The Brief

Across California, tens of thousands of students with learning disabilities are navigating higher ed. But not all of them are getting the support they need, and many have to learn to advocate for themselves.

The first time Tammy Carrillo enrolled at East Los Angeles College (ELAC), she didn’t know she had a learning disability. She also hadn’t thought of herself as college material.

At her continuation school in Montebello, most teachers “looked down” on her and her classmates, she said. “It was kind of like: We were going to school, but we were expected to fail.”

Carrillo grew up in poverty, watching her single mother struggle to make ends meet. By the time she enrolled at ELAC, she was also traumatized after witnessing two friends get killed. She was timid, and she had no idea what to major in. Students around her proudly declared: “I'm a nursing major,” or, “I'm going into business.” Carrillo just felt overwhelmed.

“It didn’t make sense to me,” she said. “So I just figured: It’s me. I’m the one who’s lacking something. I’m the one who’s not smart enough to be here.”

She grew tired of struggling aimlessly. Then, she quit.

A second try, with help this time

Fifteen years later — and with three children of her own — Carillo decided to re-enroll at ELAC.

But despite being highly motivated, Carrillo was terrified. She didn’t want to return to school just to quit all over again.

She wanted to earn more money to give her children a better life. She wanted to follow in her aunt’s footsteps, who graduated from USC. She also wanted to honor her friends. They’d all been shot at during a drive-by when they were teenagers, but only Carrillo survived.

“We were all kids, and they never got a chance to have what I have,” she said.

But even with a light course load, she struggled again, especially in math.

She described her experience to a mentor. Her mentor listened closely and recommended that she look into ELAC's Diverseabilities Student Program and Services (DSPS), which provides support for students with learning, physical, or psychological disabilities.

After speaking with DSPS office personnel, Carrillo agreed to be assessed for a learning disability — but she was initially hesitant.

“What does this mean?” she wondered. “Does this mean I can’t learn properly? Does this mean I can’t graduate?”

Through the assessment, Carrillo was diagnosed with a processing deficit. “That just means it takes me a little bit longer to get to where I need to,” she said.

ELAC provided her with a note-taker and a personal counselor. She also qualified for priority registration, more time to finish exams, and the option of taking them in an alternate space with a proctor. When Carrillo didn’t have a note-taker, she used an electronic smartpen, which pairs audio notes to written notes, so she could “go back and just hear what I needed to hear and maybe redo my notes if I missed something.”

Her academic experience transformed. “It was a totally different ball game for me,” she said. “I loved going to ELAC.”

She graduated from ELAC in 2021, then went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Cal State L.A. Come fall, she’ll be starting a master’s program in rehabilitation counseling. Her goal is to help students with any kind of disability.

On her graduation day, Carrillo paused to take it all in. She was in her car, clad in a cap and gown, with her mom and children in tow. “Knowing where I've come from, it was a huge accomplishment,” she said.

Being told 'school is not for you'

Like Carrillo, Christopher Elquizabal attended a continuation school in Southern California. He was removed from his home when he was a teenager. At school, a counselor told him college was not for him, and Elquizabal believed her.

“I never thought I was a good student,” he said. “I always struggled academically.”

Instead of college, Elquizabal’s counselor encouraged him to go to night school and earn a certificate. Soon after, he signed up for a medical billing program.

But one of Elquizabal’s friends had pushy parents, and they were forcing her to go to college. “I'm not going by myself,” she told Elquizabal. The next thing he knew, he was enrolled at Fullerton College.

He signed up for courses in Chicano studies, Africana studies, and social psychology and found himself captivated. The college’s Disability Support Services office also diagnosed him with an auditory processing disorder and provided him with services. Suddenly, school wasn’t so hard.

After transferring to Cal State Long Beach, he began to focus on students with disabilities, in part because of his coursework.

“I started noticing that a lot of Black and brown students, in particular males, tend to be funneled into special education programs, and they have a high propensity to also be diagnosed with — or at least qualify for services — under ‘emotional disturbance,’” he said.

Elquizabal then went on to earn a master’s degree at Harvard, where he focused on the school-to-prison pipeline. There, he thought about all the times he was forced to miss recess or placed in detention, usually after “shutting down” when struggling in class.

After getting the accommodations he needed, Christopher Elquizabal went on to earn a doctoral degree in education at USC.

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Courtesy of Christopher Elquizabal

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He also learned that “if you’re Black and brown, you're more likely to end up in special education, which then leads to behavioral interventions, which then leads to the likelihood that you're going to end up in prison.”

Ultimately, Elquizabal earned a doctoral degree in education at USC, where his dissertation focused on students with disabilities in higher ed. Today, he is the dean of Student Accessibility and Wellness Services at Cerritos College.

He encourages prospective students with learning disabilities to visit campuses and ask about the services and programs that might be available to them. He also encourages campus leaders to recognize “the disability community is one of the largest minority communities on campus.”

“We tend to sort of slice up students into identity pieces,” he added. “But the reality is our students are also undocumented. Our students are also LGBTQ. Our students are also Black. Our students are also part of foster care, they’re parents. We see every population in our office.”

Putting together a school meal isn't easy.

"It is a puzzle essentially," said Lori Nelson of the Chef Ann Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes scratch cooking in schools.

"When you think about the guidelines, there's so many different pieces that you have to meet. You have to meet calorie minimums and maximums for the day and for the week. You have to meet vegetable subgroup categories."

Districts that receive federal funding for school meals — through, for example, the National School Lunch Program — must follow rules set by the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

And those rules may be changing soon.

In early January, the Department of Health and Human Services and the USDA unveiled new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, along with a new food pyramid.

The USDA sets school nutrition standards based on those dietary guidelines, which now place an emphasis on protein and encourage Americans to consume full-fat dairy products and limit highly processed foods.

Here's what to know about how the new food pyramid could impact schools:

Cutting back on ready-to-eat school meals won't be easy

Highly processed and ready-to-eat foods often contain added sugars and salt. Think mac and cheese, pizza, french fries and individually packaged peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

These foods are also a big part of many school meals, said Nelson. That's because schools often lack adequate kitchen infrastructure to prepare meals from scratch.

"Many schools were built 40-plus years ago, and they were built to reheat food. So they weren't built as commercial cooking kitchens," said Nelson.

Even so, schools have been able to bring sodium and sugar levels down in recent years.

"They've been working with food companies to find a middle ground, to find recipes that meet [the current] standards and appeal to students and that schools can serve given the equipment that they have," said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association.

Bringing sugar and salt levels down further would likely require that food companies adapt their recipes and that schools prepare more meals from scratch, Pratt-Heavner said.

But leaning into scratch cooking won't be easy. A recent survey of school nutrition directors by the School Nutrition Association found that most programs would need better equipment and infrastructure as well as more trained staff — and nearly all respondents said they would also need more money. "You cannot go from serving heavily processed, heat-and-serve items to scratch cooking immediately," said Nelson. "It is a transition."

Protein-rich school meals will come at a higher cost

At the top of the new food pyramid are animal products such as meat and cheese. The new guidelines prioritize consuming protein as a part of every meal and incorporating healthy fats.

"That could cause a change in school breakfast standards," said Pratt-Heavner. "Right now, there's no mandate that breakfasts include a protein."

A typical school breakfast today might include fruit, milk and a cereal cup or muffin; some schools may serve breakfast burritos or sandwiches.

She said schools would "absolutely need more funding," should they be required to provide protein under the USDA's School Breakfast Program.

Current standards allow for schools to serve either grains or meats/meat alternates for breakfast, and Pratt-Heavner said, "Protein options … are more expensive than grain options."

She said it's unclear whether the USDA would require protein under its own category or whether the agency would consider milk to be sufficient to meet any new protein requirements.

Whole milk is getting a lot of attention

Schools that participate in federal school meal programs are required to offer milk with every meal, though students don't have to take it. Up until recently, an Obama-era rule allowed for only low-fat and nonfat milk in schools.

But the new food pyramid emphasizes whole fat dairy, like whole milk. At the same time, recent federal legislation reversed that Obama-era rule and now allows schools to serve reduced-fat and full-fat milk.

One more thing to know about milk: Federal law also limits saturated fats in school meals — and whole milk has more of those than low-fat and nonfat varieties. But the recent federal legislation now exempts milk fat from those limits.

What does all this mean for schools? They're now able to start serving whole milk, and they won't have to worry about whole milk pushing them past the limits on saturated fats.

It'll be a while before these changes trickle down to schools

While the USDA sets regulations for schools based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, it takes time to draft and implement new rules after new guidelines are released.

"The current school nutrition standards that we're operating under were proposed in February 2023, finalized in April 2024," said Pratt-Heavner. "The first menu changes in school cafeterias were not required until July 2025." Other changes are still rolling out.

Which is to say: The new dietary guidelines won't bring immediate changes to school cafeterias. They're only the first step in a regulatory process that will take time.

"We're going to have to see what USDA proposes," said Pratt-Heavner.

Then, she said, "the public will comment on those regulations, and then final rules will be drafted and issued."

The USDA then gives schools and school food companies time to update recipes and implement the new nutrition standards.
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