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.
Silver Sage Elementary updated its playgrounds in 2016, but still had elements, like wood chips, that excluded some children who use wheelchairs or walkers.
Credit:
Sarah Miller/Idaho Statesman
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.
Why $2 Billion Isn’t Enough
In January 2024, in his State of the State address, Gov. Brad Little pulled up photos from deteriorating school buildings that had appeared in a Statesman and ProPublica investigation. He highlighted the reporting that showed how school districts’ limited ability to fund facility upgrades left students learning in schools with leaky ceilings, failing plumbing and freezing classrooms. Months later, lawmakers approved the $2 billion and celebrated it as the largest investment in school buildings in state history.
In reality, that money will do little to help schools address the needs of students with disabilities. As it is, many districts received only enough to make a few repairs; the smallest ones, which often have significant needs, got less than $1 million to upgrade schools.
Before the state investment, we surveyed superintendents in all districts and heard back from 91%, more than half of whom cited ADA issues in their schools, including multifloor buildings with no elevators or elevators that often don’t work, inaccessible playgrounds and restrooms, plus uneven sidewalks that were difficult to navigate with wheelchairs. We followed up with them again this year. Some superintendents said they planned to use money they received to make accessibility improvements. A handful said they have since been able to fully address such issues but many others said the money wouldn’t be enough to do so.
Small, rural districts didn’t get enough money from the bill to retrofit older buildings “without completely exhausting the funds,” Superintendent Brian Lee of the Nezperce School District in North Idaho said.
“If we don’t have a functional roof, heat, and functional classrooms, electrical, and plumbing, ADA compliance is a non-issue because we can’t have school,” he said in an email. “Most older buildings are not architecturally capable of making small changes to meet ADA compliance.”
The Americans with Disabilities Act, which was updated in 2010, requires schools to provide equal access to programs for students with disabilities and to eliminate barriers to their learning. But schools have some leeway in physical alterations if their buildings were constructed before certain standards were in effect. Schools can still comply with the law without altering their buildings by providing reasonable modifications for students and ensuring equal access. For example, if a library is on the second floor, a school can bring books to a floor that students with disabilities can access.
In struggling to make their schools fully accessible, Idaho is not alone. A 2020 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found most schools had some kind of physical barrier, like steep ramps or door handles that were difficult to use, and noted that schools needed more guidance in interpreting the Americans with Disabilities Act. There’s little enforcement by the federal government or the state to ensure districts follow the law, and little recourse for families when their children are excluded.
Districts have contingency plans for when they can’t make a school accessible. In larger districts, students can be bused to different schools. In other cases, districts will move classrooms to the main floor if a student enrolled in those courses can’t use stairs.
But in some cases, the infrastructure simply prevents students from being able to participate in school in the same way as their peers. At least 10 districts in Idaho said in 2023 that their bathrooms, gyms and cafeterias weren’t all accessible. Students in those schools have been unable to get their meals at lunch, to make it to classes on different floors or even to attend their neighborhood school. Administrators in three districts, like West Ada, said they don’t have playgrounds that all students are able to use.
At an elementary school in Salmon in remote Central Idaho, a narrow stairway with no wheelchair ramp is the only access to the school cafeteria line. Students who are unable to navigate the stairs must rely on others to get their food for them. The district passed a bond last year after about a dozen failed attempts to build a new school.
Credit:
Sarah Miller/Idaho Statesman
“When you have old buildings, it’s sometimes difficult to do what is required to meet all of those expectations because they just weren’t built with some of those things in mind,” said Anthony Butler, the superintendent of the Cambridge School District, two hours north of Boise. Butler said the district has an old gym with inaccessible restrooms, and seating can be challenging, but it has made a number of other updates to make its other buildings more inclusive for students with disabilities.
State Superintendent Debbie Critchfield said the state doesn’t track whether buildings are accessible. But she said the state does care about students with disabilities.
“It’s certainly not a lack of desire or commitment to serve students,” she said. “We don’t want the system to exclude a student from enjoying the same experience of any other students because they can’t be with friends at lunch, or for no other reason than, there isn’t a way for them to get to that cafeteria in the basement.” Her office said she encourages districts to make a plan that “prioritizes facilities needs.”
Jeremy Maxand, executive director of LINC Idaho, an organization that helps people with disabilities live independently, said these kinds of issues that can seem less important, like having accessible playgrounds, can affect how students with disabilities are viewed by others and how they see themselves. Students with disabilities “are at a distinct disadvantage when you’re supposed to be getting the playing field level so you have an equal opportunity, like everybody else, to succeed or fail,” Maxand said.
No Way Down
In the Pocatello-Chubbuck School District, Mariah Larkins, a sophomore at the time, approached the doors leading to the elevator on the second floor of her high school in September 2022, according to an account laid out in a 2024 lawsuit. There, she saw a sign that read: “closed for lunch.” The girl has a disorder that causes debilitating bone spurs throughout her body, requiring frequent operations and forcing her to use crutches or wheelchairs at times. She called the front office, but no one answered, according to the lawsuit, which is ongoing. She called her mom, who said she’d come to the school right away.
Trapped upstairs and embarrassed, she tried to traverse the stairs with her crutches in hand. Larkins’ mom met her daughter outside the school, “alone, in pain” and crying, the lawsuit read. The family alleged that from Larkins’ first day of school, she was met with an elevator that didn’t yet work, excluded from classes and physically and emotionally harmed.
It was one of several times the student, who has since graduated, risked injury or was separated from her peers during her years at the school, according to the complaint. The district had installed an elevator in the building before the girl started high school, but it didn’t go to the basement, where the cafeteria and some classes were located. The lawsuit said the district did not move those classes to an accessible location.
Larkins couldn’t get to the cafeteria and on one day couldn’t get lunch at all. She also fell behind in classes and struggled with her mental health, her family said in the lawsuit. Her anxiety and depression worsened as she sat in rooms alone while her classmates were educated downstairs.
Aaron Bergman, Larkins’ attorney, said Larkins, who is now 18, cares about improving access for other children in school now.
“This was a very difficult time in her life that did not need to be as difficult,” he told the publications. “We expect Dominos to do it for people in their restrooms. I think we can expect school districts to do it for schools, for kids in their schools.”
Pocatello High School was first built over a century ago, long before the ADA was enacted. In 2021, the district completed major construction at the school. Part of that, as required by law, included making the school accessible.
But even at the time, officials acknowledged students still wouldn’t be able to navigate the whole building. In an email earlier this month, Pocatello spokesperson Courtney Fisher said extending the elevator to the basement would have required “significant structural changes,” since storm water drains and sewage pipes run directly underneath the new elevator.
Larkins’ mom asked the district to do more, but little changed, the lawsuit said. Just before her daughter’s senior year, she took it to the courts.
“Because M.L. is disabled, and for no other reason, she received much less than her peers,” the family’s attorney said in the lawsuit, which identifies Larkins only by her initials.
The Pocatello school district declined to comment on pending litigation, but in court filings, denied many of the allegations in the lawsuit. On its accessibility issues in general, the district said it’s addressing some of those problems but, with the lack of funding, can’t make every building fully compliant with current standards.
“The cost of retrofitting our current buildings to full compliance is prohibitive, if not impossible, and that reality does limit our ability to provide every service in every building,” Fisher said in an email. “School districts across Idaho — and across the nation — are grappling with the same issue: aging facilities that were built long before ADA requirements, limited resources to modernize them, and the significant costs associated with comprehensive retrofits.”
Interviews with superintendents across the state revealed similar problems. In 2017, parents sued the Oneida School District, in southeast Idaho, after their children struggled for years to navigate an old building with no elevator and at times had to crawl up stairs and got injured. In 2019, a judge ruled against the district, requiring it to pay two families $1.2 million. It wasn’t until 2023 that the district passed a bond to build a new school.
In West Ada, the Schlinks’ son spent years on the sidelines before the district agreed to address their concerns.
On a warm day in September, Schlink’s son crawled on the squishy, rubber surface of the large playground near their house. The playground was built to be inclusive of children with mobility challenges, according to the city of Boise, describing it as one of the “most unique playgrounds” in the system.
On the side sat his wheelchair with wheels featuring Lilo and Stitch decals.
At his school down the road, the playground was renovated earlier this year. Before the Office for Civil Rights had completed its investigation, the district agreed to a voluntary resolution to make its playgrounds more accessible. It was the second time in as many years that the agency responded to a complaint about playgrounds at West Ada schools and forced change, according to resolutions posted on the federal government’s website. West Ada said the district has “met OCR standards” at Silver Sage. In addition to updating the playground, it said it brought the parking lot and sidewalks into compliance. Next summer, the district plans to update the second playground at the school. The district said it couldn’t comment on why the playgrounds weren’t made accessible in 2016 because it was a decision made by previous district leadership.
President Donald Trump’s administration has pushed to largely gut the civil rights office, creating uncertainty around whether it will remain an effective resource for families. The administration has argued that cuts to the department will give “parents and states control over their children’s education” and relieve taxpayers from “progressive social experiments and obsolete programs.”
But for the Schlinks’ son, it made a big difference. This is the first year he can participate in recess.
A playground at Silver Sage Elementary School was recently renovated (first image). The school upgraded from woodchips on one of its playgrounds (second image) to artificial grass (third image). While the Schlinks’ son can use a wheelchair on this surface, it gets too hot in the sun for him to crawl on, according to his mother. The city of Boise used a squishy, rubber surface at a playground it built to be inclusive of all kids (fourth image).
Credit:
Sarah Miller/Idaho Statesman
The updates aren’t perfect. The ground is now a material he can use a wheelchair on, but it gets too hot in the sun for him to crawl around, his mother, Stephanie Schlink, said. The structures don’t include accessible swings or merry-go-rounds, or any kind of enrichment such as textured panels or chimes for kids with disabilities.
Idaho Passed $2 Billion in Funding for School Building Repairs. It’s Not Nearly Enough.
Still, after years of watching their son be relegated to the side at recess, “there’s a clear indicator that he is really enjoying himself and happy at school now,” she said. When she picked her son up from school last month, his classmates ran up to her to share how they played with him. He’s social and loves outings and being around people, Stephanie Schlink said.
Finally, she said, he’s part of the class.
Asia Fields contributed reporting.
