When the Safety Net Starts to Tear: IDEA Funding at Risk for Oak Ridge Schools
- Ashley Craven
- 4 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Earlier this week, the Department of Education announced reductions in force (also called RIFs) for more than 460 employees in the Office of Special Education Programs. That’s almost the entire department.
The Office of Special Education Programs (or OSEP) is the team that reviews and approves federal IDEA grants each year. These grants fund special education and early intervention services for students with disabilities.
From January through June, every school district in the country submits an application for IDEA funding. That money helps pay for teachers, aides, therapists, and materials for students with disabilities. If OSEP doesn’t have staff to process those applications, those grants don’t get approved. And if they’re not approved, the funding doesn’t go out.
That’s a lifeline being cut.
So how much could it really affect us? IDEA provides approximately $15 billion in funding nationally. Locally? Oak Ridge Schools have a budgeted amount of $1.2 million in IDEA funding for this year. Imagine a school system losing a million dollars. And that’s just one school system in the state of Tennessee. Your state and local funding sources can’t make up for that.
As it stands right now, a federal judge has temporarily blocked these layoffs, calling the plan “very much ready, fire, aim,” and warning that the “human costs cannot be tolerated.” The OSEP staff and the IDEA programs they manage are still in place... for now. But “for now” is not good enough.
Some have asked, “Why not just move the program to the states?” The short answer: we can’t. IDEA funding comes from the federal appropriations process. Tennessee receives more from the federal government than it sends in (meaning we would lose money, not gain it). It would take an act of Congress to approve moving those funds anywhere else - to the states or to a different department within the federal government. And even if that were to happen, no one else has the infrastructure system in place to process those applications, issue compliance reports, or oversee how the funds are used.
So here’s what this all comes down to: if OSEP can’t do its job, children with disabilities will lose the services they’re guaranteed by law. We can’t afford to look away from this.
Call your Congressional representatives. Call your senators. If they won’t listen, call the ones who will. Ask them to protect OSEP and the IDEA funding process that our students rely on. And urge your local leaders to raise their voices too.
Because this isn’t just “some department.” It’s our people. And it’s our kids.