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Brooke Hilyer had few options left for her son Logan’s education.

Last spring before Logan graduated elementary school, Hilyer was told by Elmore County Schools that her local middle school, Holtville, did not have a special education class available for children with multiple disabilities.

“The short version of what we’re experiencing is what we keep hearing from the county – there’s a teacher shortage and they don’t have the resources to provide a [class] for my son at our local school,” Hilyer said.

According to the district, there weren’t enough teachers and specialists for every school to have a class for students with more complex needs. And although there are other special education programs within most schools, the district is determined to keep class sizes manageable for teachers.

Due to staff shortages, students with multiple disabilities are instead bused to Millbrook Middle School. Millbrook is further away, requires a bus ride and is less convenient for Hilyer, who works at Holtville.

Hilyer couldn’t get her son to ride a bus to Millbrook. He has autism, which makes it difficult for Logan to stay in place during the trip. He can’t wear a harness on the bus, and because of her and her husband’s work schedules, they couldn’t drive him without being late to their jobs.

Beyond the difficulty in getting her son to the new middle school, she feared he wouldn’t be prepared for more advanced instruction.

The pandemic was hard on Logan – and students with disabilities more widely. Research has shown that students with disabilities have scored lower on national assessments compared to their peers and have struggled increasingly with mental health and isolation. All the while, their special education programs are struggling to staff full-time teachers and related services personnel, making it difficult for their educational needs to be met.

Read more Ed Lab coverage of school staff shortages:

Hilyer eventually decided to withdraw Logan from Elmore County. He now attends Bridgeway ABA, a program that provides intensive, one-on-one therapy to children diagnosed with autism.

The specialized program costs the family about $400 a month out of pocket, with insurance covering the remaining costs.

“You know, you do what you have to do for your child and it’s not something I mind doing. I just shouldn’t have to,” Hilyer said.

What is hard for her is knowing her son won’t get the socialization he’s had with classmates he’s gone to school with since kindergarten.

“Just yesterday a little boy came up to me in the hallway and asked when is Logan coming back to school and I’m like, baby, I don’t think he’s gonna get to.”

‘The most complex needs’

Special education teacher shortages predate the pandemic and have long plagued schools both in Alabama and nationwide due to a combination of factors, namely the difficult conditions of the job.

“The shortages we’re seeing in special ed are not really due to a shortage of people going and getting trained,” said Lauren Morando Rhim, executive director and co-founder of The Center for Learner Equity. “It’s our attrition issue that is really the biggest and when you drill down on why special ed teachers are leaving, it is because special ed is siloed, teachers feel like their colleagues don’t understand or value their work, they’re asked to do too much and are spread so thin that they never feel any success.”

According to the CEEDER Center at The University of Florida – which provides capacity building for teachers and school officials in an effort to help students with disabilities become more career and college ready – the number of fully-certified special education teachers has declined in the past decade.

Schools have seen larger student-teacher ratios in special education classrooms, declined enrollment in teacher preparation programs and a higher number of teachers being hired with emergency certifications, which are temporary teaching certificates granted to people who would not ordinarily meet criteria.

In Alabama, the state department of education began issuing temporary certifications for special education teachers in grades 6-12 this school year. The program allows someone with a bachelor’s degree to be issued a one-year certificate if they are making progress toward completing required courses at one of three partner universities. They then must take the Praxis in order to receive full certification.

According to officials at the state department of education, 76 people are enrolled in the program, but approximately 752 special education teachers were projected to be needed last school year.

“There’s only one way to get teachers right now,” said Richard Dennis, superintendent of Elmore County Schools. “Steal them from your neighbors.”

Advocates like Morando Rhim are skeptical of these temporary measures and their impacts on students with disabilities.

“We’re really concerned about the mismatch of the children who have the most complicated, complex learning needs who are being taught by the teachers who are the least qualified,” Morando Rhim said.

A new report by The Center on Reinventing Public Education found that while virtually all students declined academically during the pandemic, students with disabilities were especially impacted.

According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), students with disabilities’ math scores dropped by 8 points between 2020 and 2022, compared to 7 points for non-disabled students, and by 7 points in reading, compared to 5 points for non-disabled students.

Along with educational outcomes, evidence suggests that students with disabilities are experiencing increasing mental health concerns. Many families faced choices between health and in-person learning, oftentimes forgoing socialization with peers in order to keep children with medical conditions safe, according to the CRPE report.

‘Students are going to be at greater risk’

Paraprofessionals and related specialists such as occupational therapists, audiologists and speech-language pathologists also are in short supply.

“When we look at those related service providers, if they’re not there to support that student’s instruction, if those positions aren’t filled, then students are going to be at greater risk for not attaining educational standards, for not making progress within their [Individualized Education Plans],” said Jeana Winter, executive director of the Alabama Parent Education Center, an organization that provides support to parents who have children with disabilities.

According to data provided by the Alabama State Department of Education, last school year districts across the state were projected to need 640 paraprofessionals, 1392 audiologists, 138 speech pathologists, 25 American Sign Language interpreters, 163 psychometric psychologists, 40 occupational therapists and 30 physical therapists.

The Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program said clients without access to those specialists in classrooms can face profound impacts.

According to the organization, one of their clients can’t attend school because there is no nurse to administer their treatments. A few others that are homebound – meaning their disability makes it difficult to learn from school so instead they receive instruction at home – cannot get a homebound teacher and are aren’t receiving instruction.

‘Communication is everything’

Students who are deaf or hard of hearing have been affected by large shortages of audiologists and ASL interpreters, roles that help students understand instruction.

“Communication is everything regardless of whether it’s oral language or sign language. If that language is not accessible to a student, it’s going to impede their ability to learn,” said John Mascia, president of Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind, which provides a number of residential schools and community-based programs for students who are deaf or blind.

“A kid could be super brilliant. But it would be like you speaking French to me if they don’t have an interpreter. The impact on these kids is that we can’t unlock their God-given talents if we don’t have a way to get complete and accessible communication to them.”

Kristen Wilburn requested her school, located in a rural district in the Black Belt, provide her kindergartner, who has cochlear implants, with an ASL interpreter.

The school district posted a job advertisement for a candidate to fill the position to help her child early in the summer, but as the school year approached, the role still had not been filled.

“Me and my family did have moments of panic for a couple of weeks,” said Wilburn. “I personally was trying to send out emails and post on social media trying to locate anyone that may be interested in the position.”

Local school districts in Alabama are responsible for filling their own job vacancies. Rural districts like Wilburn’s and Hilyer’s often experience the most difficulty because there is not a large pool of local candidates.

Certain specialists also often have to acquire licenses and certifications. Sign language interpreters must be licensed by the Alabama Licensure Board of Interpreters and Transliterators. Currently the state only has 293 people certified.

Frances Courson, professor of Deaf Studies & Deaf Education at the University of Montevallo, said the state does not have a standardized payscale for interpreters and although there are teachers of the deaf and interpreters who are retired and willing to return to work, the state requires retirement benefits to be suspended. Many people are not willing to do that.

“If the state would lift those requirements, these retired teachers and interpreters could help to fill some of the vacancies which would allow the schools to remain in compliance with Individuals with Disabilities Education Act,” Courson said.

Wilburn’s district couldn’t find an ASL interpreter for her son and instead provided her with compensatory services, which are offered as an alternative remedy for students with disabilities when they are unable to receive the services they are entitled to in their IEPs.

Wilburn’s son received a teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing, who is specially trained to address his language development and academic needs and also provides ASL interpretation.

Wilburn said she gets nervous on days when the teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing is absent and no substitute is available – but otherwise the situation has “turned out pretty well.”

But for other families across the country, compensatory services are often hard to attain.

According to the report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, “an untold number of families are still waiting for compensatory services to make up for what students lost earlier in the pandemic. Many are not even aware they qualify.”

As a result of the lack of available services and the pandemic, more families with children with disabilities are turning to alternative schooling options nationally, according to CRPE.

The Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind’s enrollment has remained steady, officials said, but programs there too have dealt with staff shortages.

“Lack of personnel and trained teachers is one of the biggest obstacles and barriers that we’re dealing with currently,” said Mascia of AIDB. “Many candidates just are not ready to really take on the stress and the complexity of many of our children. These kids can and do learn every single day, but they need well trained and motivated professionals that are willing to work really, really hard.”

A better community

Alabama offers no incentives like bonuses to specifically hire more special education teachers and related services personnel. There are also no statewide programs in place beyond the temporary teacher certification.

Certain districts, like Birmingham City Schools, are offering bonuses up to $10,000, but so far the state has only put forward budget proposals that will be voted on in 2023.

State Superintendent Eric Mackey, who has identified special education as a priority area, is pushing for nearly $100 million in additional spending and will put forth a proposal to that effect to the State Legislature when their session opens in January.

On top of increases in recent years designed to fill the gap between what federal funds pay for and the actual cost of educating children with disabilities, Mackey wants $68 million to pay annual $5,000 stipends to special education teachers.

The budget proposal also includes $37.6 million for state-funded preschool programs for children with disabilities, up from $17.6 million as well as an $8.5 million program to fund grants for certified behavior analysts for students with autism that would pay for an analyst in nearly every school district.

But until the budget passes and more resources are put into special education programs, advocates remain concerned about the long-term impacts of the pandemic on students with disabilities and how they will be remedied.

“Ultimately we’re going to see our students with disabilities are going to be some of the most disadvantaged students because they may not be able to recover that lost progress if there’s not qualified instruction,” said Winter of the Alabama Parent Education Center, who previously was also the chair of Special Education Advisory Panel, which provides policy recommendations to the Alabama State Department of Education.

“We’re better as communities when students exit school and are qualified to live, learn and work independently,” she said. “It’s a lot for the school system to bear but they are the ones responsible to educate students which prepares them to contribute to their communities.”

Reporter Trish Crain contributed to this story.

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Savannah Tryens-Fernandes is a member of The Alabama Education Lab team at AL.com. She is supported through a partnership with Report for America, a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.