Higher Ed Unions, Student Unions, and For-Profit College Borrowers Unite Against Trump’s “Higher Education Compact”
Several higher education unions, student unions, and former students of for-profit colleges are organizing in opposition to the Trump administration’s proposed “higher education compact”—a plan heavily shaped and promoted by private-equity billionaire Marc Rowan.
Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management, has played a central role in advancing this proposal. Apollo owns several predatory for-profit institutions, including the University of Phoenix, one of the most notorious offenders in the industry.
In a recentNew York Times op-ed, Rowan took public credit for the compact, writing:
“The evidence is overwhelming: outrageous costs and prolonged indebtedness for students; poor outcomes, with too many students left unable to find meaningful work after graduating…”
Yet, under Rowan’s leadership, the University of Phoenix has become the largest source of Borrower Defense claims of any for-profit school, with more than 100,000 pending applications as of July 2025. Borrower Defense is a federal protection that allows students to seek loan forgiveness if their school misled them or violated state or federal law.
The University of Phoenix has faced multiple law enforcement investigations for deceptive recruiting tactics that targeted veterans, service members, and working adults nationwide. The school’s misconduct led to a $191 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for falsely claiming partnerships with major employers. More recently, the university attempted to portray itself as a public institution while seeking to sell to two states—both of which ultimately rejected the deal after public backlash.
While Rowan’s personal fortune exceeds $7 billion, borrowers continue to shoulder crushing debt from degrees that delivered little to no value. His leadership has fueled a system that profits from student harm—and now, through this compact, he is setting his sights on reshaping major public universities.
We refuse to stay silent. Borrowers, students, and educators are standing together to demand accountability and defend higher education from predatory perpetrators.
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Dive Brief:
New York City sued the U.S. Department of Education on Oct. 15 over the federal agency’s decision in September to terminate $47 million in federal funding for 19 magnet schools. The department severed the nation’s largest school system from discretionary grant funding after the agency found the New York City Department of Education violated Title IX when it set transgender-inclusive bathroom and locker room policies.
In an unprecedented measure, the Education Department, in a Sept. 16 letter, gave New York City Public Schools a short timeline of just three days to agree to overhaul its Title IX policies in response to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights decision.
The lawsuit seeks to stop the defunding of the Magnet School Assistance Program, meant to help with desegregation and that primarily serves low-income Hispanic and Black students. OCR said in its letter to New York City that funding the grant is “no longer in the best interest of the Federal Government.”
Dive Insight:
Abruptly discontinuing Magnet School Assistance Program funds threw “into chaos and uncertainty” the future of the magnet schools as well as the 7,700 students who attend them, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit claims the cuts have also led to “the complete disruption” of the magnet schools’ specialized programming.
The Trump administration already sought to zero-out the program entirely in its proposed fiscal year 2026 budget. That, however, would require congressional approval.
“With this lawsuit, New York City Public Schools is fighting back against the U.S. Department of Education’s attack on our magnet program and transgender and gender expansive students,” said New York City Public Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos in an Oct. 16 statement. “U.S. DOE’s threat to cut off tens of millions of dollars in magnet funding unless we cancelled our protections for transgender and gender expansive students is contrary to federal, state, and local law, and, just as importantly, our values as New York City Public Schools.”
Districts are increasingly opting to take the administration to court in response to its federal funding threats, rather than comply with the department’s demands. Those demands often include adopting “biology-based” definitions of “male” and “female,” and in some places run against state law that require inclusive policies for transgender people.
Two large Northern Virginia school districts, for example, were among the first to sue the administration in late August after the agency decided the districts violated Title IX by allowing transgender students access to sex-segregated facilities aligning with their identities. Fairfax County and Arlington County school boards collectively have on the line $190 million, which the districts use to fund school meals for low-income students; services to students with disabilities, homeless students; and English learners, among other activities.
In these cases, the administration issued Title IX violations after very brief investigations, and provided recipients with 10 or less days to respond — as opposed to the usual 90-day timeline.
New Jersey City University has signed a definitive agreement to become part of nearby Kean University, the institutions announced in a joint press release Wednesday.
The agreement — approved unanimously by both universities’ governing boards — is subject to accreditor approval by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education as well as by state and federal regulators. Officials expect the merger to be completed by July.
Once complete, NJCU will become “Kean Jersey City.” The two public institutions signed a letter of intent to merge in May after recent years of financial and governance turmoil at NJCU.
Under the merger terms, Kean will take on NJCU’s assets and liabilities. It will also honor NJCU students’ academic credits, need-based financial aid commitments and merit scholarships if they transition to Kean. Once they do, students will pay Kean’s tuition and fee prices, which amounted to $15,300 for full-time undergraduate students in the 2025-26 academic year.
A steering committee will oversee the next steps of the merger, including the complicated work of academic and operational integration, as well as navigating regulatory and governmental reviews.
As part of the agreement, NJCU students will gain access to Kean’s student services, clubs and organizations after the merger.
As for student sports, the agreement establishes a separate advisory committee to look at athletic programming at NJCU post-merger. The university currently competes in more than a dozen NCAA Division III sports, including men’s basketball, women’s softball, and men’s and women’s volleyball and track and field. The committee is expected to make its final report to Kean’s president in December.
As part of the fiscal 2026 state budget, New Jersey lawmakers lined up $10 million for Kean to help fund its merger with NJCU. The money is to help with feasibility studies, planning and legal work as the two institutions integrate.
NJCU’s board voted in March to pursue a merger with Kean. The move came after years of financial distress followed by recovery and turnaround work led by Andrés Acebo, who joined NJCU as interim president in January 2023 before being named permanent president this September.
About six months prior to his appointment, NJCU had declared a financial emergency. Declining enrollment and funding shortfalls led the university to increase scholarships, add academic programs, and spend more on student services and real estate expansions. Those moves failed to turn enrollment around and “instead served to dramatically increase NJCU’s expenses,” New Jersey’s comptroller said in 2023.
But by fall 2024, Fitch Ratings lifted the NJCU’s outlook from negative to stable, with analysts citing “significant progress toward achieving fiscal balance despite continued pressure on student enrollment.” The improvements were the product of both state aid and cost cutting at the institution.
In fall 2023, NJCU’s student headcount stood at 5,833 students, down 27% from 2018 levels, according to federal data. By fall 2024, the university’s total enrollment fell another 6% year over year, though first-year, full-time students grew by 3% and transfers surged 28%, NJ.com reported.
In a statement Wednesday, Acebo said the merger with Kean represents “a significant milestone in a process designed to secure the future of our institution and the communities we have proudly served for nearly a century.”
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Last month’s mass shooting in New York City, like every mass shooting incident, is yet another wake-up call to education leaders and school safety experts about how to better protect their buildings and therefore the students and staff inside. This story, from our sister publication Facilities Dive, provides insight into how commercial facilities operators are responding, with takeaways for the education sector.
The mass shooting that took place in Midtown Manhattan last month, which resulted in the deaths of a police officer and three others, puts a spotlight on how building operators can protect occupants in the face of armed assailants. The incident makes clear that access control is a critical factor, but not all access systems are the same, security specialists say.
Prior to the assailant entering the office skyscraper’s lobby and beginning his attack, cameras at 345 Park Avenue flagged the approaching gunman as a potential threat, Reuters reported.
A still frame of closed circuit television footage the outlet obtained, time-stamped just over a minute before police received the first emergency call about the shooting, shows a man holding an assault-style rifle at his side. The photo shows a yellow box around the figure generated by the building’s security system, which analyzes live video feeds for threats requiring instant action. The system was supposed to alert guards at the front security desk, a former federal official told Reuters.
Protecting building occupants in the case of an emergency starts with access control, especially in the case of an active shooter, according to Josh Sullivan, chief operating officer of the ALIVE Active Shooter Survival Training Program, which shares best practices with organizations on responding to threats.
“Access control and the physical security measures in place can prevent a lot of things from happening in the first place,” Sullivan said. “There are multiple ways. No. 1, they have systems out there, like the one that was in place [at 345 Park Avenue] that just didn’t get used properly.”
Software is available that can connect to cameras, identify threats and lock down access controls, doors and other systems, Sullivan said. The software can also notify local authorities or call 911.
“Those things save valuable time,” he said. In some cases, the software automatically provides the security system login to the emergency dispatchers, who can provide it to the first responders, giving them “access to the camera’s live feed, more plans and to where things are in the building.”
The technology is only part of the equation, however, Matthew Dumpert, global leader of enterprise security risk management at financial and risk advisory firm Kroll, told Reuters. “It takes significant resources, alarms to notify people [and] training to recognize it,” he said.
Considering the rate of active threats today, allocating those resources and having a plan is increasingly important for facilities managers, Sullivan says.
The OSHA general duty clause says that employers must take reasonable actions to ensure the safety of employees or guests from recognized hazards that are “likely to cause death or serious physical harm.”
“An active shooter, unfortunately in today’s world, is a common hazard,” Sullivan said. “It’s No. 3 overall in any workplace as the cause of injury or death. In healthcare and education, it’s No. 1.”
Stagnant technologies leave gaps in security
Many organizations use access control technologies that are outdated, improperly configured or insecure, according to Tina D’Agostin, CEO of Alcatraz AI, a company that provides facial authentication hardware and software solutions to enterprise clients.
“When you look at what is deployed today, 90% of it is still badges and proximity cards,” said D’Agostin, noting that the first access card technology was released in 1983, with little innovation since. “Imagine using a TV or phone from the ’80s. That’s essentially what we’re doing in access control. In no other area of life would that be allowed to happen.”
Among their weaknesses, these cards can be easily cloned, she said.
Facility managers might want to look at other technologies, including mobile technologies and biometric-based systems, she said. Each has its pros and cons, she said.
Among their cons, mobile devices are carried, just like an access card, so they can be lost, and using biometrics requires a trade-off between friction and convenience, she said.
Separate from these issues is the problem of tailgating, where unknown actors follow authorized employees or occupants into a space, bypassing access controls.
Tailgating is the No. 1 cause of a security breach, and it’s usually not very elaborate, D’Agostin said. “It’s a courteous human being holding the door open for someone who is unauthorized that goes in to be a bad actor,” she said. “All the other technologies do not protect against that. If you have a technology at the door, and someone holds that door open, the whole system is defeated.”
Going forward, building operators should treat active shooter threats as seriously as they do fire evacuations and other safety matters, Sullivan said.
“If they even touch on [active threat situations] at all, it’s very minimal,” he said. “Most companies out there don’t touch on — or don’t touch enough on — the active threat space. The workplace violence space needs to really [be taken] seriously.
When then-16-year old Mariam Kaba won $1 million through the Transform Rhode Island scholarship three years ago, she saw it as her opportunity to create the change she wanted to see in her nearly 45,000-person community of Woonsocket.
“I don’t see much positive representation from our community all the time,” Kaba said. “I was thinking ‘my scholarship won’t get picked.’ But it did … and I was able to bring something so big to my community, a community that already doesn’t have the most funding in the world.”
Kaba’s investments resulted in a number of youth-centered spaces and opportunities popping up across the city, including 120 calm corners in elementary classrooms to support students’ sensory functions, new physical education equipment for all Woonsocket elementary schools, job fairs, hundreds of donated books, and field trips to local colleges & universities, among others.
Kaba, who is now a rising sophomore at Northeastern University, describes the experience of winning the scholarship as surreal.
“It didn’t occur to me that I was the last person standing and I won $1 million,” Kaba said. “But when I won, the first thing I thought was, ‘OK, let’s get to work. I’m given this opportunity to help improve my community. What steps can I take? And when does the groundwork start happening?’”
When a teen leads, adults follow
Bringing Kaba’s vision to life meant working alongside adults with experience in project management and community engagement while keeping up with her student life at Woonsocket High School.
“In high school, I managed both classwork and extracurriculars like student council, being a peer mentor and participating in Future Business Leaders of America,” Kaba said. “Balancing those things with my work with the scholarship came easy to me.”
Kaba partnered with community organizations across the state like nonprofit Leadership Rhode Island. This collaboration helped lay out a roadmap for Kaba’s proposal, manage the scholarship funds and coordinate meetings with community leaders.
The winning student also sits on the board of the Papitto Opportunity Connection Foundation for a year. This provides an opportunity for them to build their network and connect with leaders in Rhode Island.
High schoolers can make a difference through spaces and support like this, Kaba said, and also advises teens interested in engaging with their community to “not be afraid to start off small.”
This “small” gesture, Kaba added, can be as simple as gathering a group of friends to organize a community cleanup or starting a school club or Instagram to advocate for something they’re passionate about.
“Starting off small is going to give you those steps to leading these big impactful projects,” Kaba said.
The feedback Kaba received on her community investments, primarily from peers, community members and teachers in Woonsocket, was overwhelmingly positive.
“People told me, ‘I was able to go to this job fair and I got connected to this job,’ or, ‘I’m going to the Harbour Youth Center to get items from the food pantry you created and it’s been helping my family a lot,’” Kaba said. “Community organizations reached out to me to let me know they would love to find a way to work together and do their part to take action too.”
City College of San Francisco announced last week that it had hired a new chancellor—but never voted to approve the candidate and later deleted the news release, leaving the process in limbo.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that City College posted a news release on Tuesday announcing that it had selected Carlos O. Cortez as its next chancellor, pending approval at a Board of Trustees meeting on Thursday. However, the board spent several hours in a closed executive session before ultimately deciding not to make a decision on the candidate.
Trustees did not explain their inaction on the search, according to a review of the meeting. The board agenda shows trustees were also set to consider approval of a contract for Cortez, with an annual base salary of $350,000, but removed that action item after punting on the search.
Multiple speakers at the meeting expressed support for Cortez.
In the Tuesday news release that was later deleted, Anita Martinez, the Board of Trustees president, lauded the candidate for his “proven track record of success in academic innovation, fundraising, student success, and community engagement.”
Cortez was previously chancellor of the San Diego Community College District from July 2021 to May 2023 before he stepped down suddenly, a move he attributed to the need to take care of his ailing parents in Florida. Since then he has emerged as a finalist for six jobs at the chancellor or president level, including SFCC. Five of those jobs were in California and one was in Wisconsin.
The San Francisco Chronicle also reported that Cortez was arrested in Florida on suspicion of driving under the influence in January 2024 and later pleaded no contest to reckless driving. Cortez told the newspaper the charge was “due to a mixture of prescription medicine.”
Cortez told the San Francisco Chronicle last week that he didn’t know where his candidacy stands. He did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed sent via LinkedIn on Monday.
City College officials also did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.
This month marks one year since Salt Lake City clocked possibly the shortest public comment in city council history when police removed activist Jenna Martin after only 20 seconds of speaking that began, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Martin, who was wearing a keffiyeh pinned in the front like a shawl, then accused Mayor Erin Mendenhall of having police arrest local pro-Palestinian activist Michael Valentine on multiple occasions for “the most bullshit reasons.”
The council promptly ejected Martin, who could hardly be described as causing any type of disturbance given that she only had the floor for 20 seconds and her comments were entirely relevant to matters of public concern. But apparently, the council did not like people cursing in front of the mayor.
On Aug. 14, 2024, FIRE wrote the council, explaining that the First Amendment protects the public’s right to comment on matters related to the city and its leaders, even if the commentary is less than “respectful,” so long as the speaker is not disrupting the meeting. Pointed criticism is not the same as disruption.
Mandating respectful discourse is an example of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination because the city is sure to enforce the rule only against criticism, not praise. It’s also vague because what qualifies as “respectful” is undefined, constitutes a matter of opinion, and falls to the complete discretion of the same elected officials who are often the subject of that very criticism. The law recognizes that you cannot have the fox guarding the hen house.
Although not pertinent to Martin’s case, FIRE also warned the council that its unqualified ban on “discriminatory” language is unconstitutional for the same reasons. After FIRE sent a second letter on Oct. 7, a city attorney acknowledged the council had no basis to eject Martin, confirmed the policy had been revised to comply with the First Amendment, and noted that the city implemented “First Amendment training after receiving FIRE’s notice and plans to continue to reinforce that training.”
Instead of vague and viewpoint-discriminatory categorical prohibitions on speech, the policy now encourages speakers to “avoid … intimidating or discriminatory language,” “profanity,” “threats,” and “personal attacks.” The policy also now explicitly acknowledges that speakers have free speech rights that the council cannot infringe upon:
The Council respects constitutional rights to free speech. It recognizes that some comments may be legally permissible under the U.S. and Utah Constitutions or other federal and state laws. However, the Council reserves the right to address behavior that creates disruption or safety risk or constitutes unprotected speech (such as true threats).
Salt Lake City’s previous decorum policy highlights a common misconception among elected officials across the country regarding the contours of the First Amendment. While they may encourage the public to be respectful, they absolutely cannot censor or eject a speaker on these grounds. The mere use of profanity does not justify censorship either. FIRE will watch to ensure the city actually enforces the new policy in line with the First Amendment.
Salt Lake City Council meetings are, at minimum, limited public forums. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that in limited public forums, towns can restrict speech only in a reasonable and viewpoint-neutral manner. For instance, Salt Lake City can decide when the public may speak, and may require comments to be relevant to city affairs — but it cannot cut off the public simply for using profanity or accusing the mayor of an abuse of power.
The First Amendment protects not just the content of speech but also the tone and intensity of that speech — an essential part of how people communicate opinions and ideas.
If Martin can’t hold the mayor accountable for a perceived abuse of authority at a city meeting, where can she voice her grievances? City meetings are supposed to encourage civic engagement and inform the public. Yet FIRE has had to repeatedly hold local government officials accountable for censoring public comments beyond constitutional bounds. Fortunately, we’ve recently secured a couple victories on that front.
We commend Salt Lake City for taking corrective action and realizing that salty speech is not a threat to democracy, but a sign of its good health.
FIRE defends the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — no matter their views. FIRE’s proven approach to advocacy has vindicated the rights of thousands of Americans through targeted media campaigns, correspondence with officials, open records requests, litigation, and other advocacy tactics. If you think your rights have been violated, submit your case to FIRE today.
Tuesday Willaredt knew her older daughter, Vivienne, struggled to read.
She tentatively accepted teachers’ reassurances and the obvious explanations: Remote learning during the COVID pandemic was disruptive. Returning to school was chaotic. All students were behind.
Annie Watson was concerned about her son Henry’s performance in kindergarten and first grade.
But his teachers weren’t. There was a pandemic, they said. He was a boy. Henry wasn’t really lagging behind his classmates.
So Willaredt and Watson kept asking questions. So did Tricia McGhee, Abbey and Aaron Dunbar, Lisa Salazar Tingey, Kelly Reardon and T.C. — all parents who spoke to The Beacon about getting support for their kids’ reading struggles. (The Beacon is identifying T.C. by her initials because she works for a school district.)
After schools gave reassurances or rationalizations or denied services, the parents kept raising concerns, seeking advice from teachers and fellow parents and pursuing formal evaluations.
Eventually, they all reached the same conclusion. Their children had dyslexia, a disability that makes it more difficult to learn to read and write well.
They also realized something else. Schools — whether private, public, charter or homeschool — aren’t always equipped to immediately catch the problem and provide enough support, even though some estimates suggest up to 20% of students have dyslexia symptoms.
Instead, the parents took matters into their own hands, seeking diagnoses, advocating for extra help and accommodations, moving to another district or paying for tutoring or private school.
“You get a diagnosis from a medical professional,” Salazar Tingey said. “Then you go to the school and you’re like, ‘This is what they say is best practice for this diagnosis.’ And they’re like, ‘That’s not our policy.’”
Recognizing dyslexia
It wasn’t until Vivienne, now 12, was in sixth grade and struggling to keep up at Lincoln College Preparatory Academy Middle School that a teacher said the word “dyslexic” to Willaredt.
After the Kansas City Public Schools teacher mentioned dyslexia, Willaredt made an appointment at Children’s Mercy Hospital, waited months for an opening and ultimately confirmed that Vivienne had dyslexia. Her younger daughter Harlow, age 9, was diagnosed even more recently.
Willaredt now wonders if any of Vivienne’s other teachers suspected the truth. A reading specialist at Vivienne’s former charter school had said her primary problem was focus.
“There’s this whole bureaucracy within the school,” she said. “They don’t want to call it what it is, necessarily, because then the school’s on the hook” to provide services.
Missouri law requires that students in grades K-3 be screened for possible dyslexia, said Shain Bergan, public relations coordinator for Kansas City Public Schools. If they’re flagged, the school notifies their parents and makes a reading success plan.
Schools don’t formally diagnose students, though. That’s something families can pursue — and pay for — on their own by consulting a health professional.
“Missouri teachers, by and large, aren’t specially trained to identify or address dyslexia in particular,” Bergan wrote in an email. “They identify and address specific reading issues students are having, whether it’s because the student has a specific condition or not.”
Bergan later added that KCPS early elementary and reading-specific teachers complete state-mandated dyslexia training through LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling), an intensive teacher education program that emphasizes scientific research about how students learn to read.
In an emailed statement, the North Kansas City School District said staff members “receive training on dyslexia and classroom strategies,” and the district uses a screening “to help identify students who may need additional reading support.”
Public school students with dyslexia or another disability might be eligible for an individualized education program, or IEP, a formal plan for providing special education services which comes with federal civil rights protections.
But a diagnosis isn’t enough to prove eligibility, and developing an IEP can be a lengthy process that requires strong advocacy from parents. Students who don’t qualify might be eligible for accommodations through a 504 plan.
A spokesperson for Olathe Public Schools said in an email that the district’s teachers participate in state-mandated dyslexia training but don’t diagnose dyslexia.
The district takes outside diagnoses into consideration, but “if a student is making progress in the general education curriculum and able to access it, then the diagnosis alone would not necessarily demonstrate the need for support and services.”
Why dyslexia gets missed
Some families find that teachers dismiss valid concerns, delaying diagnoses that parents see as key to getting proper support.
Salazar Tingey alerted teachers that her son, Cal, was struggling with reading compared to his older siblings. Each year, starting in an Iowa preschool and continuing after the family moved to the North Kansas City School District, she heard his issues were common and unconcerning.
She felt validated when a Sunday school teacher suggested dyslexia and recommended talking to a pediatrician.
After Cal was diagnosed, Salazar Tingey asked his second grade teacher about the methods she used to teach dyslexic kids. She didn’t expect to hear, “That’s not really my specialty.”
“I guess I thought that if you’re a K-3 teacher, that would be pretty standard,” she said. “I don’t think (dyslexia is) that uncommon.”
Louise Spear-Swerling, a professor emerita in the Department of Special Education at Southern Connecticut State University, said estimates of the prevalence of dyslexia range from as high as 20% to as low as 3 to 5%. She thinks 5 to 10% is reasonable.
“That means that the typical general education teacher, if you have a class of, say, 20 students, will see at least one child with dyslexia every year — year after year after year,” she said.
Early intervention is key, Spear-Swerling said, but it doesn’t always happen.
To receive services for dyslexia under federal special education guidelines, students must have difficulty reading that isn’t primarily caused by something like poor instruction, another disability, economic disadvantage or being an English language learner, she said. And schools sometimes misidentify the primary cause.
Tricia McGhee, director of communications at Revolucion Educativa, a nonprofit that offers advocacy and support for Latinx families, has had that experience.
She said her daughter’s charter school flagged her issues with reading but said it was “typical that all bilingual or bicultural children were behind,” McGhee said. That didn’t sound right because her older child was grade levels ahead in reading.
“The first thing they told me is, ‘You just need to make sure to be reading to her every night,’” McGhee said. “I was like, ‘Thanks. I’ve done that every day since she was born.’”
McGhee is now a member of the KCPS school board. But she spoke to The Beacon before being elected, in her capacity as a parent and RevEd staff member.
Dyslexia also may not stand out among classmates who are struggling for various reasons.
Annie Watson, whose professional expertise is in early childhood education planning, strategy and advocacy, said some of Henry’s peers lacked access to high-quality early education and weren’t prepared for kindergarten.
“His handwriting is so poor,” she remembers telling his teacher.
The teacher assured her that Henry’s handwriting was among the best in the class.
“Let’s not compare against his peers,” Watson said. “Let’s compare against grade level standards.”
Receiving services for dyslexia
Watson cried during a Park Hill parent teacher conference when a reading interventionist said she was certified in Orton-Gillingham, an instruction method designed for students with dyslexia.
In an ideal world, Watson said, the mere mention of a teaching approach wouldn’t be so fraught.
Annie Watson with her son Henry, 11, before track practice. Henry went through intensive tutoring to help him learn to read well after his original school didn’t provide the services he needed. (Vaughn Wheat/The Beacon)
“I would love to know less about this,” she said. “My goal is to read books with my kids every night, right? I would love for that to just be my role, and that hasn’t been it.”
By that point, Watson’s family had spent tens of thousands of dollars on Orton-Gillingham tutoring for Henry through Horizon Academy, a private school focused on students with dyslexia and similar disabilities.
They had ultimately moved to the Park Hill district, not convinced that charter schools or KCPS had enough resources to provide support.
“I felt so guilty in his charter school,” Watson said. “There were so many kids who needed so many things, and so it was hard to advocate for my kid who was writing better than a lot of the kids.”
So the idea that Henry’s little sister — who doesn’t have dyslexia — could get a bit of expert attention seamlessly, during the school day and without any special advocacy, made Watson emotional.
“Henry will never get that,” she said.
While Watson wonders if public schools in Park Hill could have been enough for Henry had he started there earlier, some families sought help outside of the public school system entirely.
The Reardon and Dunbar families, who eventually received some services from their respective schools, each enrolled a child full-time in Horizon Academy after deciding the services weren’t enough.
Kelly Reardon said her daughter originally went to a private Catholic school.
“With one teacher and 26 kids, there’s just no way that she would have gotten the individualized intervention that she needed,” she said.
The Dunbars’ son, Henry, had been homeschooled and attended an Olathe public school part-time.
Abbey Dunbar said Henry didn’t qualify for services from the Olathe district in kindergarten, but did when the family asked again in second grade. Henry has a diagnosed severe auditory processing disorder, and his family considers him to have dyslexia based on testing at school.
She said the school accommodated the family’s part-time schedule and the special education services they gave to Henry genuinely helped.
“I never want to undercut what they gave and what they did for him, because we did see progress,” Dunbar said. “But we need eight hours a day (of support), and I don’t think that’s something they could even begin to give in public school. There’s so many kids.”
T.C., whose daughters attended KCPS when they were diagnosed, also decided she couldn’t rely on services provided by the school alone. One daughter didn’t qualify for an IEP because the school said she was already achieving as expected for her IQ level.
In the end, T.C. said, her daughters did get the support they needed “because I paid for it.”
She found a tutor who was relatively inexpensive because she was finishing her degree. But at $55 per child, per session once or twice a week, tutoring still ate into the family’s budget and her children’s free time.
“If they were learning what they needed to learn at school… we wouldn’t have had that financial burden,” she said. Tutoring also meant “our kids couldn’t participate in other activities outside of school.”
Support and accommodations
Tuesday Willaredt is still figuring out exactly what support Vivienne needs.
Options include a KCPS neighborhood school, a charter school that extends through eighth grade or moving to another district. Outside tutoring will likely be part of the picture regardless.
Willaredt is worried that her kids aren’t being set up to love learning.
Vivienne, 12 (left), and Harlow, 9, were both diagnosed with dyslexia earlier this year. (Vaughn Wheat/The Beacon)
“That’s where I get frustrated,” she said. “If interventions were put in earlier — meaning the tutoring that I would have had to seek — these frustrations and sadness that is their experience around learning wouldn’t have happened.”
When Lisa Salazar Tingey brought Cal’s dyslexia diagnosis to his school, he didn’t qualify for an IEP. But his classroom teacher offered extra support that seemed to catch him up.
In following years, though, Salazar Tingey has worried about Cal’s performance stagnating and considered formalizing his accommodations through a 504 plan.
She wants Cal, now 10, to be able to use things like voice to text or audiobooks if his dyslexia is limiting his intellectual exploration.
Before his diagnosis, she and her husband noticed that every school writing assignment Cal brought home was about volcanoes, even though “it wasn’t like he was a kid who was always talking about volcanoes.”
When he was diagnosed, they learned that sticking to familiar topics can be a side effect of dyslexia.
“He knows how to spell magma and lava and volcano, and so that’s all he ever wrote about,” Salazar Tingey said. “That’s sad to me. I want him to feel that the world is wide open, that he can read about anything.”
New Jersey City Universityis set to become part of nearbyKean Universityafter the two public institutions signed a letter of intent Thursday to combine by June 2026. The merger would be subject to accreditor and regulatory approvals.
Under the plan, Kean would assume NJCU’s assets and liabilities and operate the institution as “Kean Jersey City,” the universities said.Executive oversight would fall to Kean’s president, who would appoint a chancellor to lead Kean Jersey City.NJCU will have some representation on Kean’s board of trustees, per the letter.
NJCU signaled in March that it planned to pursue a merger with Kean after past years of budgetary struggles and a directive from a state-appointed monitor to find a financial partner.
Dive Insight:
In Thursday’s release, Kean and NJCU said that their combination would “preserve NJCU’s mission of serving first-generation, adult and historically underserved students while advancing Kean’s role as the state’s urban research university and a newly designated R2 research university.”
Luke Visconti, chair of the NJCU’s trustee board, said Thursday’s letter of intent “provides an important framework for the detailed discussions that will follow.”
Still to come are full due diligence, a definitive agreementand a detailed outline for combining the two public universities. That process will be collaborative and “rooted in student and community engagement” so that the merger with Kean celebrates the two “distinct cultures” of the universities, NJCU Interim President Andrés Acebo said in a statement.
According to the institutions, an integration planning team with representatives from both universities will begin work immediately,coordinating with New Jersey’s state higher education office. The two universities will develop shared services agreements to streamline operations and boost student success, officials said.
Kean is the larger institution of the two, with 13,352 students in fall 2023,which was down by 5% from five years prior, according to federal data.NJCU, meanwhile, had 5,833 students in 2023,down 10.8% from the year beforeand 27% lower than 2018 levels.
NJCU’s enrollment declines have contributed to its recent financial turmoil. A little over three years ago, the university declared a full-blown financial crisis after heavy spending on real estate expansions, student services and scholarshipsfailed to reverse its enrollment slowdown and enlarged the university’s expenses.
In 2023, the state comptroller’s office issued a scathing report that accused administratorsof failing to fully inform NJCU’s board of the dire financial state, and which also suggested the university “likely” broke federal law by using emergency pandemic funding for an existing scholarship program.
Since then, Acebo has taken the reins, and the state has appointed a monitor to help ensure NJCU rights its finances and operations. State lawmakers also provided $17 million in critical stabilization funding to the institution.
In November, Fitch Ratings lifted the university’s outlook from negative to stable, citing “significant progress toward achieving fiscal balance despite continued pressure on student enrollment.”
