by Becca Savransky, Idaho Statesman

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Idaho Statesman. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.

At an elementary school in southwest Boise, Idaho, in the fall of 2020, children in pre-K went to their recess on the playground, laughing and climbing ladders to reach the slide. One 3-year-old boy sat on the sidelines.

The loose woodchips prevented the boy, who uses a wheelchair, from joining his classmates. There were no swings he could use or textured panels or blocks he could play with. The only student in the class who used a medical stroller, he was relegated to watching his classmates play as a staff member stood with him.

Another year, he often spent recess inside his classroom.

“It was heartbreaking,” said his dad, Grant Schlink, at a neighborhood park where he pushed his son laying back on a swing made of a large circular disk that curved up on the sides. The boy, now 8, sported sunglasses and Converse shoes. The Schlinks requested that their child’s name not be used to protect his privacy.

The playgrounds at Silver Sage Elementary excluded children like Schlink’s son, even though they had been updated by the West Ada School District in 2016 — decades after the Americans with Disabilities Act required new construction to be fully accessible to all students.

The Schlinks reached out to the school asking for help. The district told them in 2022 that improvements were in the pipeline, the boy’s mom, Stephanie Schlink, said. But at some point, communication stalled, she said. Another year passed.

“I finally was just like, ‘OK, they’re not going to do anything,’” Stephanie Schlink told the Idaho Statesman and ProPublica. “‘F this, I’m going hard.’” In 2023, she filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights within the U.S. Department of Education, the agency that investigates complaints over discrimination against people with disabilities in schools. The West Ada School District said in an email it is committed to “safe and equitable access” and that it is making progress toward that goal.

Like Silver Sage Elementary, many schools in Idaho struggle to meet the standards laid out under the law. In 2023, nearly 70 superintendents told the Statesman and ProPublica that accessibility for people with disabilities was a concern in at least one of their buildings. In many cases, school leaders said, they would need major renovations to make those schools inclusive to students with disabilities.

Over a year after the state approved $2 billion to help schools repair and replace their aging buildings, around three dozen superintendents told the Statesman and ProPublica that their buildings are still not fully accessible, while others said they had workarounds that were not ideal. Many pointed to funding as a continued challenge. Lawmakers cited the Statesman and ProPublica’s previous reporting last year when they approved the $2 billion investment, while acknowledging the funds still wouldn’t solve all of the issues.

Many of the problems the Statesman and ProPublica heard from superintendents had disproportionate impacts on students with disabilities. One of the most common was broken or outdated HVAC systems, often an expensive upgrade; freezing or overheated classrooms can be especially hard on students who can’t regulate their body temperatures, such as children with Down syndrome.

“Unfortunately there is not nearly enough for us to do any type of major construction that would make our building more ADA compliant particularly in such a rural part of North Idaho where construction is very expensive,” Megan Sindt, the superintendent of the Avery School District, a K-8 district of just about 10 students, said in an email. The North Idaho school, built in 1918, has stairs to the second floor, where most classes are held.

It’s far from the only district trying to navigate these challenges. Despite a historic funding push by the state, that’s not likely to change.

In January 2024, in his State of the State........

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