One day while driving her son to school, Julie Chau Diep heard the song “Colors of the Wind,” a classic from the Pocahontas film soundtrack, when one specific lyric moved her to the point of tears.
“How high does the sycamore grow? If you cut it down, then you’ll never know.”
Diep, a trustee of the Anaheim Elementary School District, is also president and executive director of the OC Autism Foundation where she oversees a speech therapy clinic, disability advocacy center and community integration program.
As an adult who received her own autism diagnosis in the last 10 years, she understands the difficulty Asian girls in particular face in getting the support they need to succeed.
In celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, CSBA spoke with Diep about her journey and what school and local educational agency leaders must keep in mind when serving this student population and engaging with families who come from cultural backgrounds that may look at mental illness, learning disabilities and other challenges with skepticism.
Receiving a diagnosis
“I was born in Vietnam, left on a boat, came to here in ‘81 when I was 5 years old,” Diep said. “Growing up, I got Ds and Fs all my life up through high school. In my culture, the language for disability is not very kind. The joke in our family was always, ‘Asian Americans don’t get a diagnosis, we get a degree.’ I didn’t get formally diagnosed until I was 42. Mind you, I’m turning 50, and I worked in the field.”
Her situation is unfortunately not a unique one. According to data from Autism Speaks, while one in 31 children in the U.S. has autism, boys are nearly four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls, and those of Asian or Pacific Islander descent account for about 3.8 percent of cases. Additionally, just 74 percent of autistic students in the U.S. graduate with a diploma while 8 percent don’t finish high school at all, compared to a rate of 5 percent of all students.
However, research on children in the AAPI community with autism is likely skewed due to cultural norms, Diep explained. Whereas some nationalities that fall under the AAPI umbrella may be more likely to embrace a diagnosis and support services or participate in research surveys, others simply don’t have the language or receive the same level of outreach.
Despite these challenges and “barely” receiving her diploma from high school, Diep enrolled at Pasadena City College, volunteered for the disabled student services program, and ultimately transferred to Loma Linda University where she earned a master’s degree in Speech-Language Pathology and a postgraduate degree in Applied Behavioral Analysis.
Partnering with families
Diep children’s experience as students in Anaheim ESD prompted her to run for school board. Like her, both Diep’s son and younger daughter are on the spectrum and didn’t get the services they needed, such as an individualized education program (IEP), she said.
Diep feels her being an autistic woman provides a unique perspective to the Anaheim ESD board that is an asset. “Being on the spectrum, we don’t solve problems the way normal people solve problems,” she said.
She also hopes that her time as a trustee will change what she describes as a combative relationship between the education system and families of children with disabilities. Interactions between schools and these families are often viewed through a lens of liability and litigation, rather than collaboration, Diep said.
“I think when we have a procedure on how to approach and interact with families, I think that’ll change the paradigm because right now people and families with children with disability are considered a liability,” she said. “Twenty percent of our district budget goes to special education. So, we’re already spending way too much money on these few students, not because we are spending a lot of money to actually service them — we’re spending a lot of money on litigation, we’re spending money on a lot of things that are not fruitful. At the end of the day, we are always reminded that we are here for all the students, and that is what I’m proud to represent.”
Budget advocacy
Contentious relationships between LEAs and families of students with disabilities often arise when schools struggle to provide the services these children need to receive a free and appropriate public education, and it’s not just Anaheim ESD that faces this challenge.
Federal law requires school districts to provide services to students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). When IDEA was enacted, Congress committed to funding 40 percent of the average per-pupil cost for special education. That commitment has never been met and federal funds now account for less than 10 percent of California’s special education expenditures.
As a result, LEAs must redirect funds to provide students with critical and federally mandated services. “We get about $1 million of the $65 million that we spend on special education,” Diep said of her own district’s budget.
As an attendee of the April CSBA-ACSA 2026 Coast2Coast Federal Advocacy Trip — where trustees and superintendents met with federal policymakers to explain face-to-face the realities facing California schools and make sure the state’s representatives advocate for solutions that improve school conditions and student outcomes — special education funding was a priority for Diep.
“I learned so much and it actually changed me as an elected official [because] it taught me how to approach the topic of funding special education better,” she said. “The most important takeaway was that I learned how to convince people not funding special education affects all students.”
By not fully funding special education dollars, LEAs must often divert general funds that could be used to hire and retain quality staff or fund mental health and other special programs, Diep explained.
“That’s one huge takeaway I got from Coast2Coast for my advocacy for special education. It helped to see that without funding special education, you’re affecting all students and staff and the district and our ability to grow and serve all students better,” she continued. “I think now it really changed my dialogue in how I interact with people and how I talk about disability and special education and just educational funding itself.”
