Deborah Schneider Solis has been a special education teacher at the elementary level for 19 years.

She has been a strong advocate for students with exceptional needs and has combined her union work with that advocacy. She is currently on the UTLA Board of Directors representing special education teachers.

As a resource specialist, she models a partnership with general education teachers where she team teaches as opposed to a program where students are pulled out for instruction. She has developed strategies and relationships to foster an environment where students with exceptional needs feel no different than other students and have access to curriculum and activities.

Schneider Solis has helped organize parents of students with exceptional needs, fostering lasting relationships and helping train parents to advocate for their children. She has also been a strong advocate for how the expansion of unregulated charters and specifically their exclusionary practices toward students with disabilities has had both a fiscal and programmatic impact on traditional public schools. She helped organize and expose how these exclusionary practices led to extreme increases in the overall caseloads for the entire district.

She has testified in Congress and the State Assembly for the need for more funding for SPED and has been active in organizing for fully funding IDEA.

Schneider Solis has “led the charge to create spaces for opportunity — not only for growth, but for voice” — for special ed educators, said UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz, who nominated Schneider
Solis for the award. “With that voice, when we went on our solidarity strike in 2023, Debby and the [SPED] committee put forth bold ideas that are now being implemented in our schools.”

Watch Deborah Schneider Solis’ short video here. Read about the other Human Rights Award winners here.