How a Hurricane Is Still Punishing Special Ed Kids a Year Later
September 28, 2018
By: John O’Neil and Michael Elsen-Rooney
Source: Bloomberg
As the first anniversary of Hurricane Maria approached, Ruth González wasn’t focused on how deadly that storm had been. She was worried about how many weeks of school her son Kaleb would miss this fall.
Kaleb is 4 years old and autistic. After a year of upheaval, he and hundreds of other children in need of special education were greeted not with a rebuilt and recovered school system, but with chaos. Their first weeks were marked by what one advocate called “the storm after the natural storm,” a sweeping reorganization that involved closing approximately one quarter of Puerto Rico’s public schools.