Lauren Wagner for The 74

For decades, the Feds were the last, best hope for special ed kids. What happens now?

Last December, after a year and a half of blind alleys, impenetrable paperwork and bureaucratic stonewalling, it seemed like the complaints Sierra Rios had filed against her fifth-grader’s elementary school were finally getting a proper investigation. A lawyer in the Dallas office of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights was asking hard questions of the school where Rios said her daughter, Nevaeh, was repeatedly denied special education services.

But then, a few weeks into the probe, the San Antonio mother got a bounce-back email informing her that the attorney working on her case was no longer employed by the agency. As part of its plan to shutter the depa

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