\n\t\tn January 2020, just weeks before the NBA shut down and Costco shelves emptied and Tom Hanks got sick, Joy Corbitt\u2019s only brother died in his mid-forties with symptoms of Covid<\/a>. Which meant, from the pandemic\u2019s earliest days, Joy was taking no chances.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tShe\u2019d heard that Black and brown people like her seemed to be getting sick and dying at higher rates than other Americans. And that kids were either not getting sick, or getting less sick, or getting sick in ways we didn\u2019t really understand. So, when it came to protecting her then-14-year-old daughter, Lia, the North Carolina mother was vigilant.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI was consumed with the news \u2014 consumed with the numbers,\u201d Joy says.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs one week of lockdown slogged into the next, Lia, a straight-A student, struggled through that chaotic, ever-unmuted, camera-off Zoom version of school. Which is to say, she didn\u2019t learn much.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tWith Joy\u2019s husband James, a long-haul trucker, frequently on the road, the mother and daughter did their best to fill the time. They got a crazy Shih Tzu puppy named Zane. They spent long hours playing foosball and air hockey. They watched Netflix and cooking shows and Bridgerton together (yes, even the sex scenes).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tBy the time fall 2020 poked its head onto the horizon, Lia\u2019s high school was set to resume in-person classes. Joy kept her daughter home. She was anxious; it was too soon for students to return. But Lia, a budding theater kid, was eager to get back to her friends, to her life, to try her luck onstage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tA couple of months into the school year, after Lia scored a role in a production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Joy relented. Lia \u201cjust lit up\u201d about theater, her mom recalls. Joy figured, we had to let kids be kids. She took some consolation in the rules mandating universal masking.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe masking, of course, didn\u2019t last long. Kids.<\/p>\n
\n\tOn an otherwise unremarkable day in January 2021, Lia came home with what she described as a \u201cvery minor sore throat.\u201d She isolated, per school policy, counting down the 10 days until she could return. On Lia\u2019s first day back, though, her throat was sore all morning. She threw up at lunch. Joy took her home early.<\/p>\n
\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI was very confused,\u201d Lia says. \u201cI thought, \u2018Am I still sick?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI thought it would go away,\u201d she adds, \u201cquickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tIt didn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tOver the next three years, Lia would develop a perplexing, debilitating, and persistent set of symptoms. Extreme fatigue that turned mornings into catatonic nightmares. Brain fog that made memories slippery. Incessant vomiting. It all kept her out of class, stuck in the nurse\u2019s office \u2014 or out of school entirely. The straight-A\u2019s evaporated.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tLia\u2019s story is one I\u2019ve heard from dozens of families over two years investigating the impact of long Covid on kids. It\u2019s a slow-moving spiral: first their health, then their grades, then their future. And as the country throttles past the pandemic\u2019s fifth anniversary, those for whom Covid looms very present are feeling increasingly forgotten, subject to pervasive skepticism and a kind of cultural fatigue when it comes to their illness.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tLia and Joy Corbitt at their dining room table in Davidson, North Carolina. \u201cWhen you have a disability people can\u2019t see,\u201d Joy says, \u201cyou don\u2019t get as much empathy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEli Cahan<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Make America Healthy Again movement has recently gestured at embracing the long Covid community. In September, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) convened two roundtables with the stated purpose of bringing long Covid \u201cout of the shadows,\u201d including by launching a \u201cpublic awareness and education<\/a> campaign.\u201d Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall \u2014 a physician with a loved one suffering from long Covid and who co-led the convenings \u2014 says those conversations were the first step to \u201ctake this invisible illness seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \n\tBut since the earliest days of the second Trump administration, the dollars that could help those suffering from the illness have quietly faded away. In March, cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) disappeared the nearly $2 billion invested in the RECOVER (Researching Covid to Enhance Recovery) initiative<\/a>, hamstringing research that might have yielded diagnostic tests or better treatments. The same week, the administration shuttered the Department of Health and Human Services\u2019 Office of Long Covid Research and Practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn April, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gutted the NIH\u2019s Vaccine Research Center \u2014 the entity whose work laid the foundation for the Moderna Covid shot. In May, health officials installed by Trump overrode career scientists at the Food and Drug Administration to limit approvals of new Covid vaccines. Around the same time, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. disavowed the vaccine for healthy kids and pregnant women. (\u201cWe\u2019re now one step closer to realizing President Trump\u2019s promise to make America healthy again,\u201d Kennedy said in a video announcing the policy.)\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn the weeks that followed, the secretary also removed every member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory committee, replacing them with a merry band of loyalists and skeptics. That committee has since walked back recommendations for the Covid shot. And since the committee\u2019s suggestions only move forward with the approval of the CDC director, RFK Jr. fired Susan Monarez, whom he\u2019d appointed to that role 29 days earlier, for her refusal to \u201ccommit in advance to approving every [committee] recommendation regardless of the scientific evidence,\u201d as Monarez later testified at a Senate hearing.<\/p>\n \n\tThen there was Trump\u2019s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, expected to boot tens of millions of Americans, including potentially one in five kids, off Medicaid. Where health insurance goes, vaccine access follows: Uninsured or partially insured children are less likely to get the shot, studies show. And unvaccinated children are up to 20 times more likely to develop long Covid.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to requests for comment on how the measures taken since March could affect young people with long Covid. But in the lead-up to this school year, these developments led experts to warn that Covid cases may start ramping up again. That could have devastating effects in an education system beset by plummeting achievement levels and an epidemic of absenteeism (more than 10 million kids, or nearly one-third of all school-age children, regularly missed school last year). And for families already affected by long Covid, absence after absence is prompting threats of investigations for truancy that have led to children being removed from school altogether, either by choice or upon the advice of the district.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cMillions of Americans are impacted by long Covid, and they deserve a federal government that will have their back,\u201d Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said in response to inquiries from Rolling Stone. \u201cThe Trump administration is not only failing to achieve those goals, but actively taking us in the wrong direction.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIt all suggests a brewing public health crisis for a generation of Americans \u2014 including people like Lia Corbitt, who, since 2022, has been largely in virtual education. That\u2019s left doting parents like Joy disheartened.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tA decorative pep talk on the Corbitts\u2019 bookshelf<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEli Cahan<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhen you have a disability people can\u2019t see, you don\u2019t get the same level of empathy,\u201d Joy says. \u201cIt feels like the world has moved on.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTHE CDC DEFINES LONG COVID as a wide array of chronic symptoms \u2014 including fatigue, difficulty concentrating, memory changes, and sleep disturbances \u2014 that began after an infection with the virus and last more than three months. The most recent data from HHS estimated that, as of December 2024, around 22 million American adults had the illness at some point. More than nine million were still sick with it by the end of 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tData is harder to come by for children, who since the earliest days of the pandemic were noted to experience a wider-ranging and less predictable set of symptoms than adults. In February 2024, a paper published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) estimated that up to 6 million children in the United States had suffered from long Covid at some point. A year later, CDC researchers put the figure at closer to one million, with 300,000 actively suffering from the disease; it also noted the numbers, based on national survey data, may significantly undercount the illness\u2019 true toll.<\/p>\n \n\tWhichever figure you use, the numbers are enormous, rivaling conditions like ADHD and autism as one of the most common chronic diseases in American youth today. And for the children and teens I\u2019ve spoken with, long Covid has done serious physical and emotional damage. It\u2019s also hindered their ability to participate in school \u2014 something that becomes an all-encompassing source of frustration for children and parents alike.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAll of the students interviewed for this story were diagnosed with long Covid. And they all met the Department of Education<\/a>\u2019s (DOE) eligibility criteria for specialized school accommodations because of their illness. It\u2019s a group that\u2019s ballooned in size: The number of children receiving specialized accommodations increased by 500,000 after the pandemic relative to before.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThere\u2019s Alexander, in eighth grade when the pandemic hit, the adventurer extraordinaire from Massachusetts whose Covid-related exhaustion meant tardy after tardy \u2014 but who was denied accommodations because his grades were too good.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThere\u2019s Eliza, a kindergartner in Washington state whose severe stomach pain constantly kept her out of school, but who was denied accommodations because the principal said that \u201cwe have great teachers here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThere\u2019s ninth-grader William, a Mets fanatic from suburban New York, who was denied accommodations because school officials told him that \u201cCovid is over.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThose struggles are despite a July 2021 joint statement from HHS and the Department of Justice clarifying that long Covid is a protected condition under the Americans with Disabilities Act. But early actions under the second Trump administration stand to further jeopardize their ability to access special education. An Inauguration Day executive order targeting DEI withdrew federal support through the DOE for learning loss caused by the pandemic, including from long Covid. (The rollbacks specifically targeted special education for Hispanic, Black, and tribal communities, whose children who faced higher rates of severe illness due to Covid, and who use special education at higher rates.) The Big Beautiful Bill\u2019s Medicaid cuts likewise stand to dry up billions more in special education dollars.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAnd should the Trump White House fulfill its campaign promises to axe the DOE entirely, billions of federal dollars upon which schools rely to support millions of children who need special education may vanish overnight.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWITHIN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY, the legitimacy of long Covid has been a wellspring of controversy.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhat the wide-ranging long Covid symptoms have in common is that they\u2019re a challenging combination of persistent yet intermittent, incapacitating yet invisible. Too often, especially for young people, that means adults \u2014 even doctors \u2014 \u201cdon\u2019t believe there\u2019s anything wrong with the child,\u201d says Alexandra Yonts, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who is also the director of the post-Covid program at Children\u2019s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. \u201cThey think they\u2019re being a teenager.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m battling with the school because they don\u2019t believe anything is wrong with Dakota. They don\u2019t believe he has long Covid. They don\u2019t believe long Covid exists.\u201d<\/p>\n Michelle Hooker, Dakota Presnell\u2019s mother<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\tAt various points, skeptical doctors have attributed the symptoms to a kind of neurosis: patient as hypochondriac, equipped with a fancy new diagnosis. \u201cIt is hard to know if this kind of long-tail phenomenon is more pronounced or more common [with Covid],\u201d Adam Lauring, an infectious disease doctor at the University of Michigan, told<\/a> The Washington Post in June of 2020, \u201cor we are just seeing things that come to our attention because there is a heightened awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOther doctors have chalked up the symptoms to a kind of societal malaise: patient as emotional sponge in a chaotic world, sickness quite literally all in their heads. \u201cWhether long Covid can be considered just a consequence of a viral infection or should be attributed to the implications of \u2018the pandemic era\u2019 we are now living in is still a matter of debate,\u201d Achille Marino and Rolando Cimaz, pediatric rheumatologists at the University of Milan, wrote<\/a> in 2022 in the journal of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases.<\/p>\n \n\tSome in the medical community have even called for dumping the diagnosis altogether. \u201cIt is time to stop using terms like \u2018Long Covid,\u2019\u201d John Gerrard, former chief health officer of Queensland, Australia, wrote<\/a> in a press release for a March 2024 study comparing symptoms of Covid patients to those with the flu. \u201cThis terminology can cause unnecessary fear, and in some cases, hypervigilance to longer symptoms that can impede recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAnother piece of the long Covid puzzle is a practical issue: getting diagnosed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to Elizabeth Pray, former president of Washington state\u2019s chapter of the National Association of School Nurses, who herself has cared for numerous kids with symptoms of long Covid, there are two major steps in the diagnostic odyssey. First, the child needs a documented Covid infection. Second, they need to find a doctor able \u2014 and willing \u2014 to make the diagnosis.<\/p>\n \n\tBut many kids may not have tested at the time of their infection, Pray says. Months into the pandemic, the U.S. faced severe shortages in Covid tests for everyone. Well into the winter of 2022, major retailers like CVS and Walgreens were still rationing tests to favor adults, who were at greater risk of severe illness and death. At various points, tests were restricted for kids under 16 years of age, and then under 12.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tEven in kids who did test, studies show that up to 90 percent of cases can go missed<\/a> due to differences in how kids\u2019 immune systems handle the virus. \u201cIf you have families that didn\u2019t test,\u201d Pray says, \u201chow would you tie it back to know how big the problem is?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn the situation where a child does have a confirmed case, finding a doctor to ink the long Covid diagnosis can still be a challenge. According to the patient advocacy group Long Covid Alliance, there are fewer than a dozen long-Covid pediatric clinics across the country, compared with 400 adult clinics. That means many kids who live far from major medical centers \u2014 like Pray\u2019s students in Moses Lake, a town of 25,000 that\u2019s 200 miles from Seattle \u2014 won\u2019t ever be seen at such a clinic.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tDakota Presnell was one of those kids.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBefore the blackouts, the vertigo, the sniffle, and the cough, Dakota\u2019s childhood in the seaside North Carolina vacation town of Manteo was idyllic.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tDakota Presnell on a dock in Manteo, North Carolina. He used to spend the summers roller skating and playing in the ocean, his mom says, before his long-Covid symptoms hit.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEli Cahan<\/p>\n \n\tHe\u2019d spend summers leaping off story-high footbridges and docks and jetties, and slipping down slides into the rollicking Atlantic surrounding Roanoke Island. In the off-season, he\u2019d roller skate down deserted streets and frequent the laser tag arena or the bowling alley, playing one or the other until they closed up shop.<\/p>\n \n\tDakota was \u201ca happy-go-lucky kid,\u201d his mother, Michelle Hooker, says. \u201cIt was hard to keep him home \u2026 He was always on the go, always doing something.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThen, sixth grade. Winter 2021. Omicron.<\/p>\n \n\tDakota had gone back to school in-person and \u2014 like many who contracted Covid\u2019s most infectious variant \u2014 he was quickly bedridden, Michelle says. Of all his symptoms, the dizziness and fatigue were the worst. At one point, a friend told Michelle that she should \u201clook into\u201d long Covid; she\u2019d bring it up time and time again with Dakota\u2019s pediatrician, to little avail.<\/p>\n \n\tIn the summer of 2022, the blackouts started. Out of nowhere, like a limp marionette, Dakota would drop to the ground. Michelle \u201cbecame his legs,\u201d she says, as she\u2019d carry her son from room to room. By the fall his fatigue and fainting spells were a \u201ccomplete and utter nightmare.\u201d By January 2024, Dakota\u2019s symptoms also included memory loss and severe pain in his arms and legs that he couldn\u2019t shake.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tMichelle says that, during this time, they went to loads of doctors \u2014 pediatricians, neurologists, the works \u2014 and racked up several hospitalizations where they were seen by still more clinical teams. They accrued loads of diagnoses: non-epileptic seizures, amplified musculoskeletal pain syndrome, functional neurologic disorder.<\/p>\n \n\tThat last diagnosis, in particular, irked Michelle. \u201cThat\u2019s a fancy way of saying it\u2019s all in your head,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \n\tLong Covid, she adds, never made the list.<\/p>\n \n\tTo Yonts, at Children\u2019s National, experiences like Dakota\u2019s are no longer surprising. She\u2019s heard story after story of undiagnosed patients who, by the time they make it to her clinic, have been seen by doctors who \u201cthink there\u2019s something else going on, [something] not physical.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAt the same time, Yonts knows specialized long Covid clinics, including hers, can\u2019t see the vast majority of patients who request a visit: Their capacity is \u201cwoefully inadequate,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019ve had really lengthy waitlists for most of our existence.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFOR KIDS LIKE DAKOTA suffering from long Covid, navigating school is a mess, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tUnder federal law<\/a>, any student with a \u201cphysical or mental impairment\u201d impacting their ability to participate in school is entitled to accommodations under a so-called 504 or an Individualized Education (IEP) plan. The DOE\u2019s language is deliberately inclusive: Such entitlements stand whether students are diagnosed with \u2014 or are \u201cregarded to have\u201d \u2014 any such impairment, William Koski, director of the Youth and Education Law Project at Stanford University, says.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tA table of contents for one of many notebooks maintained by Dakota\u2019s mom, Michelle, charting his medical care and correspondence with the school district.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEli Cahan<\/p>\n \n\tThe accommodations provided under the plans can run a broad spectrum. They include everything from rest breaks to extra time to provision of quiet spaces for testing. They can also be more tailored: For example, for children with conditions that put them at risk of passing out \u2014 in which staying hydrated is critical \u2014 accommodations can include things like keeping pretzels or a water bottle at their desk. More intensive plans can include tutors or \u201cchanges to the curricular expectations\u201d<\/a> altogether.<\/p>\n \n\tSince the onset of the pandemic, the number of school-aged students with IEPs has jumped. In the 2018-19 school year, 6.3 million children received special education services. In 2022-23, 6.8 million did. Still, some long-Covid families say they\u2019ve been in the dark when it comes to accommodations. In some cases, they\u2019ve faced pushback for seeking special education.<\/p>\n \n\tThat\u2019s true for people like Lia, who had a preexisting special education plan for ADHD, and who had, by then, a long Covid diagnosis. But Lia struggled to convince her school to provide additional accommodations for her fatigue, nausea, and frequent absences. After much back and forth, the school offered a compromise: She could have two extra days to hand in her homework. Oh, and she could go to the bathroom when she needed to.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThat was really the only change that they gave us,\u201d Lia says.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIf there had been other options,\u201d Joy adds, \u201cthey weren\u2019t discussed or offered.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe obstacles to accommodations have been especially stark for people like Michelle and Dakota, who hadn\u2019t previously navigated special education, and who lacked a formal diagnosis of long Covid. It took more than three years before Michelle realized they could even seek help. \u201c[The school] didn\u2019t give us any information,\u201d Dakota says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhen they finally did hear through Facebook about the possibility of a 504 \u2014 and started pinging the school to advocate \u2014 things quickly became contentious.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m battling the school,\u201d Michelle says, \u201c[because] they don\u2019t believe anything is wrong with Dakota.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t(Dare County Schools, Dakota\u2019s district, did not respond to requests for comment.)<\/p>\n \n\tTo Laura Malone, pediatrician and director of the Post-Covid-19 Rehabilitation Clinic at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, part of the trouble around accommodations traces back to lack of knowledge around the illness. \u201cLong Covid is a newer diagnosis \u2026 [that] schools, education systems aren\u2019t as aware of,\u201d Malone says.<\/p>\n \n\tMichelle puts it more bluntly. \u201cThey don\u2019t believe he has long Covid,\u201d she says of the school. \u201cThey don\u2019t believe long Covid exists.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAFTER MONTHS OF BATTLING, by the beginning of eighth grade in fall 2023, Dakota successfully got a 504 plan. Theoretically, that entitled him to extra time on tests and deadlines, as well as breaks throughout the school day. On paper, it was a version of school that retained a sense of normalcy while being feasible given his fatigue and brain fog.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tUnfortunately, the text on paper didn\u2019t translate to real life, Michelle says. The plan \u201cdidn\u2019t do much \u2014 he was still expected to [take] all these classes, carry all of this homework, do the daily assignments,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was kind of a B.S., fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type answer.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn this way, Dakota and Michelle\u2019s experience reflects a different issue with learning accommodations: the difficulty implementing and enforcing them.<\/p>\n \n\tOne of the biggest pieces of the implementation issue is that of dogma, Kathy Riley, nurse at the Plymouth school district in Massachusetts and co-lead for the National Association of School Nurses\u2019 long Covid efforts, says. There are cases where teachers, much like some school officials, simply disagree with the notion that long Covid is real, or that kids with it need help. \u201cThe teachers have to buy into the accommodations \u2026 or it\u2019s not going to work,\u201d Riley says. \u201cIf a teacher doesn\u2019t really agree with it, then the kid doesn\u2019t get it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat gets into the problem of enforcement, which typically falls upon the districts themselves. The DOE\u2019s Office of Civil Rights \u201cgenerally will not evaluate the content\u201d of 504s or IEPs, the agency states<\/a> on its website. Nor does it \u201creview the result of individual placement or other educational decisions.\u201d Instead, \u201cany disagreement can be resolved through a due process hearing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBut a 2019 report<\/a> from the Government Accountability Office found that the ability and willingness of families to pursue such hearings varies widely due to language barriers, ability to find an attorney, legal costs, and fears of retaliation, among other factors. Such barriers were particularly marked in low-income school districts, which on average have more children of color, and which tend to have higher numbers of children with disabilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n At various points, skeptical doctors have attributed the symptoms to a kind of neurosis: patient as hypochondriac, equipped with a fancy new diagnosis.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \n\t\u201cMany parents feel they are at a disadvantage in a conflict with the school district due to an imbalance of power and so may be reluctant to engage in dispute resolution,\u201d the report concluded. (The DOE did not comment on inquiries from Rolling Stone about the inability of students with long Covid to receive 504s or IEPs, or lack of enforcement of 504s or IEPs in cases where they are granted. )<\/p>\n \n\tRecent reporting suggests that kids\u2019 access to special education may worsen further following widespread cuts to the DOE. In March, the administration hollowed out<\/a> the department\u2019s Office of Civil Rights \u2014 including entire investigative teams in the majority of regions \u2014 leaving thousands of pending cases in limbo, according to the New York Times. And in May, ProPublica found that, in the period following the cuts, hundreds fewer ongoing cases were investigated<\/a>, and new cases were dismissed outright at rates 30 percent higher than previously.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn late September, Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks introduced a bill to exempt funding for special education from any future DOE cuts. \u201cAny attempt to slash programs and protections for our students with disabilities is beyond callous,\u201d Alsobrooks said in a press release. Still, by October \u2014 amid the government shutdown \u2014 mass layoffs were imperiling the DOE\u2019s ability<\/a> to administer special education, department sources told ABC News.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTo Dakota, politics shouldn\u2019t play a role in whether kids with long Covid get the support they need. That\u2019s true for teachers not following certain special education plans rather than others. It\u2019s also true for government-wide initiatives that pull out the rug from under children like him.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cPeople are inclined to their opinion,\u201d Dakota says, \u201cbut at the same time, in some situations, like [with] long Covid \u2026 opinions get in the way.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTHE TUG-OF-WAR AROUND accommodations comes at a time when fewer American students are attending school than ever before.<\/p>\n \n\tIn January 2024, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that chronic absenteeism \u2014 defined as the number of students missing at least one out of every 10 school days \u2014 nearly doubled<\/a> following the Covid pandemic. Every state saw increases in chronic absenteeism, the study found: In total, nearly 30 percent \u2014 some 13 million children \u2014 regularly missed school.<\/p>\n \n\tThe alarm bells around the absenteeism crisis partly relate to learning loss. In January 2025, an annual Congressional analysis known as the \u201cnation\u2019s report card\u201d found that American students\u2019 achievement levels were declining to some of the worst in recent history<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tThe alarm is also related to money. Attendance is one of the key factors that determines school funding in most states. That incentivizes schools to do what they can to make sure students show up, since absences can only hurt their bottom line. As a result, some districts are taking a punitive approach to chronic absenteeism. On one extreme is Missouri, where, following an August 2023 decision from the state\u2019s Supreme Court, parents of children with poor attendance records are now liable<\/a> for jail time.<\/p>\n \n\tA more common mechanism involves truancy.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tStates like Indiana are already moving to toughen truancy laws<\/a> by introducing bills to tighten attendance requirements and immediately refer families for investigation in ways that can lead to prosecution of children, parents, or both.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTruancy hinges on defining an absence as unexcused. But that\u2019s a definition \u201creally dependent on the school itself,\u201d Christy McGill, deputy superintendent for educator effectiveness and family engagement for the Nevada Department of Education, says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tFor example, some schools may require doctors\u2019 notes for every missed day, McGill says, while others do not. Studies have found that children of color were up to four times more likely<\/a> to have their absences marked unexcused than those who were white.<\/p>\n \n\tRolling Stone contacted every state\u2019s education department for this article, the majority of which did not respond to requests for comment. Most of those that did \u2014 Colorado, Kentucky, Oregon, and Utah among them \u2014 lack visibility into the reasons for excused versus unexcused absences.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSuch variability worries Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a national nonprofit organization focused on chronic absenteeism. \u201cUnfortunately, across the United States, absences are too often deemed \u2018unexcused\u2019 for arbitrary reasons,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n
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