{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.hirono.senate.gov/news/press-releases/photos-and-video-hirono-holds-spotlight-forum-on-interagency-agreements-that-will-harm-students-with-disabilities", "PHOTOS & VIDEO: Hirono Holds Spotlight Forum on Interagency Agreements that will Harm Students with Disabilities", "2026-08-05", "2026", "2026-08", "Democrat", "Senate", "HI", "Mazie K. Hirono", "H001042", "www.hirono.senate.gov", "hirono", "https://www.hirono.senate.gov/news/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senator Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI) held a spotlight forum titled: Breaking the Promise: How Relocating the IDEA will be Detrimental to Students and Families,\u201d highlighting the dangerous consequences of the Trump Administration\u2019s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (ED) for our nation\u2019s students with disabilities and their families. During the forum, a panel of witnesses comprised of former ED leaders, civil rights advocates, and parent advocates spoke about how outsourcing ED\u2019s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) and Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which oversee critical federal programs for students with disabilities, to other agencies will harm millions of students with disabilities nationwide.\n\n\u201cThese agreements are not just harmless administrative shifts,\u201d said Senator Hirono. \u201cWhat we are witnessing is nothing short of a deliberate effort to dismantle the programs that support students with disabilities and their families, particularly for those with nowhere else to turn.\u201d\n\nIn June, the Trump Administration announced that OSERS would be moving away from ED to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and OCR would be moving to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). OSERS has been responsible for enforcing compliance of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)\u2014 which helps guarantee that every child with a disability can receive a free and appropriate public education that responds to their needs\u2014 since the law was passed five decades ago.\n\nSenator Hirono raised alarms about how moving OSERS to HHS, an agency that lacks the personnel and infrastructure to enforce the IDEA could threaten the over 8 million students who rely this civil rights law to provide them with adequate services. Senator Hirono also highlighted how shifting OCR\u2014the agency responsible for investigating potential violations of students\u2019 rights\u2014 to DOJ would exacerbate an already severe backlog of over 23,000 cases.\n\nAt the forum, Senator Hirono was also joined by U.S. Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).\n\n\u201cI have heard from hundreds of my constituents in New Hampshire about this Administration\u2019s moves to dismantle the Department of Education, and they\u2019re concerned about what would happen\u2014particularly for our young children with disabilities,\u201d said Senator Shaheen. \u201cThank you to the witnesses for sharing your knowledge and experience with us today and helping to sound the alarm around the harms that would come to instruction and services for children with disabilities if special education were removed from the Department of Education.\u201d\n\n\"Students come to the classroom with varying backgrounds and abilities, but they each deserve to pursue an education with peace of mind. OCR has supported this goal since the late 1960s, but the Trump administration's decision to move this office to the Department of Justice will hinder these efforts,\" said Senator Blunt Rochester. \"I'm proud to stand with Senator Hirono and my colleagues to push back against President Trump's attempts to dismantle the Department of Education, and I'll continue fighting to put our students' well-being and success first.\"\n\n\u201cA quality education is the cornerstone of our children\u2019s success, and the Department of Education has been responsible for ensuring students with disabilities have equal access to a public education since the passage of the IDEA\u2019s predecessor half a century ago. The Trump Administration\u2019s illegal decision to move that responsibility to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice \u2013 agencies with none of the expertise or experience necessary to best serve our students \u2013 will worsen educational outcomes and delay civil rights protections. We will fight to keep IDEA and the Department of Education alive to provide every student in America equal access to a high-quality education,\u201d said Senator Van Hollen.\n\n\u201cAll children deserve a strong education that meets their emotional and academic needs. The Trump Administration\u2019s removal of crucial programs from the Department of Education will harm students with disabilities. Shuttling the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services and Office for Civil Rights to agencies that lack experience serving students with disabilities hinders students\u2019 access to a safe and high-quality learning environment and the recourses they are entitled to if they face discrimination,\u201d Senator Durbin said.\n\nThe forum featured testimony from:\n\nLaurie VanderPloeg, Associate Executive Director for Professional Affairs, Council for Exceptional Children\n\nKaty Neas, Chief Executive Officer, The Arc of the United States\n\nValerie C. Williams, Former Director, Office of Special Education Programs, U.S. Department of Education\n\nSeth Galanter, Senior Fellow, Edley Center on Law & Democracy\n\nElizabeth Tang, Senior Counsel for Education and Workplace Justice, National Women\u2019s Law Center\n\n\"I ran the office that administers IDEA, and I am the mother of a son who happens to have Down syndrome,\" said Valerie C. Williams, CEO of Apokrisis Consultants and former Director of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). \"From both chairs the answer is the same: children with disabilities are students first, not patients, and the work that protects their right to learn belongs in the Department of Education, not scattered across agencies that have never done it.\"\n\n\"OCR's tradition valuing every complaint by students and families is nothing like DOJ's impact-litigation culture -- you can't swap one for the other,\" said Seth Galanter, Senior Fellow at the Edley Center on Law and Democracy and former OCR official in the Biden and Obama Administrations. \"The Department shouldn't be paying DOJ to be a poor substitute for the office it's dismantling.\"\n\n\"These changes will leave a lasting gap in the leadership and support that helps states improve special education. The result will be pockets of excellence, while vast parts of the country struggle to meet their responsibilities to children with disabilities,\" said Laurie VanverPloeg, Associate Executive Director for Professional Affairs, Council for Exceptional Children.\n\n\u201cBehind every complaint of discrimination that OCR receives is a student who has experienced real harm,\u201d said Elizabeth Tang, senior counsel for education and workplace justice at National Women\u2019s Law Center. \u201cThose tens of thousands of students are in danger of being ignored if the Department of Education and its civil rights office continue to be systematically neutered and dismantled. Every child deserves to feel safe and included at school\u2014we owe it to them to fight for a world where they will be.\u201d\n\nVideos from the forum can be found hereand photos can be found here.\n\nA full transcript of Senator Hirono\u2019s opening remarks is available below.\n\nAloha, thank you all for being here today as we discuss the threats the Trump Administration\u2019s Interagency Agreements pose to students with disabilities.\n\nAs you may know, President Trump has been working to undermine the U.S. Department of Education (ED) at every turn, with the stated goal of dismantling the entire Department.\n\nFollowing Donald Trump\u2019s illegal Executive Order to dismantle ED, the Trump Regime has issued a total of 14 \u201cInteragency Agreements,\u201d or IAAs, to move programs from ED to other agencies.\n\nThese agreements are not just harmless administrative shifts. The result will be weakening and removing federal government support for these programs.\n\nToday we are here to discuss two of these agreements and their impacts on students with disabilities. First, transferring the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, or OSERS, to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and second, moving the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to the Department of Justice (DOJ).\n\nFifty years ago, Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to help guarantee that every child\u2014regardless of disability, zip code, or family income\u2014has access to a free and appropriate public education that responds to their needs.\n\nCurrently, there are more than 8 million students with disabilities who receive services under the IDEA.\n\nSince the IDEA was created, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) has been responsible for ensuring that schools comply with the IDEA so students get the services they need.\n\nHanding that responsibility to The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proves this regime doesn't give a rip about students with disabilities. HHS has zero experience dealing with the IDEA.\n\nAnd with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly calling autism an \u201cindividual tragedy that destroys families,\u201d I have serious concerns about his department\u2019s ability to adequately serve students with special needs.\n\nTo make matters worse, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR)\u2014the agency responsible for investigating violations of student rights, including special education access\u2014is being moved to the Department of Justice\u2019s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division.\n\nThat division has already significant staffing cuts and was never designed to advocate for individual students.\n\nConsider the difference: while the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is required to review every complaint it receives\u2014amounting to thousands of cases each year\u2014the DOJ Civil Rights Division, by contrast, selectively picks a few dozen high-impact cases annually.\n\nWe are already experiencing a severe backlog of OCR cases: over 23,000 cases\u2014about half of which concern students with disabilities. In moving this mountain of cases to the DOJ Civil Rights Division, we can expect this backlog to get even worse. Thousands of legitimate complaints could end up buried, ignored, or summarily dismissed.\n\nWhat we are witnessing is nothing short of a deliberate effort to dismantle the programs that support students with disabilities and their families, particularly for those with nowhere else to turn.\n\nFamilies deserve a government that will defend students\u2019 rights, support disability programs, and strengthen public education for all. Instead, this regime continues to attack our nation\u2019s public education system and the tens of millions of families across our country that rely on it.\n\nToday, we are going to hear directly from education leaders, civil rights advocates, and parent advocates, about the implications related to these moves. I look forward to hearing more from my colleagues and today\u2019s panelists as we work to defend special education across our public schools.\n\n###", 1, "2026-08-06T07:37:31Z", "2026-08-06T07:38:34Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.hirono.senate.gov/news/press-releases/photos-and-video-hirono-holds-spotlight-forum-on-interagency-agreements-that-will-harm-students-with-disabilities"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.885767163708806, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}