School districts of all sizes in Virginia face special education staffing shortages, which is resulting in self-contained classroom age ranges as large as K-6. This places significant strain on teachers expected to cover seven grade levels of curriculum at once. IDEA requires that each child’s educational placement be individually determined and aligned with age-appropriate peers unless a student’s specific needs clearly require otherwise, and it does not allow for efficiency or staffing alone to determine placement. This bill prevents the routine use of wide age ranges as a default driven by system capacity, while preserving the flexibility of IDEA’s individualized decision-making by maintaining the ability of IEP teams to make exceptions to the age range requirement when it is educationally appropriate. Pennsylvania and New York, which mirror Virginia’s mix of rural, suburban, and urban districts, successfully maintain this age range requirement with similar flexibility. This bill sets the same reasonable guardrail, ensuring placements are driven by student need rather than system limitations. I urge you to support it.

The Arc of Northern Virginia is strongly in support of HB461 and HB1331. The greatest thing we can do to drive up long term independence and drive down long term costs for people with lifelong disabilities is offer high quality, inclusive education. Both bills take critical steps in that direction. HB461 works to ensure students with similar ages are learning together, an important step in ensuring people with a full range of disabilities are used to working and learning with peers and receiving the side benefit of peer to peer mentoring and support. This is far less likely to happen with students far apart in age. HB1331 simply bring Virginia into compliance with more than 30 years of accessibility law by ensuring schools know where they are not accessible, and can therefore plan to address it. We're generations past it being the norm or understandable for people with disabilities to be told they buildings where they go to learn are not set up to welcome them.

I am the mother of a nonverbal autistic son in elementary school. For children like my son, placement matters, not just academically, but emotionally, socially, and developmentally. This bill sets a common-sense safeguard: young children with disabilities should not be placed in classrooms where the age range is so wide that it undermines learning, safety, or dignity. A six year old does not belong in a classroom with much older students simply because of a disability. Research and lived experience tell us that younger children learn best alongside peers who are close in age. Large age gaps can increase anxiety, limit meaningful social interaction, and reduce access to age appropriate instruction and play, especially for nonverbal students who already face communication barriers. Importantly, this bill does not remove flexibility. It preserves the authority of the IEP team- parents, educators, and specialists to make individualized decisions when an exception is truly in a child’s best interest. This is not about limiting options. It is about protecting our youngest and most vulnerable students, promoting inclusion, and ensuring placements are developmentally appropriate. I urge you to support this bill for equity, for dignity, and for children like my son who cannot speak for themselves.