Afterschool’s role in helping children with special needs or disabilities recover from the COVID-19 pandemic

By Stephanie Barker, Coordinator for the Kentucky Out-of-School Alliance (KYOSA) and parent of two elementary-age children with special needs and disabilities. To learn more about students with special needs or disabilities in afterschool programs, read a recently released brief by the Afterschool Alliance, “America After 3PM for Children with Special Needs or Disabilities.”

As cases caused by the delta variant continue to surge throughout many parts of the country, the 2021-2022 school year now marks the third consecutive school year challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic. While school closures and safety protocols created numerous logistical and pedagogical challenges for schools and districts, serving students with disabilities during remote instruction has been, according to education leaders across the country, perhaps one of the most trying aspects of K-12 education during COVID-19. However, participation in an appropriate and high-quality afterschool or summer learning program can help accelerate the recovery process for these students by providing timely access to critical services and supports, such tutoring, homework help, and social-emotional learning (SEL) opportunities.

Historical Context

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), first enacted in 1975, guarantees a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) to every student with a disability through specialized instruction and/or appropriately tailored services. During the 2018-19 school year, more than 7.2 million students – roughly 14 percent of the total student population – received services under the IDEA, while another 1.5 million received services under Section 504 only. Even in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, districts have been required to comply with this federal legislation. As the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Programs (OSEP) reiterated in a March 2020 guidance document, in reference to remote instruction:

“If an LEA continues to provide educational opportunities to the general student population during a school closure, the school must ensure that students with disabilities also have equal access to the same opportunities, including the provision of FAPE.”

However, there is often a gap between such promises and the reality for many students with disabilities and their families. In 2019 alone, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) resolved nearly 4,300 complaints alleging more than 7,000 violations of students’ rights to equal educational access under these federal disability-discrimination laws. This is on top of the thousands of complaints of IDEA violations filed at the state level.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, journalists across the country have been reporting on the challenges around ensuring FAPE during remote instruction, especially for students whose needs require hands-on, face-to-face interaction with a team of highly trained teachers and therapists. A survey conducted in May 2020 by ParentsTogether, which has since been widely cited by major media outlets, found that parents of children with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) were more than twice as likely than parents of children without IEPs to say that their child was doing little to no remote learning (35 percent versus 17 percent) and that distance learning was not going well (40 percent versus 19 percent).

While these parents have been encouraged to document any learning loss and/or missed services caused by the pandemic in preparation for requesting compensatory services, cumbersome legal processes that underpin this country’s fragile and underfunded special education system typically results in many students not receiving such services in a timely manner – if they receive them at all. Expanding on this issue in a recent New York Times article, a grandmother of an autistic student in New York City who is largely non-verbal stated, “There’s so much that he’s entitled to that we can’t access without a long, tedious process” that often necessitates families to hire a lawyer.

The Role of Afterschool

Afterschool, while not a replacement for compensatory services, can provide an additional layer of support in a timelier manner to students with disabilities and their families struggling with learning loss and developmental regression caused by prolonged pandemic-related school closures. A new America After 3PM special report, America After 3PM for Children with Special Needs or Disabilities, provides a first-time look at the experience of children with special needs or disabilities in afterschool programs and demonstrates the important role of afterschool in helping this population recover and re-engage.

Even though just 19 percent of all parents with a child in an afterschool program reported that their child has special needs or disabilities – representing just a fraction of the number of special education students served under the IDEA – children with special needs or disabilities and their families who do participate receive many benefits. For students, these include:

• Access to critical supports and enrichment opportunities in a structured environment
• Stronger connections with peers and increased confidence
• Opportunities to develop important workforce skills and be physically active

For parents or caregivers, the benefits include:

• Ability to remain in the workforce or seek employment opportunities
• Access to much-needed respite care
• Peace of mind that their child with special needs or disabilities is safe and actively engaged during when school is out

However, families with children with special needs or disabilities also experience unique barriers to participation when compared to parents overall. These are: higher than average cost and greater difficulty finding an appropriate program. Related to cost, parents with a child with special needs or disabilities enrolled in a program were more likely than parents overall to report that afterschool programs are difficult to afford, with parents of a child with special needs or disabilities spending higher than the national average on both their child’s afterschool program ($107 per week vs. $99 per week) and other activities during the school year ($2,141 vs. $1,499). On top of higher than average program costs, parents of a child with special needs or disabilities (56 percent) experience greater difficulty than parents overall (47 percent) when it comes to finding an afterschool program that meets their child’s needs, even though they reported greater access to information on afterschool programs in their community (75 percent vs. 60 percent).

For students with special needs or disabilities who are able to participate in afterschool programs, the experience is overwhelmingly positive for them and their families. However, even though parents of children with special needs or disabilities recognize the benefits that afterschool programs afford their children, with 9 in 10 agreeing that all young people deserve access to quality afterschool and summer programs, these new findings from America After 3PM show that there is still much work that needs to be done in order to increase access to afterschool programs for this group of young people that continues to be disproportionately affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.