SAN ANTONIO, Texas — As a little kid, Sophia Munson loved to perform. She would often steal her mother’s high heels and dance around the living room like it was a stage, singing Spice Girls songs into whatever nearby object resembled a microphone.

She was always filming silly videos with her older brother, riding her bike or goofing around with her friends. She was also an avid swimmer and dreamed of becoming a star cheerleader in high school.

That was before Memorial Day weekend in 2019, when Sophia suffered a stroke and traumatic brain injury in a car accident. Now, the 16-year-old is confined to her wheelchair. Her visits to the pool are reserved for recreational therapy.

High school is not at all what she’d dreamed it would be. Sophia spends most of her time in an Alternative Learning Environment, or ALE, classroom, where students with cognitive deficits receive specialized instruction to learn communication, self-help and social skills, and motor development.

“She has short-term memory loss, so she will remember things for a little bit. But unfortunately, with education, she’s not learning much anymore,” said Sophia’s mother, Jackie Martinez-Munson. “What I send her to school for is the social skills, to be with her friends and to keep doing therapies.”

Sophia was one of nearly 765,000 Texas students who received special education services last year, according to state data. That total, a record high, marks a 32% increase in the number of public school students with disabilities since before the 2020 start of the pandemic.

School officials say parents’ heightened awareness, improved testing procedures and pandemic-era learning losses have contributed to the spike in students requiring specialized instruction. So has a new law that puts the state’s swelling dyslexic population under the vast umbrella of special education, in addition to changes in state rules and regulations.

In San Antonio, public schools are struggling to meet the rising demand for special education amid an ongoing staffing shortage and stagnant state funding. Unable to hire enough special education teachers, paraprofessionals, school psychologists and speech pathologists, districts have had to rely on costly contracts with third-party agencies to fill vacancies — even as they grapple with record budget deficits.

An exodus of special educators has exacerbated the problem, leaving remaining employees with bigger caseloads and undermining the consistency high-need students often require in the classroom — such as interacting with the same teacher at the same time of day.

Understaffed and overwhelmed with requests for evaluations, school officials say they need more money to do their jobs right.

“My biggest concern is that we won’t see funding changes on the forefront with legislation because the services are becoming more complex and we are seeing more kids,” said Albrey Hogan, assistant superintendent of special programs at Southwest Independent School District.

Record number of students

Northside ISD, San Antonio’s largest school district with over 100,000 students, served 13,851 students with disabilities during the 2019-2020 school year. Now, more than 17,000 students require specialized instruction, said Veronica Mechler, the district’s special education director.

“We’ve seen an increase in students with emotional disabilities, autism, learning disabilities,” she said. “It’s been a huge jump, and it’s across the board.”

Northside isn’t the only district hit by the surge. The number of students qualifying for special education services has increased since the pandemic at every Bexar County school district, from San Antonio’s urban core to the growing, more affluent suburbs.

Mechler, an educator for more than two decades, said parents have become better informed on what to look for in their children, and there’s less of a stigma around having them tested for a disability.

Then there’s House Bill 3928, a 2023 state law that requires school districts to develop specially designed instruction plans for students with dyslexia, a learning disability characterized by a difficulty reading, writing and spelling. Last year, students with dyslexia and other intellectual disabilities made up nearly 43% of Northside’s special education population.

Still, it’s not just dyslexic students filling up ALE classrooms. From 2019 to 2024, Northside saw a 27% increase in students diagnosed with autism. The district is also identifying more students with a dual diagnosis of an intellectual disability and a mental disorder, such as autism and ADHD.

The district’s goal is for special education students to learn in the least restrictive environment possible, Mechler said. For eight-year-old Luka Martinez-Alvarez, one of more than 2,600 Northside students with autism, that means splitting the school day between an ALE classroom and a general education classroom, where he is taught alongside traditional learners.

“We are trying to push for him to spend more time in general education,” said Luka’s mother, Victoria Martinez. “We think his learning is hindered a little bit in ALE because of the unpredictability of behaviors in that class by other kids.”

Surrounded by nine students, two aides and one teacher in his ALE classroom, Luka confidently calls out answers, plays with multi-sensory learning tools and engages in class activities, like learning how to shape letters with Play-Doh. But the Elrod Elementary School student is also hyper-aware of his peers and can be derailed by their outbursts.

Luka thrives on routine, from eating the same foods every day to going to bed by 6:45 p.m. every night. When class is disrupted by other students having “meltdowns, screaming, kicking, throwing themselves on the floor,” Martinez said he becomes anxious and unable to focus on learning.

Martinez knew early on that there was something different about Luka. He still hadn’t spoken by 18 months, and one of his favorite activities was meticulously organizing his toys as if they were puzzle pieces.

When he was two, Luka began speech therapy because he still wasn’t talking. At three, he was evaluated by Northside ISD administrators, who said he showed signs of autism and qualified for the district’s early-childhood special education program.

Luka spoke his first words shortly after beginning school, at three and a half years old. He was officially diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 1 when he was four.

“He’s been in school ever since,” Martinez said. “We’re the biggest proponents of public special education because we’ve seen the growth, the maturity and the progress.”

Texas law requires an Admission, Review and Dismissal, or ARD, committee to meet yearly to determine a student’s special education needs and services. In Luka’s annual ARD meetings, Martinez and her husband, a former special education teacher, have continued to push for the second grader to spend more time in a general education setting for the academic and social benefits.

“We support him 110%, but it’s also a fine line where we want him to be as independent as possible,” Martinez said. “We have to remind ourselves that it’s okay for him to struggle a little bit. Just because he’s autistic doesn’t mean he doesn’t have goals and expectations that he has to meet.”

Luka spends most of the day in a classroom led by a general education teacher who’s assisted by a special education teacher or aide as part of his individualized education program, or IEP.

On a Tuesday in December, Luka sat cross-legged on the carpet as teacher Brianna Farias read aloud “Mooseltoe,” a story about a moose eagerly preparing for Christmas. Farias paused occasionally to quiz her students on the plot. At one point, she turned to Luka and asked what the main character had forgotten on Christmas Day.

“Don’t answer for him,” Farias said, shushing the students’ whispers. “He can do it.”

Luka paused before exclaiming, “He forgot a Christmas tree!”

A teacher for over a decade, Farias said having special education students in her general education classroom has taught her how to adapt instruction to meet an individual student’s needs. She said Luka has shown significant growth this school year, from being more confident in his interactions with classmates to keeping up with grade-level coursework.

“It not only provides the special education student with social skills and the ability to be part of the classroom and to receive grade level content, but it’s also really beneficial to other students to develop more understanding and empathy,” Farias said.

Pandemic’s lingering impact

At Wood Middle School, special education staff rotate between two groups of students within one ALE classroom. On one side of the bookshelves-turned-dividers are higher-functioning students. On the other, nonverbal students and those with behavioral challenges focus on meeting goals in their IEPs.

Seventh grader Jeremy Herrera is in the first group. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the 13-year-old leaves the Wood Middle School classroom to bring coffee and breakfast orders to staff, occasionally disappearing between deliveries to chat with friends.

Jeremy has Williams syndrome, described by the Cleveland Clinic as a rare genetic condition that causes distinct physical features, delayed development and cognitive challenges. The North East ISD student has a different definition. Having Williams Syndrome means “being funny and full of love,” he says.

Jeremy, described by friends and teachers as a social butterfly, often sits in on general education electives with a paraprofessional and tells jokes to the rest of the class. In the fall, he spent every afternoon on the sidelines of the football field, cheering on his peers as the seventh-grade team’s manager. In the winter, he achieved his goal of joining the school’s basketball program.

The pandemic, and the isolation it spawned, was a challenge for Jeremy. Living with his father, stepmother and seven siblings while his mother worked in medical facilities, Jeremy missed wandering the halls, talking face-to-face with classmates and his teachers. Sometimes, he would say he was on break and play in his room when his virtual class was still in session.

“I love school,” Jeremy said, sitting at the dinner table at home. “Kids who are special just need a little bit of support and help.”

Disruptions to classroom learning during the pandemic led to setbacks for most students, but especially those with disabilities, said Hogan, who oversees Southwest ISD’s special programs.

Hogan said remote learning didn’t work for special education students who require personalized instruction. It was even worse for nonverbal students with physical disabilities and behavioral concerns. In those cases, online instruction “is really no instruction,” Hogan said.

Students who lost access to in-person instruction and related services, including occupational, physical and speech therapies, showed a loss of academic, physical and social skills when transitioning back to school. Hogan said the regression forced school systems to go into “triage mode” and redesign programming to reverse students’ learning losses.

Under federal law, school districts must conduct an initial evaluation when a student is suspected of having a disability within 45 days of receiving written consent from a parent or guardian. Since the pandemic, school districts across San Antonio have seen an increase in such requests — and they’re struggling to keep up.

Southwest ISD conducted 572 initial special education evaluations last year, a 19% increase since the 2019-2020 school year, according to data obtained by the San Antonio Express-News through public records requests.

Hogan said administrators must determine whether a student shows signs of a disability or is just struggling to re-acclimate to the classroom post-COVID. She said the evaluation process has changed to account for the fact that children were isolated for months.

For example, evaluators no longer flag a lack of eye contact as a sign of autism since most students returned from the pandemic with poor social skills.

She said Southwest ISD has denied many referrals for special education to give students time to adjust. Since the 2019-2020 school year, 222 Southwest ISD students have been evaluated and found ineligible for special education services.

“Some of the kids that came into our district from a district that moved very quickly to evaluate them early on coming back from the pandemic, we retested and saw that they really don’t qualify for services,” Hogan said.

‘Lack of funding’

Texas schools receive $6,160 per student attending school as a basic allotment. For special education students, the state uses a different formula that bases funding on how much time a student spends in a special education setting.

Disability advocates have long argued that the settings-based funding model, which has existed for more than 30 years, is outdated and must be modified to account for students with significant disabilities who require additional support at school.

Such is the case for Sophia Munson, who was 10 when her family crashed while driving home from a vacation in Corpus Christi. Sitting in the backseat beside her older brother, Sophia suffered the worst of the injuries, including a shattered eye socket, nose and jaw, and a brain stroke. She was in a medically induced coma for three weeks and remained in the hospital for over 100 days.

When Sophia was released, doctors warned that she would never eat, drink or walk again, her mother said. Two years later, on Christmas Eve in 2021, Sophia said her first word since the crash: “Mom.”

Now, she speaks in full sentences with the same sass, silliness and sarcastic sense of humor she exhibited as a child. In 2023, she fulfilled her dream of dancing with her dad at her Quinceañera and was crowned the Especial Fiesta queen during San Antonio’s annual Fiesta celebration.

“I’m proving (the doctors) wrong,” the teenager said.

Therapies are key for Sophia, who has continued to make physical progress, including eating by mouth and standing up from her wheelchair. Every week, she receives 70 hours of nursing, 30 hours of respite care and 30 hours of personal care.

“Any extra help we can get through school is helpful,” said Martinez-Munson, Sophia’s mother.

Now a sophomore at Madison High School, Sophia attends school three half-days per week. On campus, she receives physical, occupational and speech therapies, vision therapy and adapted physical education for students with disabilities.

For students with significant disabilities such as Sophia, school districts must hire registered nurses to administer medication, do feedings and change diapers. In her case, North East ISD also had to install new doors at her elementary and high school to accommodate Sophia’s wheelchair.

“When they have all of those services, it could be triple the cost of what the state actually allots per student, and that money has to come from somewhere else,” said Lisa Franke, San Antonio ISD’s executive director of disability services.

San Antonio ISD received just under $11 million in special education funding this year, a $150,000 decrease from the year before, Franke said.

State data shows the inner-city district went from serving just under 6,000 students with disabilities in 2019-2020 to 7,276 last year, a 23% increase. During that time, initial evaluations for special education increased over 150%, more than any other local school district.

Texas doesn’t provide funding for districts to evaluate students, which costs approximately $1,500 per student, according to a report by the Texas Commission on Special Education Funding.

The Texas Education Agency estimates that the state faces a $1.7 billion gap in special education funding.

While lawmakers push to change the enrollment-based special education funding model, some education experts say the passage of a private school voucher program could make matters worse. As public funding is diverted to private schools that are not legally obligated to accept students with disabilities, many of those students could remain in public schools, their percentage of the population growing — but without state funding to match the increase.

It doesn’t help that Texas school districts stand to lose an estimated $300 million a year in federal special education funding under the school Medicaid program, which reimburses school districts for medical-related tasks, including helping a student with disabilities use the restroom, move between classrooms and take medications.

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission tweaked the program last year, narrowing the definition of expense-eligible medical interventions and mandating specialized training for some teachers.

In December, federal officials asked hundreds of Texas school districts to return $16 million that they received for special education services. Franke said San Antonio ISD has set aside more than $2 million that it may have to pay back, forcing it to cut the number of behavioral specialists and paraprofessionals that support over-burdened special education teachers on its campuses.

“We haven’t been able to reduce teacher caseloads by adding more teachers because of the lack of funding,” Franke said.

Less workers, more work

San Antonio ISD began the school year with 55 special education teacher and paraprofessional vacancies.

The biggest struggle has been hiring licensed specialists in school psychology to keep up with the spike in special education referrals from teachers and parents. Caseloads for the assessment staff are “very high,” Franke said — which results in some staffers quitting.

About 10 of 50 school psychology positions at San Antonio ISD are vacant. The district has had to hire outside agencies to provide evaluation staff, a last resort because of its much higher cost.

Franke said public schools can’t compete with the private companies that offer more competitive salaries and flexible schedules. Colleges are also not producing as many graduates qualified to fill the positions, which require a master’s degree in diagnostics and a bachelor’s degree with a certificate.

She said applicants to teach special education on middle and high school campuses are sparse. Elementary school teachers typically require both a general and special education certificate. For secondary schools, educators must also earn a certification in English and whatever content area they are applying to teach.

“A generalist doesn’t cut it,” Franke said. “It’s very difficult for us to find a life skills teacher to teach students who are very cognitively delayed with a math, science, social studies and English certification on top of special education.”

When Franke began teaching nearly 40 years ago, there were too many special education teachers and not enough jobs. Now, applicants are hard to come by. Franke believes it’s because of the working conditions — the extra caseloads, a lot of paperwork, the severity of disabilities and lack of support.

Franke said teachers serve as many as 25 special education students per class. The Texas Association of School Boards recommends one special education teacher for every 15 students.

“We need people in the buildings with kids to lower these caseloads,” Franke said. “That has a big impact on learning.”

Like other school systems, San Antonio ISD has had to get creative to fill vacancies.

This year, San Antonio ISD has joined the Military Spouse Employment Partnership, a network that provides employment resources for the families of service members, to help fill staffing gaps.

Edgewood ISD, one of the state’s poorest school districts, has spent about $1 million annually on contracts for outside school psychologists and speech pathologists in recent years. The staffing companies often reach out and say they have teachers, occupational and physical therapists, and other employees available to fill vacancies, said Jennifer Bernal, the district’s director of special education.

She said one of the hardest positions to fill has been ARD facilitators who oversee the development and evaluation of individualized plans for students with disabilities.

“They are our first defense in the compliance piece,” Bernal explained, referring to state and federal requirements. “They ensure all the procedural things are done and completed on time because that stuff can really get us in trouble, so they are vital to special education.”

Because of the staffing shortage, the district’s ARD facilitators are responsible for three or four campuses, overseeing anywhere from 60 to 100 students from early childhood to high school. The workload is “massive,” Bernal said.

Safety concerns are also driving people out of the field. In Feb. 2024, a Brandeis High School instructional assistant died after being injured while “redirecting” a special education student. Since then, special education staff across the city have come forward with their own stories of assaults in the classroom.

Bernal said Edgewood ISD offers training on safety, care and crisis prevention and intervention that focuses on behavior strategies to employ when students act out.

It hasn’t been enough to stop the high turnover of teachers and support staff. Bernal said some people last a year before quitting, while others give it a few more before deciding they’ve had enough.

“We’re not talking about people who retire or resign to go to another district,” she said. “No, they completely leave the profession because of the behavioral challenges, the pay and maybe the lack of support they’re receiving at campuses with these issues.”

Bernal said more state funding would be a lifeline for public school systems, allowing them to improve staffing, professional development training, mental health support and early intervention efforts.

It could enable school districts to offer more personalized therapies for students with significant disabilities like Sophia or improve consistency for students with autism like Luka, who rely on routine.

On a Saturday in October, Sophia rode through downtown San Antonio on a parade float as part of DisabilitySA’s AccessAbility fest, an annual event where individuals with disabilities and their families can learn about available services and have a good time. Wearing a tiara, red bow and a sash full of Fiesta medals, Sophia occasionally waved to passerby pedestrians and joined in chanting, “Accessibility is our future!”

Her mother sat beside her and sang along to the pop music blaring from the speakers, often turning around to meet her daughter’s smile. Sometimes, Sophia sang the words back.

Now a vocal advocate for San Antonians with disabilities, Martinez-Munson said she’s pushing for schools to provide more one-on-one services to provide special education students with the attention they need to meet their goals. Consistency is key for students with disabilities to develop trust, promote positive behaviors and encourage growth, Jackie said.

Still, she acknowledged that many people can’t handle working in an ALE classroom.

“Having a special needs child can be hard, but working with a special needs child and not being their parent is even harder,” she said. “You have to be a special kind of person. You have to love children, and you have to be able to accept all of their issues and everything that goes with it.”

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