unless something changes at school.
“I’m a single parent, and one day I won’t be here,” she said. “My kids are going to be adults soon, yet my son doesn’t know how to read and write. I’m like, ‘Wow.’ There really is no help here.”
This article was produced by KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.