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Boston Globe
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Student-parents face uncertain future as federal child care program wanes
Colleges and policymakers alike need students with children to finish their degrees and fill jobs, including jobs in high-demand fields such as nursing. Providing more on-campus child care is one way to help them do that, but d The number of colleges offering on-campus child care fell by 24 percent between 2012 and 2021, according to the left-leaning think tank New America. Now, the Trump administration's budget proposal calls for eliminating the only federal program that specifically helps student-parents with child care. Advertisement 'We've seen many parenting students stop out of their degrees because they did not have consistent, adequate, accessible, high-quality child care,' said Brittani Williams, director of advocacy, policy and research at the nonprofit Generation Hope, who was a student-parent herself. 'Even from my own personal experience, the ability to have child care was absolutely a centering pillar' for students to be able to complete degrees. Advertisement At Southern Connecticut State's drop-in child care center, teacher assistant Kayleigh Morgan greets Cai-Lonni Haywood and her son. Having good child care for her son has enabled Haywood to return to college, where she is pursuing a social work degree. Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report The federal program is called CCAMPIS. Pronounced 'see-campus,' it stands for Child Care Access Means Parents in School. Created in 1998, CCAMPIS provides grants to colleges to create on-campus child care centers, subsidize access for low-income students and partner with nearby child care facilities. Students who take part in CCAMPIS have higher persistence rates than students overall, according to the federal government's own research. CCAMPIS support allowed Haywood to go back to college. She started attending her current institution, Southern Connecticut State University, because she heard about the drop-in child care center the institution had opened with the help of a CCAMPIS grant in 2023. The $159,000 the university gets annually from CCAMPIS not only helped launch the child care center, its director said; it subsidizes access for lower-income students like Haywood, who is now working toward becoming a social worker. She pays only about $1 a day and can drop her son off for three-and-a-half-hour blocks when she has class or other commitments. 'I am two semesters away from graduating, which I never thought I would be able to do having a baby and deciding I wanted to go back to school,' she said. 'If Southern didn't have this child care program, I wouldn't be able to do it.' Now, as with many federal government initiatives, the fate of CCAMPIS is uncertain. President Donald Trump's administration has effectively halved the number of employees at the Department of Education, which oversees th program, and issued an executive order to dismantle the agency. The department didn't respond to questions for this story. Advertisement The number of institutions receiving CCAMPIS money declined from 327 in 2021 to 264 in 2023, federal data show. They received an average of $317,108. Many colleges have CCAMPIS waitlists, and higher education advocates had been hoping that funding for the program would be increased from $75 million a year to $500 million. But in the current environment, they're not optimistic. For now, they say, they hope to simply prevent its outright elimination. 'You play the long game in federal policy,' said Edward Conroy, a senior policy manager at New America. 'Protecting the program's existence is likely to be where we're at in the near future.' Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have taken an interest in the program. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, and Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Massachusetts, introduced a bill last fall that would have increased funding for CCAMPIS to $500 million and raised the maximum grant award to $2 million. Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, had similarly introduced a bill that would add flexibility to the program. 'Not only is there bipartisan support in funding the program, but also in actually changing it to make it better,' said Richard Davis Jr., a policy analyst at New America. This support from both the left and right gives advocates some optimism that CCAMPIS will survive the administration's spending cuts. 'We would hope that Congress protects this program and funds this program so that student-parents can have the support they need,' said Justin Nalley, a senior policy analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which focuses on Black Americans. Helping adult students get degrees is increasingly a focus of politicians and colleges. Advertisement Parents who use their degrees to get better jobs pay more in taxes and are less likely to need government assistance, research shows. Many states now have Many universities are facing enrollment challenges among traditional-aged students, brought on by demographic changes and questions about the return on the investment in tuition. In response, they're looking to bring in more adult students. But older students are more likely to have kids in tow. 'Schools are recognizing the need to serve and recruit and retain and support this new learner,' said Jody Gordon, a consultant at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers who works with colleges on enrollment. Some states are focusing more on student-parents. New laws in California require public colleges to collect data on these students, give them priority registration and consider child care expenses in financial aid calculations. Illinois and Texas have passed bills requiring the collection of data about and provision of resources to students with children. 'A lot of students are not just a student anymore,' said AJ Johnson, policy director at California Competes. 'We need this type of information to start to innovate and design for our modern students and their needs, which include parenting and working.' But making child care affordable and accessible is still one of the most critical ways to help student-parents finish their degrees. Students who take part in CCAMPIS have higher persistence rates than students overall, according to the federal government's own research. On-campus child care for student-parents offers a payback to taxpayers, even if it's expensive to provide, a study by the Urban Institute found. Researchers concluded that a subsidized program in Virginia would lead to 8,700 more graduates through 2035 and offer a 24 percent return on every dollar spent. That's before looking at benefits down the line, such as making it more likely that the children of student-parents will pursue a higher education themselves once they've grown up. Advertisement 'The fact that it paid for itself at all was honestly a little bit surprising because child care can be so costly,' said Theresa Anderson, a research associate at the Urban Institute and coauthor of the analysis. 'But that's because it's really effective and important.' At Southern Connecticut State, the existing CCAMPIS grant expires at the end of September. The center is helping about 66 parenting students this semester, and serves infants up to 12-year-olds. 'We realized that we were always supporting parenting students, but the level of our support just was not enough,' said Michele Vancour, who directs the center. Opening the center 'was a great opportunity for us to demonstrate that there was a significant need and to find ways to make this part of the fabric of who we are.' The university is looking for ways to maintain services after the grant expires, Vancour said. She said she speaks regularly with administrators at other institutions that are part of CCAMPIS. 'The uncertainty, not knowing what to expect next, has been the most stressful for people,' she said. Haywood said she wishes she could use the university's child care center even more than she does now. After working jobs at Lowe's and Stop & Shop, she plans to finish her social work degree and then pursue a master's degree. By the time she starts, Landin will be 5, and old enough to attend evening sessions at the drop-in center where he's already a regular. Advertisement 'It's been a year here now and he doesn't even say bye to me,' she said. 'He just walks in and goes and lives his best life.' This story was produced by , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our . Listen to our .
Miami Herald
16-05-2025
- Health
- Miami Herald
A federal program helped student-parents thrive. Now it's on life support
NEW HAVEN, Conn. - When Cai-Lonni Haywood left the Navy, she wanted to go back to school to become a nurse. She tried a for-profit college, but it shut down suddenly. So she started attending community college in her hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. Soon something more important came up: a son, Landin. Once Haywood, now 31, gave birth, she needed child care to attend class. When she couldn't find any that she could afford, she dropped out. It's a story as common as it is little known across American higher education. More than 1 in 5 American undergraduates is a parent. For many of them, kids come first and school falls by the wayside. Colleges and policymakers alike need students with children to finish their degrees and fill jobs, including jobs in high-demand fields such as nursing. Providing more on-campus child care is one way to help them do that, but despite a growing recognition of the challenges faced by students with children, the opposite is happening. The number of colleges offering on-campus child care fell by 24 percent between 2012 and 2021, according to the left-leaning think tank New America. Now, the Trump administration's budget proposal calls for eliminating the only federal program that specifically helps student-parents with child care. Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. "We've seen many parenting students stop out of their degrees because they did not have consistent, adequate, accessible, high-quality child care," said Brittani Williams, director of advocacy, policy and research at the nonprofit Generation Hope, who was a student-parent herself. "Even from my own personal experience, the ability to have child care was absolutely a centering pillar" for students to be able to complete degrees. The federal program is called CCAMPIS. Pronounced "see-campus," it stands for Child Care Access Means Parents in School. Created in 1998, CCAMPIS provides grants to colleges to create on-campus child care centers, subsidize access for low-income students and partner with nearby child care facilities. Students who take part in CCAMPIS have higher persistence rates than students overall, according to the federal government's own research. CCAMPIS support allowed Haywood to go back to college. She started attending her current institution, Southern Connecticut State University, because she heard about the drop-in child care center the institution had opened with the help of a CCAMPIS grant in 2023. Related: See which colleges and universities offer child care The $159,000 the university gets annually from CCAMPIS not only helped launch the child care center, its director said; it subsidizes access for lower-income students like Haywood, who is now working toward becoming a social worker. She pays only about $1 a day and can drop her son off for three-and-a-half-hour blocks when she has class or other commitments. "I am two semesters away from graduating, which I never thought I would be able to do having a baby and deciding I wanted to go back to school," she said. "If Southern didn't have this child care program, I wouldn't be able to do it." Now, as with many federal government initiatives, the fate of CCAMPIS is uncertain. President Donald Trump's administration has effectively halved the number of employees at the Department of Education, which oversees the program, and issued an executive order to dismantle the agency. The department didn't respond to questions for this story. The number of institutions receiving CCAMPIS money declined from 327 in 2021 to 264 in 2023, federal data show. They received an average of $317,108. Many colleges have CCAMPIS waitlists, and higher education advocates had been hoping that funding for the program would be increased from $75 million a year to $500 million. But in the current environment, they're not optimistic. For now, they say, they hope to simply prevent its outright elimination. "You play the long game in federal policy," said Edward Conroy, a senior policy manager at New America. "Protecting the program's existence is likely to be where we're at in the near future." Related:Parents are quitting jobs, passing on raises - to qualify for child care Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have taken an interest in the program. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, and Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Massachusetts, introduced a bill last fall that would have increased funding for CCAMPIS to $500 million and raised the maximum grant award to $2 million. Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, had similarly introduced a bill that would add flexibility to the program. "Not only is there bipartisan support in funding the program, but also in actually changing it to make it better," said Richard Davis Jr., a policy analyst at New America. This support from both the left and right gives advocates some optimism that CCAMPIS will survive the administration's spending cuts. "We would hope that Congress protects this program and funds this program so that student-parents can have the support they need," said Justin Nalley, a senior policy analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which focuses on Black Americans. Helping adult students get degrees is increasingly a focus of politicians and colleges. Parents who use their degrees to get better jobs pay more in taxes and are less likely to need government assistance, research shows. Many states now have educational attainment goals that parenting students who graduate can help them meet. Many universities are facing enrollment challenges among traditional-aged students, brought on by demographic changes and questions about the return on the investment in tuition. In response, they're looking to bring in more adult students. But older students are more likely to have kids in tow. Related: As colleges lose enrollment, some turn to one market that's growing: Hispanic students "Schools are recognizing the need to serve and recruit and retain and support this new learner," said Jody Gordon, a consultant at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers who works with colleges on enrollment. Some states are focusing more on student-parents. New laws in California require public colleges to collect data on these students, give them priority registration and consider child care expenses in financial aid calculations. Illinois and Texas have passed bills requiring the collection of data about and provision of resources to students with children. "A lot of students are not just a student anymore," said AJ Johnson, policy director at California Competes. "We need this type of information to start to innovate and design for our modern students and their needs, which include parenting and working." But making child care affordable and accessible is still one of the most critical ways to help student-parents finish their degrees. Students who take part in CCAMPIS have higher persistence rates than students overall, according to the federal government's own research. On-campus child care for student-parents offers a payback to taxpayers, even if it's expensive to provide, a study by the Urban Institute found. Researchers concluded that a subsidized program in Virginia would lead to 8,700 more graduates through 2035 and offer a 24 percent return on every dollar spent. That's before looking at benefits down the line, such as making it more likely that the children of student-parents will pursue a higher education themselves once they've grown up. Related: Universities and colleges that need to fill seats start offering a helping hand to student-parents "The fact that it paid for itself at all was honestly a little bit surprising because child care can be so costly," said Theresa Anderson, a research associate at the Urban Institute and coauthor of the analysis. "But that's because it's really effective and important." At Southern Connecticut State, the existing CCAMPIS grant expires at the end of September. The center is helping about 66 parenting students this semester, and serves infants up to 12-year-olds. "We realized that we were always supporting parenting students, but the level of our support just was not enough," said Michele Vancour, who directs the center. Opening the center "was a great opportunity for us to demonstrate that there was a significant need and to find ways to make this part of the fabric of who we are." The university is looking for ways to maintain services after the grant expires, Vancour said. She said she speaks regularly with administrators at other institutions that are part of CCAMPIS. "The uncertainty, not knowing what to expect next, has been the most stressful for people," she said. Haywood said she wishes she could use the university's child care center even more than she does now. After working jobs at Lowe's and Stop & Shop, she plans to finish her social work degree and then pursue a master's degree. By the time she starts, Landin will be 5, and old enough to attend evening sessions at the drop-in center where he's already a regular. "It's been a year here now and he doesn't even say bye to me," she said. "He just walks in and goes and lives his best life." Contact editor Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556 or jmarcus@ This story about student-parents was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast. The post A federal program helped student-parents thrive. Now it's on life support appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
Vox
09-05-2025
- Business
- Vox
We're at the beginning of a harsh new era for college students
is the vice president for Education Policy and knowledge management at New America and directs the Education Policy program. Five years ago, as death, panic, and viruses were spreading across the globe, the Trump administration announced it was halting collections of college debt. At the time, almost everyone agreed this was a good idea. 'It is going to make a lot of students happy,' President Donald Trump remarked. This week, an entire Biden administration later, Trump's Department of Education began throwing the full force of the federal government against people who had defaulted on their student loans. Employers will be contacted, wages garnished, and debt collectors deployed. The move came a week after House Republicans released plans for a massive overhaul of student financial aid policy. Their bill would reduce the number of students eligible for need-based federal financial aid, make it harder for students to pay for tuition, books and living expenses, increase monthly loan payments for millions of borrowers, and make some people wait as much as 20 years longer to have their debts forgiven. Student happiness will no longer be a consideration. Sometimes, members of Congress propose radical changes they know have little chance of becoming law. This isn't one of those times. The Republican plan is part of the 'big, beautiful' budget reconciliation bill, some version of which is likely to pass Congress before the year is out. The much-debated dream of broad-scale debt relief and friendly student loans is fading. This is the beginning of a harsh new era for the roughly 43 million people who hold almost $1.7 trillion in federal student loans. For people who are struggling to make ends meet and are most vulnerable to Trump's government service cuts and the economic devastation of his reckless trade policies, the timing couldn't be worse. Related Restarting student loan payments could be a chaotic disaster The winding, lawsuit-filled history of student debt relief Trump's initial move to suspend loan payments in 2020 was ratified by Congress a few weeks later in the CARES Act, which passed the House with a 419-6 vote. That was the last time Democrats and Republicans agreed on the issue. Loans were hotly debated during the Democratic primary that year. After Joe Biden's November victory, influential party figures like Sen. Elizabeth Warren pressed him to unilaterally forgive some or all outstanding student debt. Biden was reticent — he preferred making a deal with Congress — but over time, progressive activists convinced him to launch an ambitious plan to wipe $10,000 off the balance of nearly every federal loan, and another $10,000 from debt held by low-income students. It was a historic opportunity, they argued, to help close the racial wealth gap and give relief to people who had been victimized by too-expensive colleges. Biden also untangled a knot of existing loan forgiveness programs designed to help people including public servants, students with disabilities, and people who were defrauded by their college. Those actions alone resulted in 5.3 million students having $188 billion in loans wiped away. A group of Republican attorneys general sued over the $10,000 plan, and the Supreme Court obliterated the program based on its newly fabricated 'major questions doctrine.' Biden pressed forward with more loan forgiveness schemes. The most important was the SAVE plan, which was designed for (but not limited to) community college students. It lowered students' monthly payments from 10 percent of their discretionary income to as little as 5 percent, and forgave any outstanding debts in as soon as 10 years for students with loans smaller than $12,000 (instead of 20 years). Almost 8 million people enrolled in SAVE. As for student loan repayments, Biden extended the collections pause all the way until October 2023, when he was forced to restart the system by Republicans. After a one-year 'on-ramp' to payment, the clock began ticking last October. The Department of Education has since told the servicing companies that manage the loans to start reporting non-paying borrowers to credit agencies. In just the last three months, millions of borrowers have suddenly seen their credit scores dip. This week marked the beginning of the federal government's drive to start collecting on loans that were already in default before the pandemic. The plan that could devastate the financial aid landscape College students and people with loans aren't just facing harsh new debt collection tactics from the Trump administration. The president's Republican allies in states and Congress are working to make college loan policy far less student-friendly in the future. Another group of Republican attorneys general sued to stop SAVE, and the program is currently held up in federal court. (During this time, everyone in the program has had their loan put in suspended animation, meaning no interest has accrued and they didn't owe payments.) The House Republican plan would reverse its efforts, eliminating a provision that set loan payments to $0 for low-income borrowers, and instead increasing payments to up to 15 percent of income for current borrowers and 10 percent for future borrowers. It would also deny forgiveness until 30 years of payments — that is, most of a borrower's working life. Those who do borrow will face repayment on much harsher terms. Biden's Department of Education wrote tough new rules designed to prevent students, particularly members of the military, from being defrauded in the first place. One rule cuts off federal financial aid to college programs that load up students with too much debt and don't prepare them to get jobs that pay an adequate wage. The Republican plan would repeal virtually all of those regulations. It would also prevent future education secretaries from creating new loan forgiveness plans. This means that, for students entering college or graduate school for the first time, the financial aid landscape could be grim. The Republican plan puts new limits on how much students in high-cost areas or in high-cost programs can borrow for tuition, books, room and board, even as moderate-income students will no longer be eligible for federal grants. Borrowing for graduate and professional school could be capped in a way that would make it much more difficult for lower-income students to pursue careers in medicine and law. Those who do borrow will face repayment on much harsher terms. And with most of the guardrails protecting students from predatory for-profit colleges lifted, it's more likely that they will be saddled with loans for degrees that have little or no value in the job market — if they manage to graduate at all. A sea change For the last five years, many borrowers held out hope that they could move forward in their lives without the yoke of student debt. Debt forgiveness plans were announced and congratulatory letters mailed, only to have the courts and electoral politics pull those promises away. Now the Department of Education has declared, 'There will not be any mass loan forgiveness.' As long as Trump is president, this is certainly true. Borrowers who took advantage of the five-year hiatus will need to get back in the habit of loan repayment. So will recent graduates who haven't made payments before. For those in financial difficulty, even less-generous payments plans are almost certainly a better option than default. If the loan collection system cracks and falters under the strain, the government won't have people with enough expertise to step in and fix it. One student loan servicer reports that only 38 percent of borrowers are up-to-date and actively making payments on their loans as of February, down from 60 percent before the pandemic. This is partially a problem of Republicans' own making — millions of borrowers have had their payments suspended while the SAVE lawsuit plays out in court. But there is no doubt that millions of people are at serious risk of defaulting on their student debt and suffering serious financial consequences. Restarting a collection system that was never designed to be turned off in the first place will be an enormous challenge for the Education Department and its contractors. Normally, the Federal Student Aid office (FSA) in the Education Department would have experts in place to help manage the vast, complex student loan system during a once-in-a-lifetime challenge. But Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency minions gutted FSA during their recent purge of department employees. That means if the loan collection system cracks and falters under the strain, the government won't have people with enough expertise to step in and fix it.
USA Today
05-04-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Could IEPs become more frustrating for parents of kids with disabilities?
Could IEPs become more frustrating for parents of kids with disabilities? The Trump administration recently slashed $900 million in education research contracts and more than $600 million in educator preparation grants. Show Caption Hide Caption What we know now about Trump's executive order on Education Department Now that President Trump has signed an executive order to dismantle the Education Department, what happens next? Here is what we know now. California resident Katie Prather remembers thinking that her son, who has autism, could have mastered math skills if he had less work to complete on assignments in elementary school. By middle school, she thought he would fare better if he had more social pragmatic skills to navigate interactions with his teachers and students. At the start of high school, she said, her son was "hanging out with the wrong crowd," hoping to fit in after years of being called a problem child by teachers and classmates. Often he was overstimulated, "spent by the end of the school day," and failing his classes at school even though he had an individualized education plan, which is guaranteed to students with disabilities under federal law. That's when Prather started to fear that the services the school district was providing him weren't working. Even worse, she worried he wouldn't graduate on time. "I felt like we kept bumping into this 'There's nothing we can really do to help him' attitude of the school," she said. "He was failing some classes even though he was super-smart. There was a huge gap in how he was performing and what he was capable of in that school district." About 7.5 million students with disabilities in the U.S. are protected under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Act from being turned away at public schools. These kids are guaranteed the right to a "free and appropriate public education" and can access Individual Education Programs, or IEPs, to help them succeed. The journey to obtaining and modifying an IEP that works for a student with disabilities is notoriously challenging for parents, said Carrie Gillispie, a senior policy analyst with the education policy program at the national liberal-leaning think tank New America. Parents and educators often disagree on what a child needs to succeed, and often there's a lack of knowledge about what parents know their child has access to and reality, she said. The plans are also expensive for school districts – costing up to tens of thousands of dollars per student – and the paperwork brings administrative burdens for teachers and staff at the nation's schools, Gillispie said. The workload of IEPs often drives teachers away from special education jobs, leaving heavier workloads for the teachers who are in the field, Gillispie said. The nation faces a shortage of special education teachers. All these challenges often come at the expense of student achievement and well-being. Trump wants to scrap the education department. What does that mean for IEPs? Special education experts are now warning that families' paths to accessing a working IEP for their children could get worse with the Trump administration's attempts to dismantle the Education Department. That agency has enforced the Individuals with Disabilities Act, a federal law guaranteeing students with disabilities the right to a "free and appropriate public education" for decades. The Trump administration recently slashed $900 million in education-related research contracts and more than $600 million in educator preparation grants. Both cuts will affect students with disabilities, experts say. President Donald Trump has said federal protections for the millions of students with disabilities across the U.S. "will be fully preserved" and transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The federal education agency continues to oversee special education services, said Madi Biedermann, a spokesperson for the Education Department. Congress would ultimately decide whether the agency can be eliminated. Does Project 2025 eliminate IEPs? Not explicitly, but experts are wary Moving to a residential school after the local one couldn't help School staff at the high school where Prather's son attended his freshman year ultimately recommended that the family try another school that specializes in educating students with disabilities. The 10th grader is now enrolled at Hanna Academy, a state-funded residential private school for students who have severe disabilities or behavioral problems, in Sonoma, California. Every child who attends the school has an IEP. So far it has worked for the Prathers – aside from exposure to violent outbursts on the school campus from time to time, Prather said. "The smaller class setting and no homework has been a game-changer," she said. "He's really continued to learn and done credit recovery from classes he failed last year. There are reports from the school his behavior has improved." Looking back, she doesn't blame the school district entirely for her son's struggles in schools. School staff tried to help her son, and he had an IEP for years, she said, but even the smaller class size options that were available wouldn't have worked for him. "Unfortunately with smaller setting stuff, in most regular schools that usually means kids with autism are in classrooms with kids who have more intellectual disabilities and aren't at grade level," she said. "That's not him. We didn't find anywhere in a public school setting that worked for us." 'Kicked out of every school they've been in' For Hanna Academy Principal Courtney Jackson, it has been a challenge to accommodate the IEPs of 48 students – especially since the school transitioned from a parochial private school to a school solely serving students with disabilities two years ago. Family and educator involvement to figure out what works for each student is especially crucial for these kids, he said. "These are parents typically dealing with kids who have had disability issues for so long," he said. "Their kids have been kicked out of every school they've been in, and they're looking for any sort of resources." In Maryland, Rich Weinfeld and his team of consultants at The Weinfeld Education Group work with parents of families with IEPs to help them advocate for their kids at their schools. They often encourage parents to seek data from the Education Department's research arm. The Institute of Education Sciences has historically researched and collected nationwide data on what interventions work for students with specific disabilities at specific ages and learning levels. That could range from how a student with dyslexia should be taught to how much homework a student with autism should be assigned. "In terms of medicine, that would be the dosage: What does evidence say about what kind of medicine should be given and how many per day?" he said. "When we attend IEP meetings with parents to advocate for their kids, we look at the data. We can all agree kids should have an intervention, but we don't know how often should it be provided." The Trump administration recently laid off the entire staff at the Institute of Education Sciences, effectively gutting its ability to conduct further research on students with disabilities. Weinfeld worries about what resources families nationwide will have moving forward. Gillispie said she's also concerned about the research freeze. As a former school counselor, she has seen the agency's guidance help parents advocate for their children in the IEP process. "The important part of the IEP is the individualized part," she said. "It's all about data monitoring and collection." 'You have to educate yourself.' Special education parents have rights. Here's what to know Understaffed schools and deadlines to complete IEPs In Sonoma, Jackson said he has struggled to fill special education staffing jobs. Nearly three-quarters of public schools with special education teacher vacancies reported they'd "experienced difficulty" filling the positions for the 2024-25 school year, according to the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics. "The paperwork burden of IEPs often cause teachers and other school staffers stress, and it's part of the reason why it's hard to retain and hire these teachers," Gillispie said. Special education staff often have to work more hours when there are huge workforce shortages because schools must meet deadlines throughout the IEP process, Gillispie said. "Many times schools go over that timeline, and many times it's because they're understaffed and the paperwork is bureaucratically burdensome," she said. The Trump administration has also eliminated special education teacher training programs at the federal level. Disability advocates worry the cuts could affect an already staggering workforce shortage of special education teachers who are turned off by the administrative burden of IEPs. "Without addressing the workforce issue, the rest of the of causes of frustration are not going any better," Gillispie said. Schools are scrambling: To find special education teachers. 3 ways to address shortage. Funding for special education is uncertain The Education Department pays out funding appropriated by Congress for IEPs and other education services to states. Jackson, from Hanna Academy, is worried about any future funding cuts or freezes at the federal level. The school is state-funded and could be affected by any financial deficits. He's one of many school officials unsure about how much money they'll receive for special education services from the federal government for the upcoming school year. It has been difficult for him and others to lay out their budgets. Trump has not indicated whether any federal funding cuts will specifically affect students with disabilities, but his administration has made clear it wants to cut excess spending in multiple ways. On the other hand, Gillespie argues it will be much more expensive to get rid of the Education Department in the long run. "It would just lead to huge legal costs and programming disputes," she said. 'That would be a huge concern' Prather's son is now on track to graduate high school at Hanna Academy. She says his individualized education plan there is exactly what he needed to succeed all along. But she worries what's happening at the Education Department could sever that feeling of triumph, especially if his school loses funding or any of its services. "If my son had to go back to a regular high school, that would be a huge concern." Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@ Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
It's Time to Hold States Responsible for the Climate Impact of War
This article is part of an ongoing partnership between World Politics Review and New America's Planetary Politics program, which will focus on the energy transition, the digital revolution and the shifting dynamics of global power blocs, with a particular emphasis on how these factors impact the Global South and global governance. As misguided as his declaration that the U.S. will 'take over' Gaza was, President Donald Trump did get at least one thing right: cleaning up and rebuilding the territory will be an immense project, lasting decades and costing at least $53 billion, according to the United Nations. It will also be expensive for the climate. Since the war between Hamas and Israel started on Oct. 7, 2023, more than 60 percent of the buildings in Gaza have been destroyed, along with 65 percent of the territory's roads and 85 percent of its water desalination and sewage treatment plants. Removing the debris and rebuilding the damaged infrastructure will release about 53.4 million metric tons of greenhouse gases, according to an estimate published by Queen Mary University of London in June. That is roughly 15 times what the Palestinian territories emit in a year and on par with the annual emissions of Portugal—and that is not counting all the additional destruction caused since June. To get more in-depth news and expert analysis on global affairs from WPR, sign up for our free Daily Review newsletter. While negotiators argue over who will pay for Gaza's reconstruction, one thing is clear: The world will pay the bill for those carbon emissions—in rising sea levels, increased heat and extreme weather events caused by climate change. Even before the costs of reconstruction are factored in, the actual carbon cost of the war itself—in cargo flights, reconnaissance sorties, bombing raids, bombs, artillery, rockets, burned bunker fuels and damage to some 500 Israeli tanks and armored vehicles—came to just over 700,000 metric tons for the first 12 months of the conflict, estimates Benjamin Neimark, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary and co-author of the Gaza emissions report. That is larger than Greenland's greenhouse gas emissions for 2023. Yet unlike the emissions from Greenland, emissions from the war in Gaza will not be recorded on any tallies submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC. Those tallies are used by the U.N. body to calculate the world's progress—or lack thereof—on meeting the Paris Agreement's goal to stay 'well below' a 2 degrees C increase in average global temperatures compared to preindustrial levels. The methodology for carbon accounting in conflict used by Neimark's team was pioneered by the Initiative on Green House Gas Accounting of War, led by Dutch researcher Lennard de Klerk. In an updated paper released on Feb. 24, 2025—the third anniversary of Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine—de Klerk estimated that the combined military emissions from the war there have now reached roughly 230 million tons of greenhouse gas equivalents. That is the equivalent of the annual emissions of Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia combined. But those emissions will not factor into global calculations either. Ukraine and Gaza are two high-profile examples. But according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data portal, conflicts surged around the world last year, killing an estimated 233,000 people in Ukraine and Gaza, but also in Lebanon, Sudan and Myanmar, among others. In addition to the immediate humanitarian suffering, all these conflicts combine to exacerbate the climate crisis, while remaining invisible in the emissions accounting. For Neimark, of Queen Mary, 'setting emissions targets that aren't reflecting the scale of the emissions of conflict' amounts to 'kidding ourselves.' After all, to make meaningful cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, we need accurate baselines. 'We can't cut what we don't know,' he says. The fact that we don't know the scale of military emissions is no coincidence, however. Under the Paris Agreement, reporting them is voluntary. As a result, military emissions are 'insufficiently accounted for' by the UNFCCC, according to the U.N. Environmental Program's most recent report. Researchers with Scientists for Global Responsibility, a U.K.-based consortium promoting responsible science and technology, estimate that the unreported carbon emissions produced by military activity each year amount to about 5.5 percent of total global emissions. If the world's militaries were a country, that would give them the fourth-largest national carbon footprint in the world—greater than that of Russia. And that's just the emissions of standing militaries and weapons production, not active conflict. In addition to skewing projections of how fast it will be necessary to decarbonize in order to prevent or mitigate the impending climate catastrophe, omitting the ongoing carbon costs of standing militaries and warfare also reduces individual countries' incentives to decrease military emissions. This is all the more worrying given the current trend toward arms races in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. For instance, Trump's demands that NATO nations raise their defense spending target from the current 2 percent of gross domestic product to 5 percent will increase their military carbon emissions as well. For all the explosive power of a detonating bomb, its carbon emissions are not that high. But when the energy required to manufacture it is factored in, along with the production of the components, the carbon intensity of steel production and the transport of both the raw materials and the munition itself—so-called scope 2 and 3 emissions—it adds up. So too do the costs of feeding, housing, training and transporting military personnel. National defense ministries 'think about what a war will cost in terms of casualties and resources and money,' says Neimark. 'We believe that climate effects should be included in those calculations.' The question of whether to hold militaries responsible for the damage they do to the climate is also beginning to be raised: If political and military leaders can be held accountable for crimes against humanity, could they also be held responsible for crimes against the climate? For the moment, the answer is no. Under the terms of the Paris Agreement, there are no repercussions for states that do not meet their decarbonization goals. But given the enormous consequences, climate-vulnerable nations have asked the International Court of Justice, the U.N.'s principal judicial organ, to issue an advisory opinion on states' obligations to protect the climate under international law. Essentially they are asking whether states can and should be held liable for greenhouse gas emissions that damage the climate. At preliminary hearings held in December, 96 countries and 11 international organizations presented oral statements that described how climate change had destroyed livelihoods and upended agriculture in their countries. They also debated the relative merits of the Loss and Damage Fund agreed to as part of the U.N. COP 28 Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2023. At those hearings, the state of Palestine came forward not with a description of how it, as one of the world's most climate-vulnerable nations, had already suffered the consequences of climate change. Rather, it requested that the court expand the case to include state responsibility for climate impacts caused by armed conflict and other military activities, including occupation. 'This is an important issue that the State of Palestine, as the Court will appreciate, is particularly well positioned to address,' said Ammar Hijazi, the Palestinian ambassador to the Netherlands, in his address to the court. Hijazi pointed to the 'clear negative climate effects' of the Israeli occupation, 'affecting Palestine directly and affecting the world at large.' The court is expected to send an advisory opinion to the U.N. later this year. But the fact that it is taking on the question of state obligations to prevent climate change at all is a significant milestone, says de Klerk. If the court also includes a ruling on the climate consequences of conflict, he says, 'it will be transformative.' Advocates for including military emissions in UNFCCC calculations and holding states accountable for the climate impact of their military activities are not naïve enough to think that Russia might reconsider its invasion of Ukraine based on the war's carbon footprint alone, or that Israel might reduce its tank deployments in the West Bank to shave off a couple of tons of annual emissions. But by acknowledging that states are legally obligated to account for all their emissions, even those expended in conflict, the court would go a long way toward ensuring that climate costs are no longer lost in the fog of war. Aryn Baker is a Rome-based foreign correspondent who has spent the past 25 years writing about the intersection of climate change, conflict, migration, science, culture, health and politics around the world for Time Magazine, the New York Times and other outlets. She is currently a visiting fellow at New America's Planetary Politics project. The post It's Time to Hold States Responsible for the Climate Impact of War appeared first on World Politics Review.
