When it comes to serving students with disabilities, how are Catholic schools doing?

(OSV News) -- During the past school year, 6-year-old Aloysius Ford was a popular kindergartener at St. Patrick Catholic School in Tacoma, Washington, where friends give him high-fives in the hallways and vie to be his reading partner. His 8-year-old brother also attends the school, and his 4-year-old sister attends its pre-kindergarten program.

It was what the now rising first-grader's parents, experienced Catholic school educators Rachel and Nicholas Ford, had hoped for their family, even before they were parents. But Aloysius' diagnosis of Down syndrome five days after his birth made them wonder, at the time, whether it would be possible. After their initial thoughts of "woah, this is a big change in our lives," Rachel said, came the question of how Aloysius, who goes by "Alo," would be part of their Catholic education orbits.

"These are our communities. This is our work. This is what we're passionate about. This is our vocation," said Ford, a school counselor at Bellarmine Preparatory School in Tacoma. "How does this child and this story fit there? … We were very hopeful that it wouldn't be a barrier."

And for the Fords, it has not been. Rachel knows her experience as a licensed clinical social worker has helped her be a strong advocate for her children's needs, and Nicholas was St. Patrick's principal for a year before becoming the Archdiocese of Seattle's superintendent of Catholic schools in 2022. Rachel knows other families who have not found a place for their children with special needs in Catholic schools, which troubles her.

"Look at our mission statements," she said of Catholic schools. "Inclusion is not a new thing. It's not something we're adding. It's a natural extension of what already exists as mission."

Across the United States, the landscape of disability inclusion in Catholic schools ranges widely. There are some places -- including the Archdiocese of Seattle, which includes Tacoma -- that have taken deliberate steps to include more students with disabilities in their schools. In other places, families inquiring about Catholic education for a child with atypical learning needs may be told that the child would be better served elsewhere.

But, Catholic experts argue, Catholic schools may be the best place for children with special needs, because they root each child's identity not in achievement, but in being a child of God. But that attitude alone does not erase real hurdles, they acknowledge.

"There's a huge need now" for expanding disabilities inclusion in Catholic schools, said Colleen McCoy-Cejka, a board member of the National Catholic Partnership on Disability.

According to the National Catholic Board on Full Inclusion, a nonprofit organization that supports families and schools, around 2% of Catholic schools are inclusive. Meanwhile, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Catholic Education has identified serving students with special needs as a priority.

A "career educator" who has worked as a teacher, principal and assistant superintendent, McCoy-Cejka left a role with the National Catholic Educational Association in 2022 to go full-time with Inclusion Solutions, a small consulting company she founded in 2019 to help schools -- mostly Catholic -- better serve students with disabilities. Her company has worked with schools in 13 states, and with every Catholic school in the dioceses of Austin, Texas, and Tucson, Arizona.

Catholic education -- and especially the inclusion of students with disabilities -- is "my life, it's my background," said McCoy-Cejka, an executive committee member of the National Catholic Partnership on Disability, who lives in Arizona. "I'm also the parent of a child with autism. He's 20, but still my child."

In terms of allocating resources for disabilities inclusion, "we are far behind" public schools, she said. In the second half of the 20th century, many students with intellectual, developmental or physical disabilities "were counseled out" of attending Catholic schools, she said. Many were told they would be better served by public schools.

"Even if it was a high incidence disability, like dyslexia, you were kind of ushered out of the (Catholic) school," she said. But "in the 90s, we started to see a shift."

At that time, she said, Catholic schools started to offer specialized programs and teachers to help students with high-incidence disabilities, including kids with higher-functioning autism such as Asperger's syndrome. "But … it's few and far between to see schools that include kids with Down syndrome or significant developmental disabilities, especially elementary schools," she said. "So, yeah, we still have a long way to go."

The National Catholic Educational Association's 2024-2025 annual statistical report expanded its section on serving students with special needs and suggested that disability inclusion in Catholic schools is on the rise. It stated 75.5% of U.S. Catholic schools reported serving students with diagnosed disabilities, meaning "physical, emotional and learning disabilities that are accommodated in general education classrooms with or without special resource teachers."

Meanwhile, NCEA's data show 9.1% of students in Catholic schools have a diagnosed disability, up from 7.8% last year. NECA said this uptick reflects that "Catholic schools are increasingly prioritizing the inclusion of students with disabilities" and there is a "growing commitment to serving students with atypical learning needs."

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and "specific learning disabilities" were the most reported disabilities.

The question of funding looms large over schools' decisions to meet more diverse learning needs, experts said. Greater inclusion may require teacher training, new equipment or specialized staff. And in many schools, those supports have been a deterrent. In 1996, parents of children with special needs in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri, banded together to create the FIRE Foundation, which raises funds to make grants to local, partnering Catholic schools. The organization includes 11 affiliates, with other dioceses exploring the model.

Many school communities often do not realize how many students with diverse learning needs are already in their classrooms, said Molly Fisher, FIRE Foundation's executive director. "Sometimes it's about giving them an 'ah-ha moment' and saying, 'You know, you're already doing some of these things,'" she said of teachers.

But, Fisher acknowledged, change can be scary. "We had a school that, for the first time, is going to have a student with some very severe disabilities and a feeding tube in a wheelchair," she said. "They're doing it. He's going to attend that school next fall. They're scared, and they're like, 'We want to do this right. We don't want to start down this path and not do it well and not have it go well for this family. They're parishioners, they're important to us.'"

FIRE Foundation was able to connect that school's leaders to three other schools that have been successful in serving students with similar needs. "What I love is they're doing it, and they're not letting the fear stop them," she said of the school.

While funding is key, successfully expanding disability inclusion requires that mindset shift, said Michael Boyle, executive director of the Herrmann Center for Innovative CatholicEducation at St. Louis University in St. Louis.

"People want to point to money, that money is the thing, but I would argue that it's not the money" that prevents Catholic schools from serving students with disabilities, he told OSV News. "It's more of the dispositions. I think those school leaders that have made the decision to live their Catholic identity and reach to the margins, find ways, regardless of whatever the financial resources are, to be able to create paths to educate students with disabilities."

Boyle began his career as a public school psychologist and became the director of special education for a public school district before moving into Catholic education. He began creating systems rooted in evidence-based practices to help Catholic schools address the needs of students with disabilities. Among the roadblocks to disabilities inclusion he sees is Catholic teacher formation, he said.

Most universities educate teachers for public schools, where the focus is on "access and equity," which center on legality and individual rights, he said. That differs from a Catholic approach where "every human is unique and unrepeatable."

"When we talk about inclusionary or special education approaches in Catholic schools, it's not only about access and equity for the student with a disability, but we have to talk about what it means for the typically developing students," he said. "Do we believe that, as our church says, that a person with a disability is not only a recipient of catechesis, it's also its agent? Do we allow for typically developing kids to really be able to find Christ in that other person?"

While some public charter schools and other specialty schools are designed specifically for kids with disabilities, "that's not inclusion," McCoy-Cejka said. "I'm actually an advocate for inclusion, not for separate schools and separate programs."

She pointed to research that shows that when kids with disabilities are included with more neurotypical peers, it's not only more beneficial to them -- developmentally, academically, socially, in every way -- but it's actually more beneficial for everyone in the community," she said. "It's really a myth that having students with disabilities in regular education classrooms is a disservice to neurotypical kids."

In Catholic schools, inclusion takes on a theological component rooted in each child created in the image and likeness of God.

"We talk a good game in Catholic school about virtues and the way we serve our brothers and sisters, and then we stop at 'and everyone is welcome here' and 'we're going to create places of belonging for all of you,' because we don't," McCoy-Cejka said. "So it's like, either we're going to actually live our faith and do what we're supposed to be doing and invite everybody in, or we're not going to do that, and then it's kind of hypocritical."

Currently, U.S. Catholic schools have a patchwork of inclusion policies. That's in part because schools are supported by, but not typically run by, diocesan school superintendents, who are unlikely to mandate a policy without providing the financial resources to implement it, McCoy-Cejka said.

"You have all of these Catholic schools that have varying budgets and incomes, and donors that may or may not have the ability to get all of those resources," she said. "Then what it becomes is this imbalance of the haves and have-nots, and sometimes the haves, that's not what they want to spend their money on. … They don't want to be 'the special education school.' It's very complicated. It's very complex."

Some dioceses and Catholic schools are emerging as models for disabilities inclusion, with important strides being made around the country, including in the dioceses of Arlington, Virginia; Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana; and the Archdiocese of Denver.

In 2013, the Archdiocese of Seattle began prioritizing reaching what it terms "diversified learners" across its 74 elementary and high schools, which collectively enroll around 21,600 students. An executive committee with regional meetings help educators share best practices, identify resources and avoid being "siloed," said Connor Geraghty, assistant superintendent for mission and Catholic identity in the archdiocese's Office for Catholic Schools. Through an initiative called GRACE, each school designates two "teacher-leaders" annually who work with the committee, are trained on diversified learning practices and help implement those practices in their school.

The archdiocese has meanwhile sought outside partnerships, including a relationship with the University of Washington's hearing center. And, in Washington state's Pierce County, which includes the Ford children's Tacoma school, Catholic schools recently received a local grant to work with McCoy-Cejka's Inclusion Solutions team.

"It all starts with the commitment from the school leadership and from administration," Geraghty said.

For schools exploring inclusion, Boyle has developed a number of resources available through the National Catholic Educational Association, a professional educational membership association for Catholic educators. Meanwhile, the Herrmann Center convened experts for an inclusion-focused conference at St. Louis University in May, and this fall, the university is launching an inclusive leadership program for Catholic schools leaders.

Catholic experts on disabilities inclusion are also watching for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to release a new pastoral statement on persons with disabilities, a long-awaited update to their 1978 document.

In April, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis moved forward with its plans to better welcome students with disabilities in its 89 Catholic schools by forming a 17-member commission of educators, parents of children with disabilities and disabilities experts to examine local needs and make recommendations in the fall to Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda.

"This has been an area of deep pastoral concern for the archdiocese," Jason Slattery, the archdiocese's director of Catholic education and superintendent of schools, told OSV News.

Archdiocesan school officials highlighted the commission and their vision for greater inclusivity during an April 4 convocation with school leaders and pastors. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with educators sharing ideas of what has worked in their schools, and how they have navigated funding needs, teacher training and adding support staff. One school leader said that making inclusion-based changes focused initially on a few students ultimately benefited the school as a whole.

Despite obstacles, Catholic education leaders believe widespread change is possible -- and necessary.

"We can do it," McCoy-Cejka said. "You just have to put some strategy behind what you're doing and decide whether or not you really are going to fulfill the Catholic mission of your ministry and let the children come. You have to make that decision, and then you have to make it happen."