Contributors to this Op-Ed:

Joel Davis, NM Developmental Disability Council Chair & parent, Katie Stone, NMDD Council Vice-chair & parent, Jennifer D. Sanchez, CFPSW NMDD Council Secretary & parent, Valentín Anaya, NMDD Council Treasurer, & parent, John Arango NMDD Council Past Chair & parent

By NMDD Council Members:

HB 285, the Special Education Act, begins the process of transformation long overdue in special education and will ultimately improve the outcomes for disabled students statewide. It’s about time.

• Only 64% of students receiving special education services graduate, compared to 75% of their neurotypical peers. 
• More than 71% of students who are restrained or isolated at school have disabilities. 
• Many special education classrooms lack a dedicated, full-time teacher, educational assistants, or other support staff, making up the bulk of educational vacancies in the state.
• A decade of underfunding of special education prior to our Governor’s tenure, forced districts to scramble to provide the Federally mandated educational services.  

This legislation restructures special education’s leadership, creating an Office of Special Education to enact meaningful changes statewide, while giving Special Education leadership a seat at the table when it comes to decision making. It also empowers the Office of Special Education to not only collect data on things like expulsions of disabled toddlers in preschool, but it also gives the public a window into these statistics. Legislators, school administrators, teacher unions and parents will be able to document incremental success and failure of programming and implementation, to create an evidentiary based system that works for everyone.

The Special Education Act does even more: it gives educators working in special education a well-deserved, long overdue raise, to entice licensed special educators to continue their challenging work. These teachers spend extra hours outside the classroom in meetings to create Individualized Education Programs for each student with their families and school administration. Many teachers report they get burned out by the extra toil that working in special education takes. We can do better for them, and HB 285 gives them all meaningful raises. 

The bill also supports students and classroom personnel by ensuring that all school boards, governing bodies, charter schools, administrative decision makers receive training covering federal and state special education law, disabilities-specific policies, de-escalation techniques, positive behavioral supports, structured literacy, formulation and implementation of effective IEPs, and effective engagement and communication with students, parents, and educational decision makers.

Finally, HB 285 creates a coordinated system of services for children with special needs that begins at birth and lasts through early adulthood, involving not just the Public Education Department but other Departments such as Human Services, CYFD, and Health. It further requires school districts to annually report on how they have used funds set aside for special education—something advocates and legislators have been seeking for years. And it directly addresses many of the issues in the Yazzie/Martinez decision, including that special education students achieve gains in reading and math equal to other Yazzie student groups.

We urge parents and teachers of special education students—and the general public—to ask their legislators to support HB 285.