Preschool classroom (Photo: Getty Images)
There is a version of N.C. Pre-K enrollment that takes twenty minutes. You fill out a form, submit a birth certificate, and your child starts school in the fall.
That version does not exist for families like mine.
My daughter has Level II autism and a speech delay. In North Carolina, N.C. Pre-K closes enrollment when funding runs out. Priority is based on financial need. There is no guaranteed access for children with disabilities. What most families do not know is that this does not override federal law. Under IDEA, children with disabilities ages three to five have a legal right to early childhood special education services regardless of what the state budget allows.
I had to research this myself, cite it by statute, and walk into a school administrator’s office to explain it. They acknowledged the law. They still moved slowly.
This is happening in a state that ranked dead last, 51st out of 51, in school funding effort according to the Education Law Center’s Making the Grade 2025 report, spending $5,600 less per student than the national average. In July 2025, the federal government froze more than $165 million in N.C. school funding without warning. When those funds disappear, the students who depend on them most feel it first.
Meanwhile, 60 percent of North Carolina three and four year olds were not enrolled in any formal education setting between 2019 and 2023. For children with autism and developmental disabilities, missing early intervention is not a disadvantage. It is a loss. The earlier services begin, the better the outcomes. Every month of delay is developmental time that cannot be recovered.
Under IDEA’s Child Find mandate, school districts must identify and evaluate children suspected of having a disability within mandated timelines, whether or not a parent asks. In practice, families are told to wait and see. Most take it. They do not know they can push back.
I knew. I pushed back. It still took longer than it should have. While I tracked down evaluations and requested meetings in writing, other families enrolled their children in Pre-K in twenty minutes online. Same county. Same fall start date. Entirely different experience, determined entirely by whether their child has a disability.
I work in education systems professionally, helping charter schools across North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas build enrollment processes that work for the families they serve. A district that wanted to close this gap could assign a single point of contact for every family beginning a special education evaluation. It could notify parents of their IDEA rights in plain language before a parent has to ask. None of this requires more money. It requires a decision about whose experience is worth designing for.
That decision, in a state that ranks last in school funding and just lost $165 million in federal support, is one North Carolina has not yet made.
My daughter will get her services. I will make sure of it, because I know how to navigate this system and I will not stop until she does.
I did not always know. I learned. I researched. I pushed. I know most parents in my position do not have the time, the access, or the vocabulary to do what I did.
I think about those families. The ones who applied for N.C. Pre-K, were told the funding was gone, and went home believing that was the answer. Who did not know there was a federal door that no one can legally close. Who are watching their child’s early years pass while a district that knew better chose not to move.
My daughter came to this process with well-child visit records, a documented Level II autism diagnosis, ABA evaluations, full psychological reports, speech assessments, and occupational therapy documentation. She had the paper trail most families spend years trying to build. It has still been a fight.
Somewhere in the same county, another child registered for Pre-K in twenty minutes. No separate intake appointments. No delayed screenings. No repeated requests to resubmit documentation. No one asking whether she really needed to be there.
My daughter did not earn this fight. And a state that ranks last in the nation in education funding has no business asking her to prove she deserves a seat at the table.
Peck is a consultant for charter schools in N.C., GA, and TX. She is a former LPN who lives in Salisbury, N.C.
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