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Special ed complaints surge
Nov 12, 2009 1:10 PM
Budget cuts hit special-needs kids hard
When it comes to special education, it seems principals are making excuses again.
Reports are flooding in from chapter leaders, members and parents of special-needs students not receiving the services and support that they are entitled to as principals look to tighten spending.
As of Nov. 9, 705 complaints were logged on the UFT online special education complaint form.
“We know why it’s happening,” UFT Vice President Carmen Alvarez said. “The principals are all dealing with funding shortfalls. Cutting special education services is one way to save money, but the practice causes real harm to special-needs children.”
Among the most prominent complaints:
- Not having two appropriately certified teachers in Collaborative Team Teaching classes in many schools housing students whose Individualized Education Programs require them;
- Principals amending Individualized Education Programs on their own, without input and approval from the student’s IEP team;
- Inappropriate disciplinary suspensions;
- Lack of paraprofessional support services;
- Failure to provide related services; and
- Staff being denied access to IEPs.
Alvarez charged that principals, for budgetary reasons, are breaking the law and revising IEPs to match substitute programs already in place at their schools.
“The Department of Education’s failure to provide what these kids need is not only illegal, it’s a violation of the duty we all have to help these kids succeed in school and in life,” said Mulgrew.
Sound familiar? Last spring, the union launched its “No Excuse” campaign to ensure that the Department of Education provide special-needs students with the specialized instruction, counseling and other services mandated in their IEPs. The campaign made clear that neither a tough fiscal climate nor a school’s lack of existing services, such as special classes, was an excuse for failing to provide services that state law said schools must provide.
All staff working with special-needs kids, including general and special education teachers, paraprofessionals, guidance counselors, school psychologists, school secretaries and related service providers — all those playing a role in ensuring that special ed students get the assistance and services they need and deserve — were asked to help sketch just how poorly special-needs students were being served.
Their input painted a devastating picture of rampant neglect, a picture that forced the DOE to resolve complaints. For the new school year, with a new DOE executive in charge of a new department, the Office for Special Education Achievement and English Language Learners, things were expected to improve.
They haven’t, Alvarez says.
Both Laura Rodriguez, the office’s chief achievement officer, and Dov Rokeach, her deputy, met with Mulgrew and Alvarez on Nov. 2 at UFT headquarters. Alvarez pointed out that the DOE office’s own special education service delivery report, which is supposed to reflect how many students are and are not receiving various services, doesn’t even capture Collaborative Team Teaching — now called Integrated Co-Teaching Services — which is now a major program option.
“The report is inadequate in many respects, not the least of which is that it presents a snapshot at a given point in time,” Alvarez said, “and principals are given plenty of opportunity to get their ducks in order so that things look good on the date selected to capture the data.”
In one case, a school reported no child getting or needing a Collaborative Team Teaching setting, despite IEPs calling for it.
“If you’re looking to see if the school is in compliance with CTT, it’s not even on the DOE’s form,” Mulgrew said. “There’s no transparency, no quality control, no accountability system.”
Among other problems reported this year in the UFT online complaint form:
- Therapists being told to discontinue services for students who plainly need them;
- Teachers with oversized classes and behavior issues that they can’t manage;
- General education teachers unaware — because IEPs are unavailable, in some cases for months — that students in their class have disabilities and are required to receive support and instructional and testing accommodations. This harms students while frustrating teachers.
The violations continue even though the DOE’s instructions for handling IEPs are clear.
A notice in the Sept. 1 Principals’ Weekly detailed how each general education teacher, special education teacher and related service provider must be furnished with either a written or an electronic copy of the student’s IEP.
The chancellor also stipulated that paras working with students with IEPs had to have an opportunity to review the IEP as well as have repeated access to it.
Finally, principals were told to directly inform staff members of their specific IEP responsibilities.
Klein was reminding principals of DOE procedures in place since 2002.
“Right now, we haven’t even begun to fight,” Alvarez said. “We’re still collecting complaints that document how severe the problem is again this year, and the number of complaints is staggering. But we already know that these kids are failing. The IEP is not a piece of paper; it’s a coordinated effort to save kids.”
If you know of a special education infraction in your school, report it to the union using the online special education complaint form. The UFT will investigate all complaints and help resolve them with you.
