Philly schools owe some students with disabilities COVID make-up services. Here’s how to ask for them.

The Philadelphia School District was ordered by the state to offer compensatory services to students with disabilities — more than 20,000 children in all — if they experienced educational losses during COVID-19 school closures.

But Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Special Education found that in only about 8% of eligible students’ cases did the district meet with parents, a required part of the process. Instead, the district generally made determinations of student eligibility — denying most students services — without the meeting, a violation of state orders.

Officials with the Education Law Center, the nonprofit that initially filed a complaint with the state over the matter, said it’s not too late for parents whose child has an Individualized Education Plan or a Section 504 plan to request meetings with their child’s school, and possibly get makeup services for them.

“Particularly in Philly, there is a lot of need that hasn’t been addressed to ensure that students with disabilities receive compensatory education for that period,” said Margie Wakelin, an Education Law Center lawyer. Though learning interruptions were difficult for many students, many Philadelphia children’s needs are compounded by experiencing deep poverty, having contact with the foster care system, or learning English.

After the pandemic shut schools down in March 2020, Philadelphia students were virtual for the rest of the 2019-20 school year and most of the 2020-21 school year, though some students with disabilities returned for part of that term.

Both federal and state education officials have since ruled that districts were responsible for providing makeup services to students denied their right to a free, appropriate public education.

In October 2022, district administrators who met with officials from the Education Law Center and other advocates said they had already provided COVID compensatory services.

“The advocates that work with families, the parents themselves said, ‘Wait, no one knows this has happened,’” Wakelin said. “And actually, it didn’t really happen.”

The Education Law Center then filed a complaint with the state’s special education bureau alleging the district failed to meet its obligations. After investigating, state officials agreed, and ordered the district to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether students deserved compensatory services. Those determinations were to have been made by school-based teams, including parents.

Pennsylvania education department officials originally said all determinations should be made by September 2023, then extended the deadline until last month.

In January, some families began receiving Notices of Recommended Educational Placement letters, formal notices that told them a team had met to determine whether their child was eligible for COVID compensatory services. In most cases, the letters said no makeup services were owed.

But those hearings, if held, were invalid, Wakelin said; any hearing must include parents.

In a Feb. 23 report, the state flagged the district for a lack of adequate progress.

Of 50 randomly selected student files the state officials reviewed, 88% show the district had made determinations for whether the services were owed, but for most of those cases, the required meeting was not held. Only four of the 50 students reviewed were offered any compensatory education at all.

State officials said the district needed to fix its violations by April 5.

“We know that students with disabilities are not receiving their entitlement to a free appropriate public education,” said Wakelin.

Marissa Orbanek, a district spokesperson, said the school system “is working to remediate educational learning loss attributed to the COVID-related in-person learning closures for students with disabilities amidst a national shortage of qualified special education teachers and related service providers.”

Orbanek said the district has “submitted the required verifications” to the state education department and noted that the new chief of special education and diverse learners, Nathalie Nérée, helped resolve longtime special education compliance issues in a similar role in Chicago public schools.

“Under new leadership, the School District of Philadelphia is looking forward to building transparent, collaborative and positive relationships with our families, community partners and advocacy groups as we reimagine special education for students in Philadelphia,” Orbanek said in a statement. “We will continue to engage with our families and students to make sure that we are both addressing their current needs and providing students with access to the resources needed to accelerate their growth as we build back from COVID learning losses.”

School was tough for Yolanda Workman’s grandson during the pandemic. The boy, who was in first grade when the pandemic began, is now in fifth grade at Emlen Elementary in East Mount Airy. He has ADHD and receives special-education services.

“It was hard, because he really couldn’t sit still,” said Workman. “He could have done a lot better if he was in person; he should be doing better by now.”

Workman and her daughter did attend a meeting for COVID compensatory services for the boy, but they weren’t permitted to speak during the conference, she said.

Then they got a letter saying the child was not eligible for any services and that he was doing much better in reading and writing, despite Workman’s strong feelings that he needs help in both reading and math.

Officials asked the boy’s family to sign the letter; Workman declined.

“I said we’re not signing anything,” Workman said. “I want to do some research.”

She read about compensatory services being offered in places like Pittsburgh, and she reached out to the Education Law Center.

Once Workman told school officials she was contacting a lawyer, they quickly said the boy was eligible for 75 hours of compensatory education, but there’s been no word exactly which services he will receive, or when they’re supposed to start.

Colleen Gibbons-Brown, a special education teacher at Strawberry Mansion High School, has a number of students whose families have received letters saying they were not eligible for compensatory services, and “it would be hard to argue that COVID either did not cause regression for them or significantly impact their progress. And decisions were made for them without team input.”

Her understanding is that those determinations were made by case managers who don’t work at Strawberry Mansion or know the students.

“It feels like it was done in a very rushed, haphazard way,” said Gibbons-Brown.

Even those parents who got letters saying their children are eligible are confused.

“It’s not really clear how you can use the services, and for what, and I can’t help,” said Gibbons-Brown.

Gibbons-Brown teaches English, and she’s seeing long-term effects from the learning loss incurred during the pandemic. Struggling readers now may have real phonics decoding deficits, GIbbons-Brown said, and the high school model doesn’t allow for a lot of remediation.

“Now you’ve got a kid in on a first- or second-grade reading level, and when a teacher of 25 kids is giving them a text in science, it’s completely inaccessible for that kid,” said Gibbons-Brown. “There’s a ripple effect from COVID. What people might not realize is we might be a few years out from the pandemic, but if it was hard for a general ed student with no disabilities to bounce back from that, take that and multiply it by 1,000 for a lot of students with disabilities. This is affecting life skills, this is affecting functional literacy. The accountability for the district to do this in the right way is just incredibly important.”

If you’re the parent or guardian of a district student with disabilities — either with an IEP or 504 — the school system must invite you to a meeting to examine data and determine whether the child is owed makeup services.

Parents can contact their child’s school or the Education Law Center’s helpline at 267-541-3471, Wakelin said.

If the school system determines your child is not eligible for compensatory services, it’s required to provide written notice of the denial. Parents can accept that determination, or dispute it.