by Quintessa Williams
When United Teachers Los Angeles NEA vice president Georgia Flowers-Lee began teaching special education in the Los Angeles Unified School District over 20 years ago, she didn’t expect to find her calling. Years of supporting and working closely with often overlooked students on the autism spectrum — many of them Black — changed that.
“If you’ve met one student with autism, you’ve met one student with autism,” she says. “It’s a spectrum disorder. I’ve had students who were academically strong but needed social-emotional support, and I’ve had students who were heavily impacted and needed far more support.”
But as rates of autism among Black students surge thanks to better diagnosis methods, the very supports these students rely on — trained educators, one-on-one aides, federally funded programs — face catastrophic cuts. With Title I funding threatened and cuts to the Department of Education, Flowers-Lee warns that Black autistic students will pay the price.
“These are our kids,” she says. “And if we don’t fight for them — who will?”
More Diagnoses, Less Support
According to the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 3.7% of Black 8-year-olds were diagnosed with autism in 2023 — compared to just 2.7% of white children. It’s the second consecutive report showing higher prevalence among Black children, reversing decades of underdiagnosis.
Flowers-Lee says some students require minimal interventions, while others have severe impairments, but what they all need is trained educators, consistent support, and learning environments tailored to meet their needs.
“Some students thrive in general education classrooms,” she adds. “But for others, a class of 32 is not where they are going to be successful. And those students deserve options.”
Flowers-Lee explains that autistic and other special education students all need an Individualized Education Plan — or IEP — with specific learning goals. If the IEP says a student “needs speech therapy every week, the district is legally obligated to provide it,” she says. “But too often, schools don’t have the staff, resources, or training — and that’s a big problem.”
Federal data from the 2023–24 school year reveal that 21% of public schools were not fully staffed in special education, marking the highest level of reported shortages among all teaching specialties. Additionally, a 2022 national study found that teachers of students with disabilities rated their access to support as “somewhat insufficient” to “somewhat sufficient,” with the lowest ratings given for planning and release time and training.
And even if their learning disability is identified, Flowers-Lee says many students enter classrooms ill-equipped to educate them: “They walk into increased class sizes and lower staffing,” she explains. “That’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
She also adds that paraeducators, who often provide one-on-one support, are paid so poorly that districts can’t even compete with fast food chains for talent.
“If you can make more money working at Chick-fil-A, why would you want to be in a classroom where you might get bitten, kicked, or spit on?” she asks. “It’s a complex work environment, and we don’t compensate or support people properly.”
Title I and DOE Cuts Will Hurt Special Ed Kids
These challenges could soon get worse. President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon proposed eliminating the Department of Education entirely — and recent directives have tied federal funding, including Title I, to anti-DEI compliance. Meaning schools must certify they’re not advancing diversity, equity, or inclusion initiatives — or risk losing support.
Title I funding is especially vital to schools in low-income Black communities, providing essential resources for everything from school meals to afterschool programs to special education staffing.
“We’re talking about basic things — school lunches, intervention programs, afterschool care,” Flowers-Lee says. “For many parents, that after-school program is their childcare.”
And while the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) legally mandates services for students with disabilities, it has never been fully funded. Currently, Flowers-Lee says the federal government covers only 13% of special education costs — far below the 40% originally promised.
In LAUSD, the second-largest school district in the nation, about a billion dollars a year comes from the general fund just to fill the gap,” she says. “So if we lose Title I on top of that, it’s going to break systems that are already hanging on by a thread.”
Advocating for the Support Black Students Deserve
As uncertainty looms, Flowers-Lee says she’s spending her time advocating for practical, urgent solutions that include maintaining manageable class sizes, preserving autism-specific supports, investing in paraeducators, and ensuring that financial decisions do not outweigh student needs.
“Children with special needs are expensive to educate properly — and that’s just the truth,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean we stop trying.”
She also calls on districts to use the reserves they already have. “Our district has a massive reserve, but they keep saying it’s for a rainy day. Well, guess what? It’s storming.”
