Hey everyone. Quick heads up here at the top. Congress has been working late this weekend,

so things may have changed a bit since I recorded.

With a deal to end the government shutdown, seemingly in sight, it's worth taking stock of all the chaos we've borne over the last six weeks.

Our transportation system had started to get messy, with airspace restricted from coast to coast.

Reliable food aid had become hard to find, too.

Some had start programs, had begun shutting their doors.

Then there's what's been happening with special education.

When I asked Pepper Stettler to describe the state of special education last week, she said this.

I guess in one word, I would say tenuous.

It sometimes, I think, from a structural perspective, looks like it is hanging on by a thread.

Pepper is a professor who writes about education and disability.

She says it was about a month ago when the trouble started. Reduction in

force notices went out to hundreds of Department of Education employees, a shutdown-related

punishment doled out by the White House. More than a hundred of these DOE workers were part of the

team that oversaw special ed all over the country.

They ensured resources got distributed equitably, had been doing that since the 70s.

Then one day, they simply were not there.

A court put these firings on hold, but that did not make parents feel much better.

Pepper knows this personally.

I have a 13-year-old daughter with Down syndrome, and I often think about what her life would have been like if she was born and started school before 1975, and it would have been pretty bleak.

Pepper's daughter is named Louisa. She's in eighth grade.

Special education gives her what she needs to learn beside her peers in a mainstream classroom.

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