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Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
A girl's death in Texas floods is her family's third loss this year. 3 mementos she left help her mom cope
The last time Lindsey McLeod McCrory saw her daughter Blakely alive, the young girl was heading to camp wearing a simple yet profound necklace – one that would later reconnect Blakely to her mother after she died. It was a green-and-white beaded Camp Mystic necklace – a tribute to the legendary Christian girls' camp in the foothills of Texas' Hill Country where Blakely was going. It's the same camp her mother and other women in the family had attended and forged lifelong memories. 'I gave this necklace to my daughter right before camp, and I advised her that if she didn't want to lose it – because she's 8 years old, and of course, they lose jewelry – I told her to wear it … during the whole time at camp,' McCrory told CNN on Friday. Blakely's new necklace served as a reminder of her mother's support at a time of immense loss. Blakely's father died from cancer in March. And just last month, she lost her uncle to illness. But Camp Mystic was a haven where Blakely's grief gave way to joy. 'She was so excited, and it came at such a good time since she lost her daddy,' McCrory said. 'It was a way for her to just heal with that sisterhood and her faith and just all of the fun activities.' Everything changed in the pre-dawn hours of July 4, when torrential rainfall and catastrophic flooding ripped through central Texas – claiming at least 135 lives, many near the Guadalupe River. At Camp Mystic, the cabins with the youngest campers were closest to the river. Blakely, along with 26 other Camp Mystic girls and counselors, perished in the deluge – forcing her family to endure yet another unfathomable tragedy. Despite the anguish, McCrory has found solace – thanks in part to letters that she received from Blakely after she died. Finding her tribe Even though Blakely was a new camper in a cabin full of strangers, she didn't seem nervous about going to camp. 'She loves the outdoors. She loves to fish, horseback ride,' her mother said. In a letter to her mother, Blakely said camp was 'amazing.' She was looking forward to playing tennis, going horseback riding and trying other sports, she wrote. The letter also said Blakely became a 'tonk' – something she had dreamed of. Every new girl at Camp Mystic draws a slip that tells them which 'tribe' they belong to – the Tonkawa or the Kiowa tribe. 'The tribe traditions, which have been handed down since Mystic's beginning' in 1926, 'help to emphasize team spirit, fun competition and good sportsmanship' during games, Camp Mystic's website says. 'After each game, the losing tribe commends the winning tribe who, in turn, compliments the losing tribe. Campers from opposite tribes pair up after each game and go up to Chapel Hill to pray.' Drawing a red slip meant the Tonkawa tribe. A blue slip signified the Kiowa tribe. Blakely 'wanted to be a Tonk really badly,' her mom said. 'Her two cousins are both Tonks. … So she wanted to be a Tonk so she could compete with her cousins' tribe.' The rituals instill 'sportsmanship and competition amongst the girls, which is so great for later on in life,' McCrory said. After Blakely drew a red slip, 'she was just ecstatic,' her mother said. In another letter, Blakely made an urgent request to her mother, who was getting ready to donate items because the family was preparing to move: 'PS. Please don't give my Barbie Dream house,' the 8-year-old scrawled on a colorful piece of paper. McCrory didn't receive those letters until after Blakely died. But the scribbled request forced a smile onto the grieving mother's face. 'It's just funny how a little girl's mind works. And that's why I laughed when I got the letter, because I could just hear her writing her thoughts down,' McCrory said. 'And it was just funny. … It was so Blakely.' 'I dropped the phone on the table, shaking' After sending Blakely off to camp, McCrory joined her sister and two nieces on a trip to Europe. It was the first such outing since the deaths of McCrory's husband, Blake, and her brother, Chanse McLeod – both within the last five months. When news trickled in overseas about some flooding at Camp Mystic, McCrory had no idea how bad it was. 'We were on a boat, and when we docked for lunch, we received some text messages' – including one reporting flooding at Camp Mystic. 'And so what popped in my mind – because we didn't have all of the full reports of the 30-foot surge – (was) that it was like the flood in 1987, when I was a camper.' Back then, 'you had to stay in your cabin for safety,' she said. 'They didn't want people walking in the mud and sliding around since there are so many hills. And they would bring food to us. And so that was what I first imagined it was.' McCrory then lost cell service and didn't receive a call from Camp Mystic. Eventually, she gained access to her voicemails and heard a horrid message: Blakely was missing. 'I just dropped the phone on the table, shaking,' she said. 'I was frozen when I heard that voicemail.' McCrory soon jumped on a plane back to Houston. At the same time, Blakely's half-brother and his mother scoured an evacuation center in Ingram, hoping to find Blakely. For two days, the family waited in anguish as crews trudged through thick mud and debris searching for victims and survivors. Then, on July 7, McCrory received the dreaded news: Blakely's body had been found. She was still wearing the Camp Mystic necklace her mom had given her – a piece of jewelry that helped identify her. Immense gratitude amid the grief For a widow who lost her husband, her only brother and her only daughter in just five months, McCrory is remarkably composed. She exudes an aura of calmness and even optimism. McCrory chalks it up to her faith, her family and her support network – all of which have ties to Camp Mystic. 'My faith is so strong. Actually, I was a camper at Camp Mystic, and I felt so close to my faith attending there as a camper,' she said. 'We had lovely devotionals on the waterfront where the Guadalupe River is, in the mornings, and then in the evenings, on Sundays, we went to Chapel Hill. And just the sisterhood, the faith – it just really brought me closer.' McCrory said she has learned how to cope after each tragedy and takes comfort in knowing her lost loved ones are together again. 'We lost my husband in March, and then my brother in June. So I think that prepared me for Blakely's loss,' she said. 'I'm coping very well. I have amazing love and support from people I know (and) from people I don't know. The mothers of the campers that were lost were on a group text, and were able to share stories and thoughts – and even funny moments.' As she prepared for Blakely's funeral Friday, McCrory wore the beaded necklace that she had given her daughter. 'My good friends from high school had it extended so that I could wear it, so I would have a touchstone close to my heart,' she said. She's also thankful for Blakely – and the fact that her final days were spent doing what she loved. 'She had the best time at camp. She went out on a happy note,' her mother said. And as the water started to rise, a counselor made a keen observation: 'Blakely was encouraging her cabinmates to not be afraid,' McCrory said. 'She was always a leader, encouraging others. So in my heart, I know it happened fast. And I'm just so grateful the life that she lived was so happy.'
Yomiuri Shimbun
07-07-2025
- General
- Yomiuri Shimbun
The Floods Have Devastated a Touchstone of Texas Culture: Summer Camp
For generations, the summer camps of the Texas Hill Country have been an oasis, a call to adventure, and a rite of passage for families from every corner of the state and beyond. They are so beloved that some parents reserve spots when their children are born. Roughly two dozen camps dot the landscape up and down the cooling Guadalupe River and its tributaries, where children have flocked each summer for more than a century to canoe and kayak, to swim and fish and learn archery, to reunite with old friends. 'Camp culture is something that people from all over the country come here for, because it's so beautiful, and it's so wonderful and unique,' Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said Saturday. 'It's tough. You send them there, but when you do it, that's part of growing up. You let them be independent.' But that idyll was shattered over the weekend. Roy began to cry as he spoke about Jane Ragsdale, the director of Heart O' the Hills, a girls camp, who died along with nearly three dozen others in raging floodwaters that swept through the area in the early hours of July Fourth. At least 27 girls attending Camp Mystic, another in the area, were still missing as of Saturday evening. Grief and destruction had replaced the tranquility of another summer under the Texas sun. A tradition forged over a hundred summers was threatened as well. 'We need to figure out how to protect it,' Roy said. Camp Mystic, which has been attended by the daughters of Lyndon B. Johnson and several Texas governors, as well as former first lady Laura Bush, has given many their first taste of freedom and space to forge an identity, said Claudia Sullivan, who attended the camp and later worked there. Sullivan, who has written four books about the camp experience, said she was inspired to pen the latest after attending a reunion of Mystic alumni a couple of years ago. The women were between the ages of 40 and 82, but their memories of camp had endured. 'A lot of what we learned at camp sustained us throughout our lives,' she said. Sullivan recalled a time when a friend who had attended Mystic was having a baby. The woman was in one of two groups – the Kiowas – that compete against each other at the all-girls camp. The husband announced the child's sex by saying: 'We had another little Kiowa.' Those warm memories contrasted sharply with the scene Saturday. At a reunification center in downtown Kerrville, volunteers in bright orange caps directed parents waiting for their daughters from Camp Waldemar into lines based on their cabin names: 'Swiss Chalet I and II,' 'Happy Heaven I' and 'Ranch House II.' Meanwhile, teenagers helped unload brightly colored camp trunks and black duffel bags with Waldemar logos from flatbed trailers. John-Louis Barton, 21, came to help on his day off as a camp counselor at Laity Lodge, in nearby Leakey. After camping there as a child for eight years, Barton was in his last of four years as a counselor. They'd trained for emergencies during the staff week before campers arrived at the start of the summer, he said, and that training paid off as floodwaters rose on Independence Day. 'We still had power, so we just did head counts and got everyone into one place, and watched movies,' he said. 'Most of camp is back to normal today, so I came in to help. Knowing that it could have just as easily happened to us – I'm grateful to be here. I hugged my mom, and that was a good feeling.' The first Hill Country camp opened more than 100 years ago in 1921, and others soon joined. Camp Mystic is set to celebrate its centennial next year. Young people escape hot cities such as Houston and Dallas for the higher and cooler elevations around the Guadalupe River. In the early days, they arrived by train and some traveled to camps by wagon. 'Don't wait until you are a man to be great, be a great boy,' reads the longtime motto of Camp Stewart for Boys, which sits on 500 acres along both banks of one mile of the Guadalupe River. 'A community where girls come to grow, challenge themselves, and discover their true potential' is how Heart O' the Hills, which has sat along the river for more than 70 years, describes its mission. The camps have meant a lot to the campers but are also an engine of the economy in Kerr County. 'Over and again a new resident will tell me they first heard of our area when they were a child and attended summer camp here,' local newspaper columnist Joe Herring Jr. wrote in a history of the camps. ''I fell in love with the place then,' they'll often say. 'And I knew one day I had to live here.'' Floods have been a threat throughout the history of the camps. In 1932, many camps were swamped by floods during the summer session, according to Herring's history. Structures were rebuilt above the flood line, but a deluge hit again in 1935, raising questions about whether it was safe to locate camps in the area. Sullivan said she helped evacuate campers from Mystic while working there during a flood in 1978. 'In 1978, I think we had a sense that we were safe. We knew we could move to higher ground,' she said. 'It was sort of exciting in a way and it wasn't terrifying. This was terrifying.' As Barton and others waited at the reunification center, three yellow school buses and a few white vans arrived. Waiting parents cheered as girls began to stream off the vehicles, clutching pillows, backpacks and bags. Barton said it was a bittersweet way to end his time at camp, a place that was incredibly meaningful to him as a child, just as it is to so many others. 'Camp meant the world to me as a kid. The highlight of my year was getting to be with those like-minded boys and counselors,' Barton said. 'It's kind of magical, sort of – you get to separate yourself from school and work, and reality, and just be out there.'
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
How Kids with Disabilities Will Be Impacted by Medicaid, Education Department Cuts
This article was originally published in The 19th News. This story was originally reported by Barbara Rodriguez and Nadra Nittle of The 19th. Jolene Baxter's daughter, Marlee, has overcome immense challenges in her first eight years of life. Marlee, who was born with a heart defect, has undergone four open-heart surgeries — suffering a stroke after the third. The stroke affected Marlee's cognitive abilities — she's in the second grade, but she cannot read yet. A mainstream class with neurotypical students felt overwhelming, so Marlee mostly attends classes with kids who also have disabilities. Her care includes physical, occupational and speech therapies. For years, Baxter has relied on Medicaid to cover Marlee's medical expenses while advocating for her daughter's right to an equal education. Medicaid — which covers therapies, surgeries and medication for Marlee — and disability protections under the Department of Education have been a critical safety net for Baxter, a single mom in Oklahoma City. Now Baxter fears that proposed cuts to Medicaid and those already underway at the Department of Education, which President Donald Trump has effectively gutted, will have a disastrous impact on her daughter. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter As the Trump administration overhauls federal agencies with budget cuts, layoffs and inexperienced leadership, parents of children with complex medical needs and disabilities told The 19th they are navigating uncertainty over how the federal government plans to maintain key pillars of their kids' lives. Baxter, who fostered and, later, adopted Marlee, fought to give her life-saving medical treatment when the child was an infant. Since Marlee was both an abandoned child and is Kiowa, the officials overseeing her welfare weren't invested in getting her the care she needed to survive, Baxter believes. Cuts to Medicaid would be yet another obstacle for the Baxters to overcome. Just getting Marlee enrolled in local public schools that tried to turn her away was a battle, Baxter said. Now, the mom is gravely concerned that her daughter will be left behind due to the restructuring of the Department of Education. 'I'll do everything I can at home, but she'll just fall through all the cracks, and she won't get the education that she deserves,' Baxter said. In March, Trump signed an executive order to close the Department of Education. The Republican-controlled Congress is also considering massive funding cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides health insurance to millions of low-income Americans and is a key safety net for Americans with disabilities. 'It is 50 plus years of work to get these protections for people with disabilities that we could potentially see — maybe not fully diminished — but very deeply eroded, in a very short period of time,' said Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy at The Arc, an organization that advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The Department of Education's primary duty has been to ensure that all students have equal access to education, and it is equipped with an Office for Civil Rights to investigate schools accused of discrimination. In March, the Department of Education cut nearly half of its staff, with workers who enforce students' civil rights hit particularly hard. Advocates worry how this could potentially impact students with disabilities, and a lawsuit filed in March began to paint a picture: Newly closed regional offices, frozen investigations and new alleged politically-based cases. The Trump administration claims that the nation's most vulnerable will be spared from his plans for federal downsizing. The White House has tentative plans to assign oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services. Conservative groups are calling for the Trump administration to refer civil rights complaints to the Department of Justice, an agency that has had an exodus of staff departures since Trump returned to office and changed its mission. Nicole Jorwic, chief program officer at Caring Across Generations, a national caregiver advocacy organization, said the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights receives about 20,000 complaints annually. She worries about the impact of staffing cuts on handling these complaints on the families of children with disabilities. 'Some of those staff were the ones who were looking into those complaints,' she said. It's not just OCR complaints, she added. When she was a practicing special education attorney, Jorwic turned to reports and guidance issued by the agency. That helped local school districts, superintendents and special educators know how to implement different laws or changes. 'The lack of that federal agency to provide that clarity is also important, as well as something that we're really worried about,' she said. Parents and advocates are doubtful that students with disabilities won't be impacted. Before the Department of Education was created in 1979, schools often denied these children a right to education with impunity. Dissolving it, families fear, could see a return to the period when states and schools failed to prioritize special education. Baxter's daughter, Marlee, is guaranteed the right to free and appropriate schooling by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975, which is enforced by the Department of Education. This federal law mandates that children like Marlee attend classes suited to their cognitive and physical abilities and that they get the services needed, such as speech, physical and occupational therapy, to attend school . Ninety-five percent of students with disabilities attend public schools, a higher share than the 90 percent of students overall who do — and that's largely because of the services federal policy requires public schools to provide. Kim Crawley, a mother to a teenager with medically complex needs, has a 25-year career as a special education teacher. As part of her training, she learned about the history of education, including how five decades ago, schools were not obligated to accommodate students' special needs. The agency never took power away from the states, she said, but stepped in to ensure that they educated all students equitably. 'We learn about this for a reason because we don't want to repeat it,' Crawley said. 'We don't want to have to start over again. To think of losing everything we have gained through the Department of Education over these years is scaring not only parents but teachers. Teachers are scared because we don't know where this is going to end up for those kids. And that's why we go to work every day.' Critics of closing the department and redirecting disabled children's needs to other agencies say that it will create a bureaucratic nightmare for parents. Instead of one federal agency overseeing research on students with disabilities, state funding for special education or discrimination claims, multiple departments would be involved. Families might not know which agency to reach out to with questions and concerns. As it is, families are sometimes unaware of the services legally available to them — a reality that has cost them time and energy in the past and could be even more complicated in the future. Baxter, for one, pulled Marlee out of class for two years to homeschool her after the child's kindergarten teacher retired and subsequent teachers did not know how to educate her properly, she said. It was not Baxter's first choice to homeschool Marlee, an option unavailable to most working parents, but one she made after multiple public schools said they could not accommodate her child. 'Our special needs are full,' Baxter said they told her. 'We don't have room for her.' When an acquaintance told her that public schools could not lawfully refuse to enroll Marlee, Baxter finally got a local public school to admit her. But after her ordeal last year, she has no faith that the federal government will hold schools that discriminate against children with disabilities accountable if the education department is disbanded. 'We have enough stuff to worry about [with] making sure that she gets taken care of as far as medical care,' Baxter said of parents like herself. 'We don't need to worry about what we're going to do as far as their education.' For some families, the potential Medicaid cuts could both unravel a child's well-being and their family's finances. In Philadelphia, Meghann Luczkowski has three kids with varying levels of specialized health care needs, including a 10-year-old son who spent his first year of life in a hospital intensive care unit. 'His ability to grow and thrive and be part of our family and part of this community is dependent upon significant health care support at home,' said the former special education teacher, who now works in public health. Luczkowski said her husband has robust health insurance for the family, but it does not cover a lot of her son's home-based medical needs — a reality for many families whose children are on Medicaid for care related to a disability. Private insurance never paid for his ventilator to breathe, or home health nurses that allow family caregivers to sleep at night. 'It doesn't pay for the nurse to go to school with him, to make sure that he can be at school, accessing his education with his peers,' she said. 'That's all been provided through Medicaid.' In the first months of his second term, Trump has mostly indicated support for Medicaid when asked about his budgetary plans for other popular programs like Social Security and Medicare. But the president has also said he supports cutting fraud and waste — a description that health policy experts warn could be used to defend more expansive cuts. Congress is considering hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts, a dollar figure that goes way beyond known cases of fraud. Among the considerations are work requirements and a cap on Medicaid enrollee spending. Such restrictions could have ripple effects on state education budgets and subsequent reductions in services for students with disabilities. Medicaid is one of the largest providers of funds to public school districts. It is the responsibility of school districts and states to find funding if Medicaid reimbursements are insufficient. Trump has not addressed general concerns about how such spending cuts could impact disabled children and adults. 'We know that before 1975 and the passage of IDEA, 50 percent of kids with disabilities were not educated at all. So we know that this is a crucial piece of legislation, and that mandate to find funding for these is really important,' said Linscott, who previously worked as a special education teacher in New York City. 'But we also recognize that school districts and state budgets are so limited, which is why we want Medicaid to be able to provide as robust funding and reimbursement as they possibly can for students and for these services.' Jorwic said federal funding for special education services is crucial, and local governments cannot make up for the lost funds. The federal government currently spends more than $15 billion annually on special education services, and Medicaid funding accounts for about $7.5 billion annually in school-based services. Jorwic said Medicaid cuts could also translate into higher taxes on a local or state level. This week, the Democratic Kansas governor said she had asked the state's congressional lawmakers not to cut Medicaid in large part because of the ramifications on services. 'There's no state, even the wealthiest states, that could afford cuts to those programs, either when it comes to education or when it comes to providing home and community-based services,' Jorwic said. Rachael Brown is the mom of a medically complex second grader in Washington, D.C., who receives special education services and multiple therapies at his public school. Brown's son, who has autism and cerebral palsy, has a rare vascular anomaly in his brain that has required multiple surgeries. He receives extensive support from Medicaid and IDEA, which are crucial for his care and education. Brown is concerned about how cuts to Medicaid would impact her son's care and her family's personal finances. She noted that pediatric hospitals are heavily reliant on Medicaid. If the rate of that reimbursement is cut, those hospitals' operational costs would be on the line — impacting everything from how many doctors and other health care providers are hired to what therapies are covered for her son. 'There's just a ripple effect for our whole community,' she said, adding: 'We are relatively privileged. There's a lot of families who aren't. It would be much worse for families for whom Medicaid is their only insurance.' Brown said she lives in fear and worry about what happens next, and it's exhausting. While she and other advocates have some experience fighting for health care rights given previous political battles, 'this time, everything feels a little more cruel.' On Wednesday, Luczkowski planned to travel to D.C. — taking a day off from work and rearranging child care needs — to advocate for Medicaid as part of a multi-organization advocacy day. She said parents of kids with medically complex needs and disabilities often aren't able to get out and advocate as much as they would like to, in part because of the needs of their families. 'Despite the fact that it's an incredible hardship on my family for me to be in D.C. talking to legislators and being at rallies on the Capitol steps, that's what me and a great number of families are doing — because our kids' lives depend on it,' she said. 'We're hopeful that our voices will be valued, and our children will be valued.'
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
‘She'll fall through the cracks': Parents of kids with disabilities brace for new reality
Jolene Baxter's daughter, Marlee, has overcome immense challenges in her first eight years of life. Marlee, who was born with a heart defect, has undergone four open-heart surgeries — suffering a stroke after the third. The stroke affected Marlee's cognitive abilities — she's in the second grade, but she cannot read yet. A mainstream class with neurotypical students felt overwhelming, so Marlee mostly attends classes with kids who also have disabilities. Her care includes physical, occupational and speech therapies. For years, Baxter has relied on Medicaid to cover Marlee's medical expenses while advocating for her daughter's right to an equal education. Medicaid — which covers therapies, surgeries and medication for Marlee — and disability protections under the Department of Education have been a critical safety net for Baxter, a single mom in Oklahoma City. Now Baxter fears that proposed cuts to Medicaid and those already underway at the Department of Education, which President Donald Trump has effectively gutted, will have a disastrous impact on her daughter. As the Trump administration overhauls federal agencies with budget cuts, layoffs and inexperienced leadership, parents of children with complex medical needs and disabilities told The 19th they are navigating uncertainty over how the federal government plans to maintain key pillars of their kids' lives. Baxter, who fostered and, later, adopted Marlee, fought to give her life-saving medical treatment when the child was an infant. Since Marlee was both an abandoned child and is Kiowa, the officials overseeing her welfare weren't invested in getting her the care she needed to survive, Baxter believes. Cuts to Medicaid would be yet another obstacle for the Baxters to overcome. Just getting Marlee enrolled in local public schools that tried to turn her away was a battle, Baxter said. Now, the mom is gravely concerned that her daughter will be left behind due to the restructuring of the Department of Education. 'I'll do everything I can at home, but she'll just fall through all the cracks, and she won't get the education that she deserves,' Baxter said. In March, Trump signed an executive order to close the Department of Education. The Republican-controlled Congress is also considering massive funding cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides health insurance to millions of low-income Americans and is a key safety net for Americans with disabilities. 'It is 50 plus years of work to get these protections for people with disabilities that we could potentially see — maybe not fully diminished — but very deeply eroded, in a very short period of time,' said Robyn Linscott, director of education and family policy at The Arc, an organization that advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The Department of Education's primary duty has been to ensure that all students have equal access to education, and it is equipped with an Office for Civil Rights to investigate schools accused of discrimination. In March, the Department of Education cut nearly half of its staff, with workers who enforce students' civil rights hit particularly hard. Advocates worry how this could potentially impact students with disabilities, and a lawsuit filed in March began to paint a picture: Newly closed regional offices, frozen investigations and new alleged politically-based cases. The Trump administration claims that the nation's most vulnerable will be spared from his plans for federal downsizing. The White House has tentative plans to assign oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services. Conservative groups are calling for the Trump administration to refer civil rights complaints to the Department of Justice, an agency that has had an exodus of staff departures since Trump returned to office and changed its mission. Nicole Jorwic, chief program officer at Caring Across Generations, a national caregiver advocacy organization, said the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights receives about 20,000 complaints annually. She worries about the impact of staffing cuts on handling these complaints on the families of children with disabilities. 'Some of those staff were the ones who were looking into those complaints,' she said. It's not just OCR complaints, she added. When she was a practicing special education attorney, Jorwic turned to reports and guidance issued by the agency. That helped local school districts, superintendents and special educators know how to implement different laws or changes. 'The lack of that federal agency to provide that clarity is also important, as well as something that we're really worried about,' she said. Parents and advocates are doubtful that students with disabilities won't be impacted. Before the Department of Education was created in 1979, schools often denied these children a right to education with impunity. Dissolving it, families fear, could see a return to the period when states and schools failed to prioritize special education. Baxter's daughter, Marlee, is guaranteed the right to free and appropriate schooling by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1975, which is enforced by the Department of Education. This federal law mandates that children like Marlee attend classes suited to their cognitive and physical abilities and that they get the services needed, such as speech, physical and occupational therapy, to attend school . Ninety-five percent of students with disabilities attend public schools, a higher share than the 90 percent of students overall who do — and that's largely because of the services federal policy requires public schools to provide. Kim Crawley, a mother to a teenager with medically complex needs, has a 25-year career as a special education teacher. As part of her training, she learned about the history of education, including how five decades ago, schools were not obligated to accommodate students' special needs. The agency never took power away from the states, she said, but stepped in to ensure that they educated all students equitably. 'We learn about this for a reason because we don't want to repeat it,' Crawley said. 'We don't want to have to start over again. To think of losing everything we have gained through the Department of Education over these years is scaring not only parents but teachers. Teachers are scared because we don't know where this is going to end up for those kids. And that's why we go to work every day.' Critics of closing the department and redirecting disabled children's needs to other agencies say that it will create a bureaucratic nightmare for parents. Instead of one federal agency overseeing research on students with disabilities, state funding for special education or discrimination claims, multiple departments would be involved. Families might not know which agency to reach out to with questions and concerns. As it is, families are sometimes unaware of the services legally available to them — a reality that has cost them time and energy in the past and could be even more complicated in the future. Baxter, for one, pulled Marlee out of class for two years to homeschool her after the child's kindergarten teacher retired and subsequent teachers did not know how to educate her properly, she said. It was not Baxter's first choice to homeschool Marlee, an option unavailable to most working parents, but one she made after multiple public schools said they could not accommodate her child. 'Our special needs are full,' Baxter said they told her. 'We don't have room for her.' When an acquaintance told her that public schools could not lawfully refuse to enroll Marlee, Baxter finally got a local public school to admit her. But after her ordeal last year, she has no faith that the federal government will hold schools that discriminate against children with disabilities accountable if the education department is disbanded. 'We have enough stuff to worry about [with] making sure that she gets taken care of as far as medical care,' Baxter said of parents like herself. 'We don't need to worry about what we're going to do as far as their education.' For some families, the potential Medicaid cuts could both unravel a child's well-being and their family's finances. In Philadelphia, Meghann Luczkowski has three kids with varying levels of specialized health care needs, including a 10-year-old son who spent his first year of life in a hospital intensive care unit. 'His ability to grow and thrive and be part of our family and part of this community is dependent upon significant health care support at home,' said the former special education teacher, who now works in public health. Luczkowski said her husband has robust health insurance for the family, but it does not cover a lot of her son's home-based medical needs — a reality for many families whose children are on Medicaid for care related to a disability. Private insurance never paid for his ventilator to breathe, or home health nurses that allow family caregivers to sleep at night. 'It doesn't pay for the nurse to go to school with him, to make sure that he can be at school, accessing his education with his peers,' she said. 'That's all been provided through Medicaid.' In the first months of his second term, Trump has mostly indicated support for Medicaid when asked about his budgetary plans for other popular programs like Social Security and Medicare. But the president has also said he supports cutting fraud and waste — a description that health policy experts warn could be used to defend more expansive cuts. Congress is considering hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts, a dollar figure that goes way beyond known cases of fraud. Among the considerations are work requirements and a cap on Medicaid enrollee spending. Such restrictions could have ripple effects on state education budgets and subsequent reductions in services for students with disabilities. Medicaid is one of the largest providers of funds to public school districts. It is the responsibility of school districts and states to find funding if Medicaid reimbursements are insufficient. Trump has not addressed general concerns about how such spending cuts could impact disabled children and adults. 'We know that before 1975 and the passage of IDEA, 50 percent of kids with disabilities were not educated at all. So we know that this is a crucial piece of legislation, and that mandate to find funding for these is really important,' said Linscott, who previously worked as a special education teacher in New York City. 'But we also recognize that school districts and state budgets are so limited, which is why we want Medicaid to be able to provide as robust funding and reimbursement as they possibly can for students and for these services.' Jorwic said federal funding for special education services is crucial, and local governments cannot make up for the lost funds. The federal government currently spends more than $15 billion annually on special education services, and Medicaid funding accounts for about $7.5 billion annually in school-based services. Jorwic said Medicaid cuts could also translate into higher taxes on a local or state level. This week, the Democratic Kansas governor said she had asked the state's congressional lawmakers not to cut Medicaid in large part because of the ramifications on services. 'There's no state, even the wealthiest states, that could afford cuts to those programs, either when it comes to education or when it comes to providing home and community-based services,' Jorwic said. Rachael Brown is the mom of a medically complex second grader in Washington, D.C., who receives special education services and multiple therapies at his public school. Brown's son, who has autism and cerebral palsy, has a rare vascular anomaly in his brain that has required multiple surgeries. He receives extensive support from Medicaid and IDEA, which are crucial for his care and education. Brown is concerned about how cuts to Medicaid would impact her son's care and her family's personal finances. She noted that pediatric hospitals are heavily reliant on Medicaid. If the rate of that reimbursement is cut, those hospitals' operational costs would be on the line — impacting everything from how many doctors and other health care providers are hired to what therapies are covered for her son. 'There's just a ripple effect for our whole community,' she said, adding: 'We are relatively privileged. There's a lot of families who aren't. It would be much worse for families for whom Medicaid is their only insurance.' Brown said she lives in fear and worry about what happens next, and it's exhausting. While she and other advocates have some experience fighting for health care rights given previous political battles, 'this time, everything feels a little more cruel.' On Wednesday, Luczkowski planned to travel to D.C. — taking a day off from work and rearranging child care needs — to advocate for Medicaid as part of a multi-organization advocacy day. She said parents of kids with medically complex needs and disabilities often aren't able to get out and advocate as much as they would like to, in part because of the needs of their families. 'Despite the fact that it's an incredible hardship on my family for me to be in D.C. talking to legislators and being at rallies on the Capitol steps, that's what me and a great number of families are doing — because our kids' lives depend on it,' she said. 'We're hopeful that our voices will be valued, and our children will be valued.' The post 'She'll fall through the cracks': Parents of kids with disabilities brace for new reality appeared first on The 19th. News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday. Subscribe to our free, daily newsletter.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Military Matters: The History of Fort Sill
FORT SILL (KFDX/KJTL) — If you look at Fort Sill today, you'll see a modern military installation training the future of American artillery. But buildings at the fort's center remind us of its storied past through the mid-1800s. The old section of the fort is now a historic landmark under the watch of curator Noelle Scarfone. 'Our first mission as a fort was to keep the peace in the area, with the Kiowa and Comanche, with settlers passing through,' Scarfone said. 'And then our mission switched to keeping outsiders out of the reservation area.' From its establishment in the 1860s, Fort Sill was active through the American Civil War, the Indian Wars, and beyond. Many forts in the American West fell into disrepair over time, but not Fort Sill. 'Because we have the field artillery school that was here, we have been in continual use since our establishment. So that makes us unique,' Scarfone said. As the fort remained active, it maintained its old buildings. As the fort's mission changed over time, the fort's buildings also adapted. 'In fact, the visitors center was the office for the Apache prisoners of war. And then in addition to that, they served as storehouses and different things,' Scarfone said. 'So basically, they were just repurposed.' From I-44, which bisects the fort, the only visible part of the old quadrangle is the stables. Further up the hill, however, is the rest of the idyllic quadrangle with a flagpole at the center. 'We come back over here to the housing, all along the east side and north side of the Old Post quadrangle is housing. It was officers' housing back then, and it still is today,' Scarfone said. Throughout much of the fort's history, it has been home to American soldiers from all walks of life. The barracks of Buffalo soldiers from the 9th and 10th cavalry are still preserved. Many Native American soldiers served as well, like I-See-O of the Kiowa tribe. The fort continues to house a veritable melting pot of soldiers to this day. 'We get soldiers here from all over the country, from all ethnicities, religious backgrounds, and they all come together for one purpose, which is to serve our country,' Scarfone said. As time passes, Fort Sill will continue to be a window into America's past and future. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
