Rogers says HHS not taking over IDEA, but staff to move
The Education Department convened a private call Thursday with disability rights advocates in an effort to explain the planned transfer of the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to the Department of Health and Human Services, but participants said the briefing did not resolve their concerns about how the change would affect protections for students with disabilities.
Acting Assistant Secretary Kelly Rogers, who oversees special education, told participants the move would not erode federal protections. “The U.S. Health and Human Services is not taking over IDEA. Period,” Rogers said, referring to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. She stated that staff from the Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services would relocate to HHS but that she would continue to oversee them from the Education Department with what she described as “additional support by HHS.”
Rogers said the administration is “firmly committed to carrying out the federal government’s duty to enforce federal protections for individuals with disabilities” and that the partnership with HHS “does not alter that obligation.” She did not provide a timeline for when the changes would take effect.
Chad Rummel, who leads the Council for Exceptional Children and attended the call, said the briefing “left more questions than answers for parents and educators.” Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, said the reorganization “appears to add another layer of bureaucracy while creating additional confusion and uncertainty for families, educators, and state agencies.” Marshall characterized the administration’s approach as “a sham,” noting that the Education Department remains legally responsible for IDEA under the proposal. She called on Congress to intervene, citing that only an act of Congress can fully dissolve a federal agency.
After the call, Education Department press secretary Savannah Newhouse wrote in an email that “advocates, parents, and teachers in the special education community have nothing to fear” about the changes. She said the partnership with HHS places “these important federal responsibilities in a better positioned agency.”
The private briefing occurred three weeks after the Trump administration announced plans to move the special education and civil rights offices out of the Education Department, part of a broader effort to dismantle the agency. MSI previously reported the announcement of the shift of the special education and civil rights offices out of the Education Department on June 16, as part of the administration’s plan to relocate more than a dozen Education Department offices to other federal agencies under its “Returning Education to the States” campaign.
Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said the disability community has worried for months about moving oversight of IDEA. “The concern is not that IDEA disappears overnight,” Rodriguez said. “The concern is that the administration is preserving IDEA at the Department of Education on paper, while moving much of the work that makes IDEA real for families somewhere else.” She warned that students could face “more confusion, slower guidance, weaker monitoring and less accountability when services are delayed or denied.”
Department officials said federal special education funding will continue to flow through the Education Department for now, but it remains unclear how those funding mechanisms may change when staff relocate to HHS. Marshall said the reorganization “neither advances the stated goal of closing the department nor transfers new authority to the states.”