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Julian’s Story
Julian is a 3-year-old preschooler with delays in his language skills, but the DOE failed to provide recommended services.
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William (Bill) Jesinkey, the founding Executive Director of Advocates for Children and a leader in special education in New York City, died on December 25, 2014, at the age of 80. Bill was a brilliant and imaginative thinker and practical doer, who throughout his career was able to bring people and...
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Special education should not be a bar to admission or participation in a gifted and talented program. A student can have special education needs and be gifted and talented at the same time. This guide has been written to help you work your way through the system if that’s the case for your child.
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04.06.2015 | SchoolBook | “The City needs to find a way to provide access to these programs for a broader range of New York City's children,” said Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children. She said the city's expanded pre-k options could help by providing information on gifted...
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04.07.2015 | Chalkbeat New York | When students start to show signs of significant reading difficulties — they struggle to make sense of individual words and whole texts — then experts say they need frequent, specialized help with their basic reading skills. But that demands highly trained teachers...
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04.13.2015 | Gotham Gazette | Nick Sheehan, staff attorney at Advocates for Children, shares Chowdhury's view. Torres' bill, he said, would increase transparency "about how the City chooses to allocate its resources." He went further, saying the bill should also add ratios of social workers and...
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03.10.2015 | Chalkbeat New York | Special education advocates contend the annual reporting could provide needed context on how the department can improve its assessment and implementation of services for special education students. “We want to find out what the sticky points are in the process....
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03.10.2015 | City Limits | Further efforts to fix special education were made in 2007 and between 2010 and 2012, but these mostly administrative changes did not address the two biggest challenges facing the special education program: the delay in evaluating children for additional services, such as...
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03.05.2015 | WHEC Rochester | A report from Advocates for Children of New York recommends dropping two of the regents exams and only testing students in English, math and science. We interviewed one of the authors who also thinks some kids should be assessed for their classroom work instead of...
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03.09.2015 | On March 24, AFC's Junior Board and NYU Law School's Education Law and Policy Society will hold a panel discussing the experiences of undocumented young people, particularly those who arrived recently, as they enter the City and try to access their right to a public education. RSVP by...
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02.23.2015 | Brooklyn Independent Media: BK Live | Abja Midha (Advocates for Children of New York) and Kim Sykes (The New York Immigration Coalition) discuss how Build a Bridge tries to help immigrant parents with language translation in the school system. BK Live 2/23/15 from Brooklyn...
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03.03.2015 | Brooklyn Independent Media: BK Live | AFC Staff Attorney Bernard Dufresne appeared on BK Live to discuss school suspensions and proposed changes to the discipline code. BK Live 3/3/15: School Suspensions from Brooklyn Independent Media on Vimeo.
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02.23.2015 | Chalkbeat New York | “Overreliance on suspension is an issue that needs to be addressed for all public schools, including charter schools,” said Paulina Davis, a staff attorney at Advocates for Children who represents charter-school students in disciplinary cases... A report released...
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02.13.2015 | New York Times | Some civil rights and children’s advocates were less celebratory of the administration’s specific new policies, which they considered relatively minor, and more optimistic about the introduction of a team of educators, parents, police and city officials that is to...
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02.13.2015 | Gothamist | A children’s advocacy group has found that large numbers of NYC charter schools are violating state and federal law in their disciplinary practices, handing out excessive suspensions and expulsions—often without due process—to children as young as five. Through Freedom of...
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02.13.2015 | WNYC SchoolBook | Bernard Dufresne, a staff attorney with Advocates for Children of New York, said he also hoped to eventually eliminate suspensions for insubordination. However, he called the proposed new code a "good start." He also noted the appointment of a new School Climate...
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02.17.2015 | Chalkbeat New York | On Tuesday, parents said that help was still sorely needed, telling stories of student report cards and progress reports not being sent home in a parent’s native language, fliers telling parents about their right to translation services mailed home in English, and...
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02.17.2015 | New York Daily News | Federal law grants immigrant public school parents a right to translation and immigration services. A city Department of Education policy requires language services in the nine most common languages other than English spoken by city parents — Arabic, Bengali,...
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02.12.2015 | WNYC SchoolBook | Advocates for Children of New York looked at the policies for 164 of the city's nearly 200 charter schools. Staff attorney Paulina Davis said 107, or two thirds, of those reviewed allowed children to be removed for any infraction, even if it's as minor as littering or...
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02.13.2015 | In response to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s announcement of a package of school discipline reform proposals, Kim Sweet, Executive Director of Advocates for Children of New York, issued the following statement: “We thank Mayor de Blasio for taking this important step forward on school...
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02.13.2015 | Capital New York | The Department of Education announced a series of long-awaited reforms to the school discipline code on Friday, including new policies aimed at lowering suspension rates, and new funding to support restorative justices practices and students in the criminal justice...