California must not discriminate against students with disabilities during the COVID pandemic.

The COVID pandemic has upended education across the US and in California. Some schools are making efforts to keep running with distance learning and some are shutting down.

Education is a right for all kids and it is imperative to protect it - especially now.

Many kids are being left behind by these distance learning programs including kids with disabilities.

Kids with disabilities are already one of the most poorly performing groups in the state and programs for them are already seriously underfunded. The COVID-19 pandemic is making a bad situation terrible.

We ask that you:

* Affirm the right to a free and public education for all students with disabilities - even in the face of the COVID pandemic.

* Direct the California Department of Education to NOT grant any waivers of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, regardless of action at the federal level.

* Encourage our US Representatives and Senators to work to protect the rights of all people with disabilities in any and all COVID related legislation.

* Declare a state level emergency for education so that schools that choose to close can do so without loss of revenue and continue to pay teachers and staff.

* Provide supplemental funding to school districts and counties to design and implement adequate educational programs for all students including special education.

It is absurd to think that designing and running a radically new and different educational program will cost the same as the current public school program. Teachers need training. Schools need additional resources. Some educational services cannot be duplicated by a computer. If teaching all students at home was cheaper and better, presumably we would be doing it already.

* Where schools have chosen to remain open for the 2019-20 school year, provide additional resources and take the necessary actions (such as funding summer programs or additional supports) to ensure that special education students are not left further behind their general education peers.

This should also be done for other students and groups that are not well served under distance learning.

* Create, lead, and fund a state-level program to operate public schools safely under pandemic circumstances.

This will include safety procedures, but also may require changes to schedules, negotiations with teachers unions, funding for additional equipment to rapidly clean schools, changes from large buses to smaller ones. This pandemic is likely to impact our educational system for at least two years. We need a crash program to figure out how to educate all of are kids smartly under these circumstances.

In the long term, California needs to change its educational strategy. We have slipped from being an national educational powerhouse to having a dismal education system for far too many of our children.

This is especially true for our students with disabilities who have terrible graduation rates, are far behind academically, and, unsurprisingly, too often wind up in jail or unemployed.

California's special education system is designed to fail. It is structurally underfunded. The state has created a situation where school districts are in conflict with the families with disabilities because the funding isn't available, yet the school districts are supposed to educate the kids.

We must move to fully fund our special education program - if the federal government does it share, great, if not, we are responsible for ensuring all are children are educated.

This is a rare chance to really look at what we are doing for, and to, all our children.

Let's not waste it.