The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation into Houston ISD to determine whether the district is violating the rights of students with disabilities after it unveiled plans to restructure the way special education services are delivered.
This week, after Houston Public Media reported on leaked draft documents outlining their plan, district leaders confirmed they planned to consolidate special education services to certain campuses beginning in 2026-27. The move would require some students to be transferred from their neighborhood school to another school in the district that would be tapped as a hub to provide a variety of special education services.
“Public schools are required – to the maximum extent appropriate — to ensure that children with disabilities are educated alongside their nondisabled peers and to follow specific procedures when making placement decisions about how and where children with disabilities are educated,” the education department stated in a Friday news release announcing the investigation.
Houston ISD, the largest school district in Texas that has been under state control since 2023, defended its forthcoming changes in a Friday night statement while noting that 15,000 of its more than 21,000 students in special education “are served in inclusive settings.” The district also said that for the roughly 5,000 students “primarily served in self-contained settings, families can expect small class sizes, low adult-to-student ratios to support specialized instruction, and placement with similar-age peers.” HISD added that special education services will be available at more than half of its campuses.
“Any review will show that all special education updates for the 2026–27 school year focus on increasing access to services in the least restrictive environment, strengthening systems to improve the quality of instruction, and improving student outcomes,” HISD also said in its statement.
When the draft documents of the plan first leaked, parents scrambled to find out if the district was planning to transfer their child from their home campus to another school.
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said placement decisions must be made individually based on students’ needs rather than by blanket policies that segregate students by disability category.
Federal law requires students with disabilities to be taught in the “least restrictive environment,” which means they must be taught alongside their peers without disabilities whenever appropriate.
“The allegations described here are alarming,” Richey said. “The Trump Administration will fully investigate this situation and fight to ensure every child with a disability receives the education and support guaranteed under the law.”
Mireille Patman’s 15-year-old son, Teddy, has Down syndrome. He’s been planning to attend Heights High School as a freshman next year and the family has been preparing for his transition for months. The news of the district centralizing services, and possibly being transferred out of Heights High School, frustrated and concerned the family.
“The first thing I really did think about when I saw that online was, ‘This is straight up segregation,’ however you want to look at it,” Patman previously told Houston Public Media. “This is segregating a population of people as you’ve designated, and putting them in a group to not be seen.”
Patman says she has kept Teddy in public school as opposed to private school for the federal protections.
“I actually feel that there’s a lot more expertise in public school for special education and I didn’t want to compromise Teddy’s ability to be educated with his peers. That is important to me,” Patman said. “And the federal law states with least restrictive environment, that he has that right, and I’m not taking that away from him, so that’s why I fight for it.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated May 9, 2026, to include comment from Houston ISD.
