I share Nicole’s anger and want to add one thing: I believe that lack of support for her child and my child and for hundreds of thousands of other children is CLEARLY illegal. https://twitter.com/nicolesjchung/status/1309151483812773889
Not just wrong. Not just upsetting. But illegal.
My son has a legally binding document saying what supports he should get. He did not get them from March till this week. He’s getting them now but only because our school has gone hybrid and he can go four days a week.
It was /reasonable/ (that's a legal word) for my son to not get supports when all schools were shut down in an emergency in the spring.

It is not, I contend, /reasonable/ for him not to get them now.
The idea that he must go into school to get supports, which is our current situation, is questionable. We are being required to expose him to risk of covid in exchange for accessing his legally owed free and appropriate public education.

We've made that choice, but are afraid.
But we're going to go back to distance learning unless we get this pandemic under control, which we're not, and then once again he will have no access to education.

We're entering a mediation process with the school district, then a due process hearing, then a lawsuit.
I've pitched this to WaPo, Star Tribune, Minnpost, NYT (who had Nicole and another friend, Hallie, already report on it so whatever), and The Atlantic. I have a pitch to discuss with another outlet next week. But I can't really seem to get traction here.
Partially because its wonky. Look how long this thread already is!

- My son cannot use PCA support during virtual school because PCA support is (says HHS) only for non-school. School must pay for school support.
- In August the school said they could not provide PCA support in homes because the MN department of ed said they couldn't. So we fought and got that changed and MN Ed says they "may" hire PCA support for kids in homes.

- Our school district says they won't do it. May != must.
Wisconsin has applied for a waiver from HHS (feds) to use PCA support during school hours, and HHS said ok! Good job Wisconsin HHS. But MN has a different waiver structure and so can't just use the Wisconsin model. But I have no evidence the Walz/Flanagan administration cares.
If HHS granted it to WI, surely we could find a way if MN DHS (Human services) cared. Do they? I dunno. My emails and calls go unreturned.
The other option would be to bring my son and other kids with his level of need to school even if we're on full distance (by district choice rather than state lockdown). School says no to that too, for reasons that aren't clear (but I think relates to teacher's union).
So here we are. School district failure. MN Dept of Ed and Dept of Human Services failure. HHS failure. We're fine for this week (other than raising all of our risk of covid). But we're not fine.
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