50 Years. Trillions of Dollars. Millions of Lives.

St. Mary’s School for the Deaf sits on Main Street in Buffalo, where it’s been since 1897. Back when it opened, it was called “St. Mary’s School for the Deaf and Dumb”— a name that tells you exactly how far we’ve come. If you were a Niagara Falls or Buffalo kid who couldn’t hear, that’s where you went. That’s where my high school best friend went… until one morning in ninth grade, when he showed up in my homeroom.

Our classroom had tables arranged in a U-shape, not desks. Homerooms were assigned alphabetically—mine was A, B, and C…which didn’t match his last name. I figure now that the U-shape worked better for Melanie, the interpreter who came with him. I was fourteen, wearing blue Ocean Pacific (OP) pants rolled and pegged just right over brown boat shoes, paired with a white OP tee to match. Morning announcements mumbled through the PA, and our crew usually talked over them—but not the day a Deaf student joined our class.

We’d never seen this in real life. A boy and a woman walked in, and their hands began to fly—fingers, wrists, forearms conducting a kind of thing we only knew from Sesame Street. Suddenly, the room got quiet.

His name is Jamie. His Aunt Janet was a special education administrator who believed in inclusion when it was still a fight. Because of her conviction—and the protection the law gave her—Jamie got access. He thrived: soccer captain, wrestler, homecoming king. He attended Gallaudet University, built a career that led him to the Pentagon, and is a father of two. Because of him, by the start of tenth grade, I was fluent in sign language; that’s how we talked in the halls and in classes.

That’s what inclusion does: it widens the circle for everyone—the student, the family, the friends who learn a new language, and the adults who learn a new way to teach and lead.

I was born in 1973. Two years later, a stack of twenty-four pages would change millions of lives. When President Ford signed Public Law 94-142—the Education for All Handicapped Children Act—there weren’t parades or dancers on Pennsylvania Avenue the way there were for marriage equality. It was quiet. But that quiet law would become IDEA and open school doors for children who’d been kept outside.

Fifty years later, after trillions of dollars and millions of kids, “let them in” became something larger. Year by year, the promise grew stronger:

Let them read. Let them write. Let them walk. Let them play.

Let them make friends. Let them dance. Let them stay.

If you work in schools, you know inclusion isn’t tidy. It takes skill, staffing, training, and patience. It looks like a physical therapist helping a child take steps. A counselor coaching a student to use words instead of a stapler or a fist. A speech-language pathologist who treats an iPad as a voice, not a toy. An interpreter at the front of the room translating a teacher’s words into movement and meaning.

This is a birthday post I hope catches some wind. As we sing “happy 50th” to the law that built modern special education, it’s the right time to honor the door-openers: developmental pediatricians, early-intervention providers, special educators, behaviorists, counselors, therapists, nurses, interpreters, school psychologists, paras, case managers, transportation teams, principals—the people who get every kid to morning circle or onto the playground.

A quick side note about playgrounds: if a child can’t access your playground, get a better playground—an accessible one. And remember what makes those spaces possible: a law about to turn fifty, and the people willing to live it.

I won’t pretend everything is fair in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Too many children start life with the odds stacked against them. I’ve seen it. I’ve pushed back. I once worked for a district where a leader conducted surveillance on a family to challenge residency and pressed me to remove a four-year-old who uses a wheelchair because she thought the cost of the child’s special education program was too high. I resisted. Even with the Incredible Hulk of laws - IDEA - sitting right next to us, a child’s chances still depend on the adults who know the law and aren’t afraid to call on it.

That pressure was no joke. The decision I made to stand up for the child cost me a great deal. Because of the law, they couldn’t stop me from helping her—but they could launch attacks everywhere else. It was the right thing to do. But would everyone out there have done the same?

My life has been stitched together by people who refused to let a closed door be the last word: Aunt Janet; the friend who taught me to sign (the swear words first); co-workers who stayed late to get schedules right; families who insisted on hope when the paperwork said “no.” If you’re a student, a parent, or an educator carrying something heavy right now, remember: progress isn’t loud. It’s a thousand quiet decisions, made faithfully.

When I think about my friend—the wrestler who signed jokes with me between periods, who now works at the Pentagon and tucks two kids in at night—I see the arc PL 94-142 made possible. One aunt’s conviction. One federal promise. One school’s willingness to say yes. A life that kept unfolding.

Here’s to the door-openers. Here’s to teams who use the law like a map, not a fence. Here’s to families who keep us honest and focused—the lawyers and advocates, too. Here’s to students who show us, again and again, that when we widen the circle, all of us learn more, love more, and become more, too.

Fifty candles is a lot of fire. Let’s keep using its light.