Thousands of families in special-education limbo Cayla Bamberger, Sarah Butrymowicz, Jackie Mader, Caroline Preston AUSTIN —Eli Clark has been waiting nearly a year for help. A good student with dreams of working in neuroscience, Eli, a 17-year-old junior who uses the pronouns they and them, did very well in middle school and was accepted to a competitive magnet high school. But at the new school, Eli struggled with more challenging coursework and shorter deadlines. They would write down the wrong number when solving a math problem, even knowing the right answer, or read the same page of a book several times to pick up basic details.