16 JANUARY 9, 2020 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
EDUCATION
Council approves bundle of special ed. bills
BY ALEJANDRA O’CONNELLDOMENECH
ADOMENECH@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@QNS
The City Council Education
Committee unanimously voted
to approve a handful of bills
requiring deeper levels of reporting
from the Department of Education on
its compliance with special education
services.
In February 2019, the council members
pressed representatives from
the department of education on the
shortages of seats for Pre-K students
with disabilities, 40,000 students going
without special education services and
the challenges that parents and guardians
go through to navigate the system.
“We learned about a broken system
in need of transparency, we learned
about the extraordinary steps that
parents and guardians must take in order
to get their children the most basic
of educational services,” said chair of
the City Council Education Committee
Mark Treyger.
About 224,000 New York City students,
or 20 percent all of the city’s
students, have a disability.
Treyger introduced a bill that would
require the DOE to report at the school
level on the agency’s compliance with
IEPs.
“We will also have a better idea if there
is a pattern between failure to deliver
services and certain zip codes in New
York,” said Treyger. “We have seen that
happen in other areas of the DOE.”
The bill is tied into a second piece of
legislation introduced calling on the
DOE to release a report every year on
preschool special education and early
intervention services.
The other pieces of legislation introduced
would require the agency to
increase the number of times it reports
on IEP compliance rates from annually
to three times a year and for the DOE to
to report its response to parent requests
for payment for private school tuition
or tutoring if they don’t believe that
their child is getting adequate special
education services in public school.
Parent complaints to the DOE have
increased by 51 percent between 2014
and 2018, THE CITY reported, with
a large number of those complaints
attributed to parents requesting reimbursement
from the DOE for placing
their students in the private school
system.
The committee voted 13 to 0 in favor
all the bills.
In 2018, only 78 percent of special
education students received their recommended
services, according to data
from the DOE. About 19 percent were
receiving partial services and 2.5 did
not receive any. And as Treyger pointed
out during the committee meeting, last
year, only about 46 percent of special
education students graduated from
high school in four years.
Treyger added that he recognized
that the agency has made changes, it
needs to make sure it had the resources
necessary to provide parents and students
with that right.
“We’re committed to meeting the
needs of our students with disabilities
and to greater transparency, equity
and accountability around these efforts,”
said DOE spokesperson Danielle
Filson.
File photo
Our Lady of Hope Catholic Academy
61-21 71st Street Middle Village, NY 11379
718 458 3535
olhoff@olhca.org · www.olhca.org
OPEN HOUSE
10:30 a.m. to 1:��0 p.m.
Sunday January 2��, 20����
Nursery to Grade ��
• Accelerated Middle School Math Honors Program
• Regents Courses (Algebra I & Earth Science)
• National Junior Honor Society
• STEM Enrichment
• Coding
• Science Olympiad Team
• Drama Club
• Early Morning Drop Off & After School Care
• Athletics
• Children’s Choir
• Art Club
• Band
link
link
/www.olhca.org
/WWW.QNS.COM
/www.olhca.org
link
link
link
link
/www.olhca.org
/WWW.QNS.COM
/www.olhca.org
link
link
