Caleb Cook already had three meltdowns by 11:30 in the morning Wednesday.

It was his third day home since Fort Bend ISD and virtually every other Houston school announced they would close their campuses until at least April 10. Unlike his first and sixth grade sisters, 14-year-old Caleb, who is autistic, has several intellectual disabilities and microcephaly, in which a child is born with a significantly smaller head, often caused by abnormal brain development.

Natalie, his mother, said his special education teachers already had given her access to his school computer username and passwords, and that his teacher would go to the school to retrieve Caleb’s school-issued iPad loaded with assistive technologies.

The rest of Caleb’s seventh-grade school year remains anything but certain.

“I think everybody, special needs and not, is nervous to see how this is going to go,” Cook said. “We’re waiting on direction from the district, but I have to trust they will do everything in their power to accommodate students.”

As schools pivot to online learning in an effort to slow the spread of the new coronavirus and the illness it produces, COVID-19, education leaders are scrambling to figure out how to best serve their students with disabilities and other vulnerable groups, including English language learners.

So far, it is proving a challenge.

As long as general education students are receiving any type of instruction, the U.S. Department of Education and the Texas Education Agency require schools to provide services to students with disabilities, as spelled out in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Students with so-called 504 plans, which offer accommodations such as more time to take tests, must be given equitable access to school work.

However, the law does not account for times when students cannot meet face to face with speech therapists, dyslexia interventionists, physical therapists or special education aides who help them through general education coursework.

‘Complicated, difficult’

The TEA put out guidance for districts on March 13, which reiterated that if a school district is providing online or distance instruction, leaders must “ensure that students with disabilities also have equal access to the same opportunities” as general education students, and “ensure that, to the greatest extent possible, each student with a disability … be provided the special education and related services identified in the student's” individualized education plan.

Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath has announced he will form a special education task force to look into those issues.

“This is going to be a big, complicated, difficult challenge for all of us,” Morath told superintendents and state leaders on a March 15 conference call. “There are issues that will undoubtedly surface with regard to legal risk and issues with regard to compliance.”

Part of complying with IDEA will mean more than just making sure students with disabilities have access to the same video instruction as their general education peers, said Mara LaViola, an Austin-based special education advocate. IDEA also requires that students make progress.

Determining how to serve those students has left educators with a series of hard-to-answer questions, said Kristin McGuire, director of governmental relations for the Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education.

“How does a district account for personal health and safety of everyone involved and try and provide certain related services, such as (occupational therapy), physical therapy, visual impairment services, while schools are closed?” McGuire asked. “Some services appear to be more easily transitioned over to virtual services, but some just simply aren’t possible without face to face interaction.”

In Houston ISD, interim Superintendent Grentia Lathan said the district is working to get more laptops, and students with disabilities will be given priority when it begins to distribute them. The district has not released other details on how it plans to provide special education services during the shutdown, which is expected to continue until at least April 10.

Texas’ struggle

Texas schools are not alone in facing these questions. Denver Public Schools spokeswoman Winna Maclaren said her district is using its extended spring break, which is scheduled to last until at least April 7, to try to come up with equitable remote learning plans for all students, including supports for students with a disabilities. Right now, however, district leaders’ focus is on access to core curriculum.

Denise Marshall, executive director of the nonprofit Council of Parent Attorney and Advocates, said she has yet to see any states take a uniform approach to providing special education services remotely. Some districts, she said, have been creative and innovative in helping parents and families while schools remain closed, which she hopes more districts will do. Those schools have been proactive in reaching out to families and making plans to use video-chatting, prerecorded videos and having physical therapists show parents techniques they could use to help their kids at home.

“But we’ve heard all the way to the other extreme, where a district said ‘If we provide any services at all to any students, we’ll have to provide equitable access to students with disabilities. Therefore, we won’t provide anything to anyone,’” Marshall said. “It’s unfathomable to me that any education administrator would take that approach.”

More than other states, Texas schools have struggled to meet federal requirements for educating students with disabilities. The U.S. Department of Education found that Texas violated IDEA by putting an arbitrary cap on the percentage of students each district could provide with special education services, a finding first revealed in a Houston Chronicle investigation. Since then, the TEA has struggled to implement its federally mandated corrective action plan and families have said their children with disabilities still are being denied access to special education services.

“When it comes to Texas schools I’m usually skeptical, but I’m far more empathetic now,” LaViola said. “Nobody knows what to do. No one thought about how we’re going to teach students with severe disabilities remotely.”

Some special education services may be easier to provide for than others. For example, LaViola’s 17-year-old son, who has autism, has a short attention span and struggles to pay attention to video instruction. He is much more attentive with music therapy, which is written into his individualized education plan, and would be more receptive to receiving those services online.

The key, LaViola said, is to make sure parents have conversations about those services with school staff and get any changes to their services or individualized education plans in writing.

Equally important is what happens once schools reopen, said Steven Aleman, attorney and policy specialist at Disability Rights Texas.

Along with a statewide spike in initial special education testing since 2017, educators likely will have to evaluate existing special education students to see how far they may have fallen behind while campuses were closed. That could put more strain on diagnosticians and school psychologists who already were stretched nearly to their limits before schools began to close over COVID-19.

"For special education, what we need to start planning and preparing for is when this is all over, doing those rounds of reevaluations for students who really need them," Aleman said.

English language learners

Similar concerns exist for Texas’ 1.1 million English language learners.

Hector Bojorquez, director of operations and educational practices for the Intercultural Development Research Association, said lower income English language learners may lack access to internet access at home.

For example, he said, the American Communities Survey found Brownsville and Laredo, which have high rates of English language learners in their schools, have some of the lowest rates of internet access in the country. Less than 55 percent of residents in some South Texas counties had broadband subscriptions, according to the American Communities Survey.

“It’s definitely going to present a lot of challenges for teachers and English learners,” Bojorquez said. “Face-to-face instruction is always best because it helps build rapport and language skills.”

While school leaders work on plans for these unprecedented challenges, families also are adjusting.

Cook said her other children are not putting in the same level of effort that they did at school because it is easier to get distracted at home.

Still, she has faith, and hope.

“I feel like people need to give districts some grace, give teachers some grace,” Cook said. “Not just special education, but all teachers, all educators right now doing the best they can. Everybody just has to have faith because they’ve never had to do this before.”

shelby.webb@chron.com