EXCERPT:
HERRIDGE: "So, most important to me, though — and I speak as someone, for full transparency, who has a child who needs special education — he had a transplant, he was developmentally delayed — the policies for special education children with COVID have just been crushing. You look at the levels of literacy, math, and you look at middle school, high school, and they slid back to elementary school. And our family is fortunate to have that ability to use resources to get our son to a full-time special education school now, but so many of the children that he was in the public system with don't have those resources. And I really believe children are resilient, but I have come out of these two years questioning whether these children have the access to the tools that their families also need to help bridge that gap. And I really question the course it's set them on in the future. I did some research, and when you look at rates of incarceration, there are incredibly high rates of adults who have learning disabilities or had special education needs. So, I think understanding what happened to those children and how we can do more to support them to try and close that gap is something that's been extremely underreported.”