By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice
Some mornings, she didn’t know how she got to where she was.
A Colorado Springs woman who asked to remain anonymous — referred to here as CSW — had been an EMT for more than a decade, a career she began while volunteering with a fire department. She shared dozens of emails documenting her case with RMV.
What she was experiencing on the hour-long drive to Pickens Technical College in Aurora felt like a medical emergency of its own. Nodding off at the wheel. Reaction time slowed. Her sleep neurologist had documented a working diagnosis.
All she needed was to attend lectures by video on the days she couldn’t safely make the drive. Pickens told her it wasn’t possible.
It was. A pregnant classmate had been allowed to attend lectures by video.
Failure one: A process that stalled
CSW enrolled in Pickens’ Respiratory Therapy program in Fall 2023, commuting from Colorado Springs.
Beginning in September 2023, she communicated with Program Director Jacqueline Holland about missing class due to her sleep disorder, asking whether she needed to speak with disability services, according to the OCR outcome letter.
On January 29, 2024, CSW contacted Holland and Michael Cousins. Holland directed her to the school nurse. The nurse directed her to a form on the school’s website and told her Beth Roshon, the school’s 504 coordinator, would follow up.
CSW submitted the form that afternoon. It was forwarded internally by a receptionist to an administrative assistant, then to the Program Director. It never reached the 504 Coordinator. She submitted a physician’s letter to Holland on February 2.
Holland replied asking for the date of her narcolepsy study, saying the school did not have a sleep study on file for the 504 process.
Two weeks later, having received no response, she followed up herself.
Roshon replied that the form submission had not reached her and sent CSW the correct form directly.
A 504 meeting was not scheduled until late March 2024, approximately eight weeks after the initial written contact, with the Spring 2024 semester nearing its end.
The delay, Roshon explained, was because the nurse required to attend the meeting was out on medical leave. No video accommodation was granted before the semester closed. The accommodations plan that resulted from the March 26 meeting provided extended time on assignments and permission to take short breaks. It did not include video attendance, according to the OCR outcome letter.
CSW filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The investigation opened July 2024.
In December 2024, OCR attorney Stephen Worthington notified her the college had agreed to resolve the complaint. Pickens legal counsel signed a resolution agreement committing to re-enroll her at no additional cost and process her accommodation requests through a proper interactive process.
When she re-enrolled for Spring 2025, the pushback started immediately.
In a January 7, 2025 email, Holland told CSW video attendance wasn’t possible “per our accreditation.” But the school had done it before. In November 2023, according to OCR’s findings, Pickens let a pregnant student in the program attend four lectures of a theory-based course by video because of pregnancy-related complications. The college told OCR it did not let her attend other parts of the program remotely.
“I thought, well it’s definitely possible, so why can’t I have the same accommodation?” she told RMV. “I felt singled out. I felt shame because of my inability to sleep like others.”
In the same January 7, 2025 email, Holland acknowledged a student had received accommodations “under Colorado Legislation for Title IV due to pregnancy” — a reference that appears to conflate Title IV, which governs federal student financial aid, with Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in education that covers pregnant students.
CSW’s accommodation request fell under a separate but parallel federal framework: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Pickens, as a recipient of federal funds, was bound by both.
In the OCR investigation, the college claimed that remote learning for certain courses would fundamentally alter its program. OCR later found that a pharmacology course CSW took in Spring 2024 had only knowledge-based learning objectives — no practical skills component — meaning the college’s argument that virtual attendance would fundamentally alter its program did not apply to that course.
CSW pushed back. “So as far as I can tell, Pickens allows for that type of accommodation if a student is pregnant, but with having a normal disability that could cause me to fall asleep behind the wheel of my car, it does not? For some reason that seems to be discriminatory towards those with regular disabilities.”
Failure two: An agreement that didn’t hold
The Spring 2025 semester started on January 8. A formal Section 504 accommodation plan arrived January 31 — the same date by which the college was required under the resolution agreement to report to OCR that CSW had been given the opportunity to return.
Virtual attendance was granted for her first two lecture classes. The afternoon Equipment Lab was excluded. CSW asked repeatedly for video access to that third class. The answer was no.
Between classes, she had roughly an hour to eat, manage her condition and navigate I-25 traffic that frequently backed up through the corridor. The second class often ran over. Academic questions emailed to instructors went unanswered.
“I couldn’t believe we had this agreement in place and they wouldn’t actually collaborate with me,” CSW told RMV. “I remember being pulled into meetings with the instructors and the dean where I basically got nothing but pushback…”
An instructor told her, she said, to reconsider her career.
“It was demeaning. I was so incredibly offended,” she said. “I was making good grades, demonstrating understanding, applying the skills and doing a good job despite my inability to stay awake.”
Failure three: A dismissal with the wrong dates
On February 10, 2025, Holland sent a dismissal letter citing three unexcused absences: January 3, January 5 and January 10. Two of those dates, January 3 and January 5, fell before the semester had even started.
The dates were later corrected. The dismissal was not.
CSW had already told the school in writing she could not continue unless her accommodation issues were resolved. Other students received exceptions to make up missed skills days, she said. Her requests for the same were also denied.
“I was frustrated. Heartbroken,” she said. “Being a respiratory therapist was my dream…I watched students get exceptions to make up for skills on other days and when I attempted to, I was denied.”
Nowhere to go
CSW contacted Worthington. He acknowledged her emails and promised to follow up, as did OCR’s general inbox when she forwarded his acknowledgment. Neither did.
She contacted the Colorado Attorney General’s office, which sent a form letter directing her to OCR, the DOJ and legal aid. She asked what to do when all of those had already ignored her. She received no response.
She contacted her state representative. The White House. The DOJ. The Colorado Civil Rights Division told her public accommodation complaints must be filed within 60 days of the discriminatory act. That window had closed.
“So there’s just no one I can turn to with this,” she wrote to the division in March 2026.
The office of Representative Jeff Crank replied July 2, 2026, stating they would contact OCR for an update.
What the law says and what it can’t do
Emily Harvey, Co-Legal Director of Disability Justice, Colorado’s designated protection and advocacy organization, told RMV that what documentation an institution can require is determined case by case and does not necessarily require a formal diagnosis.
On the resolution agreement, Harvey explained that the contract is between OCR and the institution — not the student. CSW had no legal standing to enforce it. She could only notify OCR of non-compliance, which she did repeatedly.
A system without enforcement
The silence from OCR was not random.
In March 2025, one month after CSW was dismissed and as she began trying to get OCR to act, the Department of Education placed roughly half of OCR’s staff on paid administrative leave and closed seven of its twelve regional offices.
A February 2026 GAO report found that of the more than 7,000 complaints resolved during that period, approximately 90 percent were dismissed.
An April 2026 Senate HELP Committee report found OCR reached only 83 resolution agreements for disability cases in 2025, down from 390 the year before.
“The cuts have been devastating,” Harvey said. “OCR was an imperfect option to get some form of relief, but now it’s essentially nonfunctional for most students. Moving OCR’s function to the DOJ is only going to make things worse…”
Pickens Technical College, Aurora Public Schools legal counsel Brandon Eyre, OCR Denver and Stephen Worthington were each contacted directly for this story. None responded by publication.
Where things stand
CSW is no longer pursuing respiratory therapy. She is now enrolled in an Emergency Management Administration program at Pikes Peak State College, but an unpaid fall 2025 tuition bill is blocking her from advancing into the bachelor’s program.
In June 2026, CSW received confirmation of brain lesions. CSF results from a lumbar puncture, conducted while her doctors were pursuing the narcolepsy diagnosis, are now pointing toward MS.
“It is a stark reminder that someone can be going through something invisible and the ADA should be taken seriously at any part of the accommodation process, before, during and after…” she wrote to RMV. “No one should be denying educational opportunities when they have the capacity to accommodate them.”