Every time her middle school classmates streamed outside for monthly fire drills, Kira Tiller had to stay behind, worrying about what would happen to her in a real emergency.
Flashing bright lights can trigger seizures for Ms. Tiller, who has epilepsy. So her teachers in Gainesville, Va., would send her to a windowless office during drills to avoid the alarm strobes. When her family requested a real emergency plan, administrators just said they would figure it out. She remembers thinking, “I could literally be left behind to die.”
Other students with disabilities have faced similar difficulties in recent years. A student in Maryland was left in a stairwell during a fire to wait for rescuers because she uses a wheelchair. And a high school student with a cane had trouble evacuating when a gunman killed two people at her St. Louis school. Police officers ended up pointing guns at her.
Only a handful of states require public schools to develop individual plans for evacuating students with disabilities in an emergency, even as schools across the country face increasing risks from climate-related disasters and school shootings. More than seven million public school students have disabilities, a population that is growing steadily.
Virginia adopted a law this year, after Ms. Tiller started researching the issue and meeting with some of the state’s 180,000 other students with disabilities. She talked to wheelchair users who couldn’t fit in closets to hide from active shooters. She met students with autism or sensory issues who needed extra support to keep calm during a lockdown.
“I just couldn’t believe that this was something that wasn’t being taken seriously,” she said.
A Prince William County Public Schools spokeswoman, Diana Gulotta, said in a statement that the district couldn’t comment on Ms. Tiller’s situation. But she added that the district supports legislation enhancing student safety. “We continue to monitor and evaluate our processes and procedures to make improvements in this area,” she said.
Laura Jane Cohen, a Democratic state delegate, introduced the bill on Ms. Tiller’s behalf. It’s the second piece of legislation she has sponsored for the safety of students with disabilities; the first requires schools to prioritize evacuating students who use wheelchairs or have other mobility challenges.
Ms. Cohen, a former Fairfax County School Board member, said she served on an advisory committee for students with disabilities and heard from plenty of families about inadequate school safety plans. “It was nuts to me,” Ms. Cohen said. “It just didn’t make any sense.”
The final version of Ms. Tiller’s bill passed unanimously, though some of its language was softened because of liability concerns from school boards and state education officials.
Maryland passed a similar bill requiring schools to have emergency plans for disabled students in 2017, after Cassidy Scott, then 12, was left in her middle school stairwell when a small fire broke out in the cafeteria. Ms. Scott, who uses a wheelchair and has significant cognitive disabilities, was traumatized by the incident, her mother said.
The Virginia and Maryland laws both require emergency plans to be considered as part of the process of developing Individualized Education Programs, known as I.E.P.s. These are legally binding documents establishing specific accommodations for students with disabilities that schools must fulfill under federal law.
It’s unclear, however, how strongly those requirements will be enforced under President Trump, who wants to shut down the federal Education Department and has slashed its staff and budget. He has also floated the idea of shifting oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Ms. Tiller, now 19 and a sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said she plans to keep pushing. She has formed a disability advocacy group that is seeking similar legislation requiring emergency plans for students with disabilities nationwide.
She secured her own plan in high school even before the Virginia law was passed, with the help of her family and an educational advocate they hired. It wasn’t that complicated: During emergency drills, she put on a pair of blackout sunglasses covered in duct tape, to block the flashing lights, and an aide was assigned to take her to the front of the building.
Still, that took six years to achieve, and Ms. Tiller regrets the time in that windowless office. “When you’re in school and you know that your safety isn’t a priority,” she said, “that’s a really discouraging and disheartening feeling.”
Sonia A. Rao reports on disability issues as a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
The post ‘I Could Literally Be Left Behind to Die’: How a Student With a Disability Changed the Law appeared first on New York Times.
