I remember the first time I felt like I couldn’t control my own body. I was in preschool, receiving adaptive physical education for the first time in East Los Angeles with my very own, one-on-one P.E teacher. He was teaching me how to walk, sternly saying “heel-toe, heel-toe” and applying pressure on the corresponding body parts. 

I was frustrated and confused. I knew what my heel was, I knew what my toe was. Why wasn’t anything working? Why was this man touching me, and why was he so annoyed? Didn’t he understand how hard this was for me? 

That day marked the beginning of my awareness that something was “wrong” with me, that needed to be corrected. I later learned that what I struggled with had a name: cerebral palsy.

Without that overworked P.E. teacher, whom I loathed seeing each session, I would not be able to walk properly today. Without the therapists who came after him, I would never have learned how to throw and catch a ball, how to skip, how to run in a straight line, and, most importantly, I wouldn’t have learned how to fall and get back up. 

These adaptive P.E. teachers and other occupational therapists, however imperfect, were a lifeline. They were provided to me through individualized education programs covered by a special education law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA mandates that disabled students be included in public schools and receive a free and appropriate education. It ensures that disabled students have the support to help them thrive and reach their full potential. 

Advertisement

Now, half a century since the IDEA Act was passed, the future of its programs and of special education as a whole are unclear. The Trump administration is working to dismantle the Department of Education and move IDEA to the Department of Health and Human Services, which lacks experience protecting the civil rights of students with disabilities. President Trump’s actions have already led to a nationwide collapse in resolutions for disability rights cases.

According to reporting by NPR last month, the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which handles cases of........

© Time