Fairfax County highlights a single neurodiversity specialist's role, urges more funding and teacher training

Kristen Haynor, the divisionwide neurodiversity specialist for Fairfax County Public Schools, told the Virginia Autism Council she has spent four years building a new role that provides coaching, professional development and policy review to improve access for neurodivergent students across 199 schools and centers.

Haynor said the position is intended to be a tier‑1, equity-driven role that advocates for neurodivergent students and staff "to normalize the diversity of cognition and different behaviors" and to shift practice away from a medical, deficit model to a strengths-based, universal design approach. "We are working to flip the script from this linear deficit ideology about what neurodivergence is and moving into the neurodiversity-affirming whole person conceptualization," she…