Fairfax schooling for students with disabilities inadequate during pandemic, Ed Dept. says

And the letter says that, once pandemic closures eased, the Fairfax school system failed to provide “compensatory education” to students with disabilities whom the district failed to educate during the shutdowns. Fairfax officials also inaccurately told staffers that the district was not required to offer these compensatory services, according to the letter. Federal law requires that all public school districts offer students with disabilities a “free appropriate public education,” known as FAPE.

“During remote learning, the Division failed or was unable to provide a FAPE to thousands of qualified students with disabilities,” the letter states.

To remedy the situation, the Education Department is requiring that Fairfax convene teams of employees to review whether it failed each student with disabilities in its system during the pandemic. Fairfax must then offer “compensatory education” to all these students to catch them up to where they should be, per the department.

The Fairfax school district has signed a 10-page resolution with the Education Department agreeing to meet these demands. In a statement published to the district’s website Wednesday evening, officials wrote that Fairfax will also conduct evaluations and offer compensatory services for students who graduated or left the school system between mid-April 2020 and mid-June 2022.

“As we emerge from the global pandemic, FCPS remains committed to working diligently to provide the support needed to ensure each and every student recovers from learning loss,” the statement reads. “FCPS has and will continue to leverage resources to ensure students with the greatest need receive prioritized support for enhanced outcomes.”

Catherine E. Lhamon, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement Wednesday that she is “relieved that the more than 25,000 students with disabilities in Fairfax County will now receive services federal law promises to them, even during a pandemic, to ensure their equal access to education.”

Fairfax students with disabilities disproportionately suspended, report says

The department opened its investigation of the Fairfax system, which serves nearly 180,000 students in Northern Virginia, in January 2021 after receiving what federal officials called “disturbing reports involving the district’s provision of educational services to children with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Fairfax was not alone. When the pandemic forced schools to switch to online learning overnight in March 2020, many districts across the country found themselves unable to meet the needs of students with disabilities — who can often require hands-on interventions such as speech therapy and physical therapy — in an online environment, The Washington Post has reported.

As national assessments of students’ academic progress during the pandemic years have emerged, results indicate that students with disabilities have fallen especially far behind. This trend has held true for Fairfax, too: As the Education Department’s letter notes, the percentage of Fairfax students with disabilities in middle and high school who earned F’s in two or more classes more than doubled between fall 2020 and fall 2021.

The Education Department’s investigation of Fairfax involved reviews of school documents and data provided by the district, internal communications among top Fairfax officials and interviews with high-ranking school administrators.

The department found that Fairfax provided mostly online-only education to most students with disabilities between March 2020, when schools shut down, and the close of the 2020-2021 school year. This virtual learning was generally inadequate, the department concluded, with classes lasting for less time than in-person sessions would have. Many students with disabilities didn’t log in or engage with these lessons, the department found.

Federal investigators further found that Fairfax cut some students’ services to “as little as 30 or even 5 minutes per month” during online learning, the department’s Wednesday letter notes. In just the first two months after school buildings shuttered in March 2020, students with disabilities missed more than 60,000 sessions of occupational, speech or physical therapy, the letter notes. The requirements for online classes were also watered down, the department found — for example, students were expected to answer only “who” or “where” questions in response to a text read aloud, leaving out the typical “what” and “when” questions. All these challenges were compounded by staff shortages and administrative stumbles, the letter says.

The letter additionally finds that Fairfax did not fully track the services it was providing — or not providing — to students with disabilities and that the district “failed to adequately remedy denials of FAPE during remote learning.”

The letter notes that top Fairfax officials understood as early as April 2020 that students with disabilities would need extra care, time and attention to help them recover from pandemic-era learning loss. At one point, officials estimated that students with disabilities were owed $3 million in missed services, the letter states.

But soon after giving that estimate, district officials began advising staffers that they were not responsible for the pandemic-induced struggles of students with disabilities and thus not obligated to offer special “compensatory services” to repair the damage, the letter notes.

Instead, Fairfax opted to offer limited “recovery” services to students with disabilities — but only to students who were below the established baseline of academic performance before March 2020 school closures, the letter states. And, the letter says, “evidence strongly suggests that appropriate remedial services still remain unavailable, as a practical matter,” to thousands of children who need them.

Fairfax has “explained, both to its staff and [the department’s Office or Civil Rights], that because it does not regard itself at fault for disruptions caused by the pandemic, it does not believe it denied any students FAPE as a result of them, nor consequently owes those students compensatory services,” the letter states. But the department deemed that assessment incorrect: “FAPE did not change during the pandemic, nor did districts’ obligation to adequately remedy shortfalls in the services that students with disabilities require.”

Per Fairfax’s resolution agreement with the department, the district will designate an administrator to oversee the creation and implementation of a plan to provide compensatory education to students with disabilities. The district will also track its progress fulfilling that plan and report its efforts to the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights.

Fairfax will additionally provide guidance and training to staffers about its plan for compensatory services, and it will publicize the plan to parents, guardians, students and other community members with an interest in the proceedings, per the department.

Some student advocates hailed the department’s actions. Denise Marshall, chief executive of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates — a nonprofit that works to protect the legal and civil rights of students with disabilities and their parents — said in a statement Wednesday that the new agreement between the federal government and Fairfax schools will ensure thousands of students with disabilities will finally begin to receive the education they deserve.

“By taking this action, [the Education Department] is demonstrating that no district can shun its obligations to students and must use the resources provided by Congress to address their educational needs,” Marshall said. “We stand ready to support Fairfax County students and their families in every way necessary.”

The Education Department’s letter and findings come shortly after a report from the nonprofit American Institutes for Research found that students with disabilities in the Fairfax system are more likely than their peers to be suspended and to fail state tests. School board members in Fairfax said in October that they are reviewing the results of that report and hope to finalize an overarching plan to improve matters by early next year.