When the pandemic hit, 10-year-old Luis, who has autism, quickly started to regress.

Luis’s mother said the boy stopped socialializing after his fourth grade class at his Los Angeles Unified school in Southeast L.A. shut down. She asked that the family not be identified in order to protect her son.

He began having behavioral issues. He fell way behind in his academics — all after not receiving his mandated services of behavior, speech, and occupational therapies or his one-on-one aid over Zoom.

Now back in school, Luis needs two years of missed services to catch up, said his mother.

“He needs these services again as soon as possible,” said Luis’s mother.  “I have no other options.”

Hopefully, Luis will soon get the services he needs.

Last Thursday, LAUSD agreed to provide these services to Luis and more than 66,000 district students with disabilities in a resolution with the federal Office of Civil Rights after an investigation revealed students were not provided federally-mandated services during the pandemic.

The broadly-worded nine page agreement calls for the district to create a plan providing students the compensatory services, staff training and ongoing communication with parents on the plan’s status.

Concerned about how the district’s Special Education Division will implement the services, disability rights lawyers, advocates and parents offered ideas on what LAUSD needs to provide to the students — including mental health services, more special education teachers, more staff training, better transportation to services and a bigger special education budget.

“I’m concerned [the resolution] is a way for the district to look compliant without fixing root issues,” said Jill Rowland, Education Program Director at the Alliance for Children’s Rights, which advocates for the rights of foster care youth in schools in California.

“We need transportation support to get kids to the providers at centers outside of their schools,” she said. “We need translation services to help students and families who don’t speak fluent English. There’s also already such a shortage of staff, especially for students with disabilities.”

The agreement also calls for L.A. Unified to provide ‘compensatory services’ to students with disabilities, which means the district has acknowledged claims they denied a free and appropriate public education to some students during the pandemic.

L.A. special education lawyer Chris Eisenberg said the resolution is another tool for lawyers, advocates, and parents to use in holding LAUSD accountable to provide students’ services.

Read the full article about kids with disabilities by Rebecca Katz at The 74.