San Luis Obispo High School teacher Julie McAdon has attended more funerals than she can count.
After 24 years teaching children and young adults with significant disabilities and complex medical needs, the special education teacher has experienced the loss of many students she spent years caring for.
“I started my summer … speaking at a funeral of a former student,” McAdon told New Times. “My students typically don’t get better. … In the overall arc of their lives, their lives are shorter than the rest of us, and so I stopped counting how many funerals I have been to.”
The work can be emotionally exhausting, but McAdon has never questioned its importance.
“I think this program especially … changes families’ lives,” she said. “And so it’s 100 percent worth it to me to have some sad times.”
Inside McAdon’s classroom, couches, beds, walkers, and medical equipment share space with conventional classroom materials. The lighting is dim, and the pace of instruction is deliberately slow.
Her students range in age from 3 to 22, with lessons tailored to their individual abilities and needs. For some, progress means recognizing a word or communicating a need. For others, it means learning to eat independently or move with the assistance of specialized equipment.
“There shouldn’t be moving fast in my room at all,” McAdon said, “unless it’s a medical emergency.”
The work requires specialized training, patience, and an understanding of each student’s educational and medical needs. Teachers develop individualized lessons, coordinate with families and other educators, and respond to medical emergencies while managing extensive paperwork and legal requirements.
But finding qualified educators to do that work has become increasingly difficult.
Across California, school districts are struggling to recruit and retain special education teachers, a shortage that has persisted for decades and shows little indication of easing.
‘We’re getting close to this tipping point in the field where … there’s just going to be more special education openings than there are people who are capable of teaching special education.’
–Stephen Crutchfield, professor
A September 2025 report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that 43 percent of public schools reported special education teaching vacancies during the 2021-22 school year, roughly twice the rate for most other teaching positions.
By March 2024, 52 percent of public schools anticipated needing to fill special education positions.
The shortage comes as more students qualify for special education services. Nationwide, approximately 7.5 million students ages 3 to 21 received services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act during the 2022-23 school year, compared with 6.4 million a decade earlier.
For Cal Poly professors Leah Wood and Stephen Crutchfield, the figures reflect a problem they have watched develop for years.
“We’ve seen a pretty consistent shortage in special education,” said Crutchfield, who teaches in Cal Poly’s special education teacher preparation program. “It’s been a teacher shortage area for decades in California, so this is definitely nothing new. But we’re getting close to this tipping point in the field where … there’s just going to be more special education openings than there are people who are capable of teaching special education.”
Cal Poly offers the only in-person special education teacher preparation program on the Central Coast, training future educators to work with students with disabilities in school districts throughout the region.
The program once averaged approximately 20 students per cohort. Ten students graduated in June, while just six enrolled this fall, according to Wood.
The declining enrollment has become a concern for faculty members who regularly hear from districts struggling to fill positions.
“One [local] school district had 20 openings. We graduated 10 students. They can’t find people, and you know they need to find people to staff these classrooms,” Crutchfield said. “[Schools are] falling all over themselves to find and hire really highly trained teachers in special education.
“They’re just not there.”
More than a classroom
When a caseworker suggested that her daughter begin attending school, one San Luis Obispo County mother thought the idea was impossible.
Her daughter, now 8, has a rare genetic disorder that causes significant developmental and physical disabilities, along with epilepsy and diabetes. She cannot speak, crawl, or walk and requires extensive medical care.
At the time, her daughter was about 2 1/2 years old, and the family had been working with the Tri-Counties Regional Center to access medical and developmental services.
“I think I actually laughed out loud when she said that,” the mother told New Times. “She’s not going to school.”
The mother, who requested anonymity, had understood special education as additional support for students in conventional classrooms. She was unaware that public schools offered programs for children with disabilities as significant as her daughter’s.
Through the regional center, the family was introduced to McAdon’s program at San Luis Obispo High School. Her daughter enrolled at age 3 and has attended ever since.
“She gets to go to school every day. It’s something I never thought would exist for her,” the mother said. “Even for our most severely disabled kids, they have a place to go and belong.”
For children with significant physical and developmental disabilities, opportunities to interact with others can be limited. As her daughter has grown older, the mother said, transportation has become increasingly difficult, while her communication disabilities make developing friendships challenging.
“Kids like my daughter can live a very isolated life,” she said. “It’s mostly oriented in family and being at home.”
McAdon’s classroom has provided her daughter with a consistent group of teachers, support staff, and other students. The mother said that continuity has been particularly valuable for her family, which has spent years navigating the medical and educational systems that support her daughter.
“What this program gives her [is] a sense of community, a sense of belonging,” she said. “It gives us—and when I say us, I mean my husband and I and our family—a way to be grounded and anchored back into a community where we don’t feel necessarily so alone.”
The family coordinates their daughter’s care with eight specialists at Stanford University, along with therapists, caseworkers, and insurance providers. She takes five anti-seizure medications and insulin, and her parents manage her medical needs while working full time and raising another child.
“The workload is substantial,” the mother said. “All the different medications, all the different forms of paperwork, and things we need to step through to continue to get [her] the support and care she needs.”
McAdon has become a resource for the family in navigating those responsibilities. The mother sometimes invites her to meetings with doctors and caseworkers, where she helps identify specialized equipment, services, and other resources available to children with disabilities.
The mother said she and her husband had little experience with significant disabilities before their daughter was born. McAdon’s years working with students with complex medical needs have helped them understand what services to request and how to advocate for their daughter.
“Teachers like Julie are so much more than teachers,” she said.
Although the family has been satisfied with the program and the district’s support, the mother worries about the effects that staffing shortages could have on classrooms serving students with significant physical disabilities.
She pointed to the challenges of transporting several students who use wheelchairs on field trips or evacuating a classroom during an emergency when a limited number of adults are available to assist.
“What if there’s an earthquake? What if there’s a fire and a requirement to evacuate?” she said. “I don’t know what kind of support they would have to be able to mobilize.”
The mother has since joined McAdon and Wood in speaking to Cal Poly students about careers in special education.
She has participated in several presentations, most recently alongside both educators, sharing her family’s experience and explaining how special education programs support students with significant disabilities.
Wood discusses career opportunities and teacher preparation, while McAdon describes the work involved in running a classroom. The mother offers a parent’s perspective on the importance of having qualified teachers who can meet students’ individual needs.
She hopes those conversations will encourage more students to enter a field facing persistent staffing shortages.
“People like Leah, people like Julie, they change lives, and not just the kids they touch,” she said. “They shift communities, and we need more of that.”
The legal obligation
For special education teachers, meeting federal requirements goes beyond classroom instruction.
Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, public schools are required to provide eligible students with disabilities a free appropriate public education, including specialized instruction and services tailored to their individual needs.
The federal law, originally passed in 1975, established protections for students with disabilities and requires schools to develop individualized education programs (IEPs) outlining each student’s educational goals, accommodations, and necessary support services.
Those plans are legally binding. Schools must provide the services outlined in them, regardless of staffing challenges.
In California, school districts generally have 15 days after receiving a written referral to propose an assessment plan and 60 days after obtaining parental consent to complete an initial evaluation and hold an IEP meeting, with certain exceptions.
“We have a legal obligation to follow their IEP, make sure they’re getting their support, make sure they’re getting their accommodations,” Daisy Ordaz, an eighth-grade special education English teacher at Fesler Junior High School in Santa Maria, told New Times. “But obviously when you have a small caseload, you are more able to do each of those things.”
Teachers are responsible for evaluating students, documenting their progress, coordinating with families and other educators, and participating in IEP meetings. Each student requires an individualized assessment and plan, with periodic reviews and reevaluations.
“If we’re testing three, four, five kids at a time—that’s a lot of periods that it takes,” Ordaz said. “And then we have to write the IEP, and we have to collaborate with general ed teachers, and that’s for one student.”
Credit: PHOTO BY PIETER SAAYMAN
Ordaz said Fesler has provided a dedicated class period for IEP-related responsibilities, giving teachers time to complete assessments and paperwork during the school day.
Still, she said the workload can be difficult to balance alongside teaching.
“When you’re pulled in so many different directions, it’s hard to do one thing really well,” she said.
A September 2025 report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights identified excessive workloads, administrative responsibilities, and inadequate compensation among the factors contributing to special education teacher burnout and turnover.
The commission also found that teacher shortages can disrupt services for students with disabilities, including specialized instruction and support required under their IEPs.
Wood said the shortage raises questions about whether schools have enough adequately trained teachers to meet students’ educational needs.
“We know what kids are capable of,” Wood said. “They’re capable of so much if teachers are well trained.”
Wood said years of research have established effective approaches to educating students with disabilities, but schools need qualified teachers to put those practices into place.
“We know so much about how to do this and how to change lives of kids,” she said, “and we’re not able to do it at this scale that it should be happening.”
A new generation
A few months into her first year as a special education teacher, Ella Weinert is exhausted.
“It’s probably been the hardest transition of my entire life,” she told New Times. “But I, like, really truly … would not want to be doing anything else.”
Weinert graduated from Cal Poly’s special education credential program in June and now teaches at Tommy Kunst Junior High School in the Santa Maria-Bonita School District. She co-teaches five seventh- and eighth-grade English classes and manages a caseload of approximately 18 students with disabilities.
Her responsibilities include adapting lessons, monitoring students’ academic progress, managing classroom behavior, and developing IEPs. She also works with students experiencing emotional and behavioral difficulties, some of whom have experienced significant trauma.
The transition to her current job has required her to apply what she learned in graduate school while navigating district procedures and the demands of managing her own caseload.
“We have a good base of general knowledge,” Weinert said. “But we have a hard time when it comes to … the systems and stuff.”
Weinert is among the small number of newly trained special education teachers who enter the profession through Cal Poly’s credential program.
Her graduating cohort consisted of 10 students. During her final quarter, she spent five days a week student teaching at San Luis Obispo High School while attending evening classes and completing graduate coursework. At times, students carried more than 25 units per quarter.
The schedule left little opportunity to earn an income.
“You cannot have a job, period,” Weinert said during an April interview before graduation. “There is not a time to work unless you’ve got to work on the weekends, but you’ve got to put time aside to work on the weekends on your school because there’s tons of out-of-class stuff we have to do.”
For prospective teachers, that commitment can present a financial barrier to completing a credential program.
Weinert said she considered entering the classroom earlier through an emergency teaching credential. She had received multiple opportunities to begin working before completing her graduate education, allowing her to earn a salary rather than spend another year paying tuition and student expenses.
Instead, she chose to finish the program.
“I can’t imagine … not having this program and doing this job,” she said. “I would feel … so overwhelmed and unprepared.”
Weinert said her training gave her experience writing IEPs, assessing students’ educational needs, and modifying instruction for students with learning disabilities. Those skills have become particularly important in her current position, where she works alongside general education teachers in classrooms that include students with and without disabilities.
But she acknowledged that the financial sacrifices required to complete an intensive credential program aren’t realistic for everyone.
“I’m grateful enough that I … am in the position where I can do that and take a year off and … just focus on school,” she said. “But I know that’s not an option for a lot of people as far as financially.”
Those considerations continued when Weinert began looking for a teaching position.
She ultimately accepted a job with the Santa Maria-Bonita School District, citing higher compensation and strong administrative support as factors in her decision.
She wanted to work in a district where special education teachers received support from administrators and program specialists, particularly as schools increasingly use co-teaching models that place students with disabilities in general education classrooms.
During her graduate studies, Weinert expressed concern that special education teachers could be relegated to supporting roles in those classrooms without sufficient time to collaborate with their general education counterparts.
She said the arrangement depends on both teachers having opportunities to plan lessons and determine how to accommodate students’ needs.
Without that collaboration, she said she worried that special education teachers could be left out of instructional decisions despite their responsibility for students’ IEPs.
Now working in that model, Weinert said she has benefited from supportive administrators and colleagues. She has also taken on additional instructional responsibilities in a classroom relying on substitute coverage.
The shortage is apparent elsewhere at her school, she said, where multiple positions have required long-term substitutes.
“We are definitely feeling like there’s a teacher shortage because we’ve got multiple … long-term subs going … for positions that can’t be filled,” she said.
For Weinert, some of the most significant moments in teaching have come from watching her students develop relationships and find a sense of belonging at school.
Some students who struggle socially have begun spending their lunch periods in her classroom. One student started attending games when she coached the school’s volleyball team and eventually began spending time with other students on the team.
Those interactions have reinforced her interest in special education, which began when she was in middle school and volunteered in classrooms serving students with disabilities.
Although she has found the work demanding, Weinert said she remains committed to the profession.
“I’m excited to go to school every day,” she said. “I love it.” Δ
Reach Staff Writer Chloë Hodge at chodge@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Nov 12-19, 2026.
