The UFT has asked the state Education Department to hold the city Department of Education accountable for its continued failure to provide mandated special education services to students.

“Not counting the years of the pandemic, the DOE has been under a corrective action plan for roughly four years,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said. “For these four years, the situation has gotten worse, not better.”

He connected it to a growing shortage of paraprofessionals and related service providers. “We know we are short thousands of paraprofessionals and related service providers in all sorts of titles, including therapists, speech teachers, psychologists and social workers,” he said. “Every school I walk into is missing paraprofessionals and yet the DOE has frozen the hiring of paras.”

Mulgrew said the DOE claims it doesn’t have the funding to hire staff, while the city’s Office of Management and Budget counterclaims that it has sent the necessary funds to the DOE. “Mandated services need to be funded and used,” Mulgrew said in an Oct. 15 letter to state Education Commissioner Betty Rosa. “One agency blaming the other is not helping our students. We are asking you to make it clear to both agencies that they have to stop playing these games.”

Mulgrew told Rosa that the DOE has proven incapable of providing precise information about the number of unfilled positions or the steps it is taking to address the issues.

The UFT asked chapter leaders on Oct. 15 to work with their school-based special education committee and their paraprofessional representative to gather data on special education violations and unfilled positions at their schools.

“Special education teachers, paraprofessionals and related service providers do an incredible job helping students with special needs despite the roadblocks,” Mulgrew said. “But enough is enough. We refuse to accept these learning conditions for our students and these working conditions for our members.”

Rosa agreed to bring the parties together for a meeting to start to devise a plan to address the issues.