10.19.2020 | Chalkbeat NY | Monday’s change to the proposal — originally floated in January as a way to ease a massive backlog of cases — comes after special education advocates and attorneys serving low-income families argued for months that only those with legal training should oversee these complicated cases. 

Had the proposal passed, New York would have become the ninth state to allow people without law degrees to adjudicate cases in which families argue that their children are not receiving needed special education services. 

“We especially didn’t support it because it was targeted just at New York City, so the pulling of the proposal responds to the real volume of comments that were heard from advocates in this community,” said Rebecca Shore, director of litigation at Advocates For Children New York. Read article