Getty IMAGESWhen Rebecca, 48-year-old mother in Michigan, needed help for her disabled son, turned to her. US Department of Education Civil Rights Office.
The 13-year-old parented boy, ADHD, and other mental health diagnosis that required special educational support. Symptoms could be aggression against the peers, the faculty or things, suspending the blasts last fall.
Rebeka said the school area separated his son from his peers for several months, only special education teachers and limited teachers.
In October 2024, Rebecca filed a complaint with the Civil Rights Office that the school had violated the federal law and her son had “discriminate and refused to free public education. He claimed that the school only allowed him to “have for two hours on each school day and in a separate place of 1:1” Rebecca said it was gradually added backwards, but she remained persecuted. The school area did not immediately respond to his request to comment.
Although Rebecca had a private lawyer and an educational lawyer, an OCR lawyer at the Cleveland office facilitated the school area early in April in April.
But before that happens, the Trump administration fired all the staff of the Cleveland office, including the lawyer who helped his son Rebecca, threw the case. – And others like it – for the limbo.
“I have no other option for this child,” said Rebecca, who has asked the BBC to preserve her final name. “They are playing with my little son with politics. And I don’t think it’s fair.
Sudden shootings, and confusion afterwards were the leader of President Donald Trump’s future: efforts and dissolution of the Ministry of Education.
On Thursday, he signed an executive order to Education Minister Linda McMahon to begin “facilitating the closure” of the department. Congress, not the president, has the power to dissolve a federal institution, and the order is likely to lead to legal challenges.
But this move has made many Americans like Rebeca uncertain about their children’s future.
“While the department will not be completely turned off, what remains will be much smaller, and will focus on “important tasks”, such as federal students’ debts.
He added that OCR will be very low in “crimes and sizes”
The cuts have already begun: on March 11, The Trump administration has cut the ministry severely using a process of reducing the force, which will reduce its staff..
The reduction has shown “compliance with efficiency, accountability, and ensuring that sources are driven by the most important places: for students, parents and teachers.
Although the Ministry of Education has little monitoring during the daily work of most schools in the United States, it plays a major role in implementing the guidelines and policies of federal education.
The Civil Rights Office was one of the most difficult distributions in the first round of shootings. The US administration has closed seven regional offices out of 12 regional offices, including major areas of major cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco.
This month, while Rebecca and her husband tried to find out what the changes were made to their son’s case, all the staff of Cleveland’s office in OCR received an email that had “infiltled” with their posts.
The news is one of Cleveland’s lawyers working on disability cases with a “complete feeling of hopelessness.
The lawyer was not concerned that they had not only told the BBC not only the individual cases that were still on the existing.
“The effect of each individual case is sometimes much bigger, in terms of educating school and improving it for others in the district,” the lawyer said.
Getty IMAGESOCR’s parents and lawyers have long been tired of the agency’s development and a decrease in the staff. They fear new cuts will make the divisions that are already large, deal with tens of thousands of complaints he receives annually.
The task of ensuring US civil rights laws is on OCR, OCR’s job is to help ensure that students are not distinguished by disability, gender, gender or religion. The treatments help the institute that can be easy to add access to school buildings or sit in a child near the eye in front of the classroom. However, the office also faces complex cases that are related to discrimination or talk about arrogance, as well as sexual harassment and rape.
Before his executive order, there was already a sign that the task of the office is in change.
AP reported that OCR staff had received instructions for the office to give priority to anti-semitisim cases. Acting Assistant Minister of Civil Rights, Craig Trainor, said they would take over cases that had gender athletes in universities in order to fight the “ideology of radical genders.
On March 14, the Ministry of Education announced that it had launched an investigation into more than 50 universities as part of the administration’s administration’s steps to end the diversity, equality and universality (DEI), which he considers exploitation.
The employees who remained in their jobs said the new leadership of the Ministry of Education had decreased or had any instructions on how thousands of suspended cases, including Rebecca, would be re-appointed. They also were also worried that cases with gender minorities, or people with disabilities, do not receive appropriate attention.
According to OCR’s annual report, the office filed 22,687 complaints in the fiscal year 2024. The number of presidents had decreased even due to the increase in cases throughout the year. In 1981, OCR 1100 had full-time employees. It fell to 588 until 2024.
“We had been distrustful in the past,” he said. “We were never proud of our processing time.
With a new cut, they said, “This cannot be done.
Getty IMAGESBut parents and educators say they will not allow the Ministry of Education to be closed without fighting. Nikki Carter, a mother and disabled person in Alabama, is one of the two prosecutors in the lawsuit brought by the Council of Lawyers and advocates, which files a complaint against the Ministry of Education, Macmahon and trainer for cutting mass work.
The petition says Mammahun’s actions have stopped the case of gender discrimination, which was dealt with by OCR, and he has “he has not received any indication that the investigation has resumed.
“There has been little contact throughout the process,” Carter told the BBC. “When the Trump administration came in, it made that situation worse and more difficult.
Despite his annoyance with OCR, he believed that the office was still necessary to help victims of gender discrimination. He hoped that the request would not only return the office, but also improve it.
“Children, family, and advocates, they will not get a legal process,” Ms. Carter said. “They are not only derived from the basic basic rights of federalism.
“We need OCR to return to work,” he said. “We also need OCR to be held accountable for their actions – or not.
Meanwhile, Rebecca moved her son to a district school for students with emotional problems. But he still wants to negotiate a special teaching lesson for his son, and educate the district staff on how to help students like him. He recently learned that his son’s case would be transferred to the Denver office, which was still working, but had not received any other updates.
“Because of the style of the structure of a structure, it has been treated very badly and different,” he said. “I want to see someone who has been held accountable for his treatment.