Five-year-old Cullen Fox loves to learn by doing.
“He needs a flexible learning environment and a variety of ways to communicate," said mom Brittany Fox.
Cullen has been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, a neurological and developmental disorder affecting communication, learning and behavior.
His mom says she struggled to find the right learning environment for him, so she decided to home-school.
“I felt like I could adapt and modify a curriculum in a way that could meet his needs at home and give him a better learning experience in the way he learns best,” Fox said.
At home, Cullen gets speech and language services twice a week and specialized academic instruction modified to meet his needs.
Schools across the state are having a hard time not only hiring but retaining teachers, especially those who work in special education.
As a former special education teacher herself, Fox says she understands the struggle.
“There are really large caseloads now because there is a shortage of teachers," she said. "Each student you have has an IEP (Individualized Education Program), accommodations, and modifications that need to be made to curriculum and there's just a really limited amount of time to do it all and there's not a lot of help.”
San Luis Obispo County special education teacher Carmen Frank knows this all too well.
“I've seen where two different classrooms have had to be combined because there wasn't a second teacher,” Frank said.
There are a few reasons for the shortage — an increase in students requiring special ed services, a high teacher turnover rate due to challenging work conditions, and lots of paperwork with limited resources, according to the San Luis Obispo County Office of Education.
“It's a difficult job trying to become a teacher. There’s a lot of things we have to do,” Frank said.
Enrollment is also up. According to the Pew Research Center, disabled students in the U.S. made up 15% of the national public school enrollment during the 2021-22 school year. That's up from 13% in 2010-11.
With over 500 special educators in SLO County and 700 in Santa Barbara County, both counties struggle with hiring and keeping special ed teachers.
So for now, Fox expects to continue homeschooling Cullen for a while.
“We're hoping to get him to a point where he can take care of a lot of his needs and communicate his needs and hopefully get him back into a school system at that point,” Cullen said.
