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Valeria Orozco is the Co-Director of Education Policy at the Greater Good Initiative. She is an incoming freshman at UNC Chapel Hill studying Global Studies and Philosophy.

Catherine Kane is the Co-Director of Education Policy at the Greater Good Initiative. She is currently a junior at Falls Church HS in Northern Virginia.

The education sector was one of the original three policy sectors created with the founding of the Greater Good Initiative (GGI) in April 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. was forced to experiment with distanced learning. As GGI is composed of high school and college students, we saw how disruptive the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have been on education firsthand. Since the creation of the education sector, we have moved beyond simply addressing education during the pandemic. We center our work around the ideals of equal access to education, safety in schools, addressing the effects of COVID-19, and increasing student representation in education policymaking. 

One of the goals of the education team is to make learning fair and accessible for all students, regardless of their circumstances. The initial development of the Advisory Committee Representation Enhancement (ACRE) Act came from team discussions about how COVID-19 has affected special education programs. Our research then progressed to Individualized Education Plans and the process of how students, parents, and teachers work together to address accommodations for students. From the beginning, we talked to a Virginia special education student who is involved with special education issues in her county. We identified a major issue: students with disabilities do not have proper representation in local education matters. After months of research and coordination, the ACRE Act was published on February 22, 2021. 

In 1975, Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA). The landmark bill required public schools to provide educational accommodations to students with disabilities. IDEA established laws around Individual Education Plans (IEPs), the essential document that lays out students’ learning needs and goals for students who require accommodations.  IEPs are used by over 7.1 million students across the United States. Additionally, IDEA sets guidelines on how states should oversee special education programs and comply with its rules. Every state must have a board that advises its state’s department of education on special education matters. These boards are made of teachers, parents, disability activists, youth advocates, and district officials. Similarly, many states require that every school district has a committee that guides the school board on special education matters.

In Virginia, for example, every school district is required to have a special education school board committee known as the Local Special Education Advisory Committees (LSEACs). The goal of LSEACs local level is to gain insight from the community and stakeholders on what potential problems are happening in schools relating to IEP implementation and special education services and then relay that information to the board they serve. 

The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) has minimal requirements for the membership of the committees: school boards have a significant amount of discretion concerning the membership of their LSEAC. The Virginia Administrative Code requires that LSEAC boards are made up of parents of students with disabilities, adults with disabilities, disability advocates from community organizations, a teacher, and a school board member. Through preliminary research, a significant gap was identified in the membership requirements that strongly contradicted the mission of these advisory committees: students with disabilities were not required to be members. The very people that these committees were designed to be of service to had no seat at the table — no invitation to discuss how their IEPs are working for them, how the school is aiding them in their studies, what the school is lacking, or even how to bring suggestions and ideas for implementation. 

The Greater Good Initiative created a proposal to address this problem, the Advisory Committee Representation Enhancement (ACRE) Act. ACRE is a policy designed for Virginia to mandate Local Special Education Advisory Committees include a student member of the committee. The policy proposal outlines the disparities and educational gaps between students with disabilities and students without and how student membership in SEACs has positively impacted local and state graduation rates across the nation. 

Some Virginia school districts already include student representatives in their LSEACs. Hence, the proposal creates a blanket policy across the state. By using the language of “require'' rather than “recommend,” the proposed policy is advocating for students in every county of the state. ACRE proposes only requiring “a student” in these committees since any fixed number could potentially throw off voting rules set by individual committee bylaws. For example, a county that currently has five voting members will have an even number of six by adding a student, creating the potential for an even split on an issue; this county would have the flexibility to potentially add two students rather than one. Additionally, a single student member can be turned into a “token representative” that cannot represent the diversity of experiences and needs in special education. The proposed policy allows for flexibility while ensuring that students with disabilities’ voices are being heard. 

To effectively advocate for ACRE, the education advocacy team needs to reach state elected officials and find Virginia state senators and assembly members willing to introduce this policy. In odd-numbered years such as 2021, the Virginia General Assembly is only in session for 30 days, beginning on the second Wednesday in January. This proved to be a problem in ACRE advocacy, as ACRE released in February after the Virginia Legislature was out of session for the year. In our advocacy efforts, we continue to email elected officials in the hopes that we will find someone willing to introduce ACRE as policy for the next session. In 2021, we also have the unique opportunity to advocate for endorsements by Virginia gubernatorial candidates, an endeavor we hope to begin in the next few weeks. Our hope is that bringing attention to ACRE through public endorsements from high-profile Virginia politicians will help give the policy leverage in the next session of the General Assembly. 

The education team at GGI is working to broaden access to education and unique opportunities in educational settings. ACRE is an incredible policy working to further those goals and something the education advocacy team is proud to fight for.