02.25.2021 | Today, AFC is submitting testimony for the New York State Joint Legislative Public Hearing on the 2021-2022 Executive Budget Health Proposal urging the Legislature to reject proposals to cut state funding for the Early Intervention (EI) program by limiting the services children can receive and, instead, invest more in EI by asking private health insurance companies to pay their fair share. Read our testimony [PDF]
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02.18.2021 | Today, AFC is testifying before the New York City Council Committee on Education in response to the school safety bills in support of proposed legislation regulating the New York City Police Department’s response to students in emotional crisis within public schools, significantly limiting the use of handcuffs on students in emotional crisis, and to express concern about the need for a new vision of school safety, beyond merely transferring the School Safety Division from the NYPD to the Department of Education. Read our testimony [PDF]
02.01.2021 | Last week, a federal judge ordered that a Special Master be appointed over the New York City Department of Education’s (DOE) implementation of hearing orders to provide or pay for services for students with disabilities.
When the DOE fails to provide appropriate educational services or school placements to students with disabilities, their parents may request an impartial hearing to enforce their children’s rights. Following the hearing, an impartial hearing officer can order the DOE to provide services to a student or pay the cost of services or school tuition, but for years the DOE has failed to implement these favorable hearing orders in a timely fashion. Advocates for Children of New York (AFC) and Milbank LLP had filed the motion requesting the Special Master in connection with the class action lawsuit, L.V. v. New York City Department of Education, after years of the DOE failing to provide the ordered services that students with disabilities required. For example, between October 24, 2018 and January 21, 2019, the DOE implemented only 19.6% of hearing orders within the required 35 days.
Families request hearings as a last resort, after the DOE has denied their children the services or school placements they need to learn. Further delays in implementing these orders only exacerbate the harm to students with disabilities, many of whom have had to wait months to receive services they were awarded by an impartial hearing officer, and to their families, some of whom have waited up to a year to receive ordered reimbursement for services, causing financial hardship. Sustained delays in payment and implementation have resulted in providers terminating services, schools barring enrollment, and students who must wait even longer without the services and instruction that they need.
“For too many years, students with disabilities have been harmed by the DOE’s failures in providing the services they need. We are hopeful that the Special Master will improve the DOE’s implementation process so students will not have to wait any longer for ordered services,” said Rebecca Shore, AFC’s Director of Litigation.
”The appointment of a special master is the latest step in our 14-year saga to force the DOE to fulfill their legal obligation to provide educational services to students with disabilities in a timely manner,” said Erik Wilson, an associate at Millbank. “The DOE’s longstanding abdication of those responsibilities has caused immense harm to these students, their families, and the schools and providers of these services. We hope that court-ordered improvements to DOE’s systems and processes—based on the recommendations of an independent expert special master—will finally bring DOE into compliance and provide much-needed relief to those who rely on DOE for providing such services.”
01.28.2021 | Today, AFC is testifying at the New York State Joint Legislative Hearing on the 2021-2022 Elementary and Secondary Education Budget proposal, urging legislators to increase, and not cut, state education funding and ensure schools can use their full COVID-19 relief funding to reopen schools and help students catch up. Read our testimony [PDF]
01.20.2021 | Today, AFC is testifying before the City Council Committee on Education about the impact of COVID-19 on student learning, outlining essential principles and critical elements that must be included in a comprehensive COVID-19 education recovery effort. Read our testimony [PDF]
01.15.2021 | Today, Advocates for Children of New York (AFC) released a new data brief, Delayed Interventions: Early Indicators of the Pandemic’s Impact on Infants and Toddlers, showing a steep decline during the COVID-19 pandemic in the number of infants and toddlers referred to the New York City Early Intervention (EI) program to address concerns about their development. As a result, thousands of young children with developmental delays or disabilities missed the chance for intervention at the time it is most effective.
The first few years of life, when the brain is developing rapidly, offer a critical window of opportunity to intervene and maximize the positive impact of services like speech and physical therapy on a child’s development, and Early Intervention—part of the federal special education law—provides such services to zero-to-three-year-old children with developmental delays or disabilities. When COVID-19 closed child care programs, led parents to postpone routine visits to the pediatrician, and otherwise disrupted daily life for families with young children, this window slammed shut for thousands of infants and toddlers in New York City. The brief released today, which analyzes data from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), shows that:
- In late March and early April 2020, there was an 82% drop-off, compared to the beginning of the year, in the average number of children referred to EI each week due to concerns about their development.
- An estimated 3,000–6,000 young children in New York City were never identified as potentially having a developmental delay or disability. Instead of being evaluated to determine their eligibility for the EI program and potentially receiving services to support their healthy development, these children have simply fallen off the radar—and thus may require more intensive, and expensive, special education services later on.
- The total number of infants and toddlers receiving EI services between July and September 2020 was 15% lower than the same time period in 2019, a difference of nearly 2,900 children.
In addition, many children with developmental delays and disabilities who were receiving EI services prior to the pandemic stopped getting their legally mandated services after the City shut down in March, whether due to a lack of technology, because teletherapy proved ineffective, or because helping children under age 3 participate in remote services proved logistically impossible for some working parents. According to phone surveys conducted by DOHMH, which runs the EI program, between April and mid-June, nearly one in four families (24%) were not receiving any of their EI services as of the time they were surveyed.
“Infants and toddlers cannot afford to wait for critically important Early Intervention services,” said Kim Sweet, AFC’s Executive Director. “The State and City need to take quick action to ensure young children with developmental delays and disabilities get the services they need right away.”
While the analysis focuses on data from New York City, statewide data show similar trends. Across New York State, 6,000 fewer children were enrolled in the EI program between July and September 2020 compared with the same period in 2019.
The brief makes a number of recommendations to New York State and City for addressing the pandemic’s impact on the Early Intervention program, including:
- Launching an outreach campaign to families and developing a comprehensive plan for developmental screenings to ensure young children are connected to services as soon as possible when a concern is identified;
- Identifying and addressing barriers to participation in EI during the pandemic, including by providing access to technology needed for remote evaluations and services;
- Providing make-up services to children who missed out on mandated therapies during the pandemic; and
- Increasing funding in the State budget for Early Intervention and preschool special education, including by requiring health insurance companies to contribute more to the cost of EI, and preparing for a potential post-COVID surge in referrals.
12.16.2020 | Today, Advocates for Children of New York testified before the City Council Committee on Education and Committee on Women and Gender Equity about the related issues of a shortage of preschool special education programs, and the problem of Learning Bridges child care programs excluding children with disabilities. Read our testimony [PDF]
12.03.2020 | Today, the New York State Technical and Education Assistance Center for Homeless Students (NYS-TEACHS), a project of Advocates for Children of New York (AFC), posted new data showing that more than 111,000 New York City students—approximately one in ten children enrolled in district or charter schools—were identified as homeless during the 2019-20 school year. In the Bronx, approximately one in six students was homeless.
The data, which come from the New York State Education Department, show that more than 32,700 students were living in City shelters, while approximately 73,000 were ‘doubled-up’ in temporary shared housing situations. An additional roughly 31,900 public school students in New York State, outside of the five boroughs, were also identified as homeless last year, for a total of more than 143,500 students Statewide.
The number of New York City students experiencing homelessness has now topped 100,000—a population larger than the entire public school enrollment of the state of Vermont—for five consecutive years. While the 2019-20 count represents a decline of 2.2% from the prior school year, the closure of school buildings due to COVID-19 likely impeded schools’ ability to identify students experiencing homelessness, as the shift to remote learning made it less likely that schools would become aware of changes to students’ housing situations.
“The vast scale of student homelessness in New York City demands urgent attention,” said Kim Sweet, Executive Director of Advocates for Children. “If these children comprised their own city, it would be larger than Albany, and their numbers may skyrocket even further after the state eviction moratorium is lifted, The City must act now to put more support in place for students who are homeless.”
Even before the pandemic, students experiencing homelessness —85% of whom are Black or Hispanic—faced tremendous obstacles to success in school. Only 29% of those in grades 3-8 were reading proficiently in 2019, 20 percentage points lower than the rate for their permanently housed peers. COVID-19 has further magnified these challenges. For many students who are homeless, school is a lifeline—the one place where they have a sense of stability and normalcy. Remote learning, in contrast, may mean trying to complete assignments on a smartphone in the middle of a noisy and overcrowded room.
City Hall and the DOE must take action to better support these students, who are at risk of falling further behind.
- The City must ensure that every student who is homeless has the technology needed to participate in remote learning. More than eight months after school buildings closed, some students living in City shelters are still struggling to get online because their shelter lacks both Wi-Fi and adequate cellular reception to use their DOE iPad, while others have not even received an iPad in the first place. The DOE must expedite iPad delivery, install Wi-Fi in shelters as quickly as possible, and expand tech support for students struggling to use their devices, including by providing on-site support at shelters.
- The City must use attendance data to reach out to all families of students who are homeless and especially those in shelter who have not been regularly engaging in remote learning and identify and resolve the barriers that are keeping them out of school. In the spring, students living in shelter had the lowest rate of participation in remote learning of any student subgroup—more than 13 percentage points below the Citywide rate.
- The City must ensure there is adequate staff to support the education of students who are homeless. Due to hiring freezes and budget cuts, the DOE has lost more than 20 staff members who focus on serving this population. With more than 100,000 students experiencing homelessness, the City must immediately restore these positions and fully staff the team.
- The City should offer full-time in-person instruction to all students who are homeless whose families want this option, given the immense challenges so many are continuing to experience with remote learning.
- Given the months of lost learning time, the City must start planning to get students who are homeless back on track after the pandemic.
“Learning from home is much harder when you don’t have a permanent home,” said Kim Sweet. “The City must ensure that every student who is homeless has the technology and support they need during this period of remote and hybrid learning. And as the public health situation evolves, we need to prioritize offering these students the option of getting back into the classroom full-time and providing them with the help they need to make up for lost learning.”
11.24.2020 | Today, AFC is testifing before the New York City Council Committee on General Welfare on the City’s progress toward advancing the recommendations of the Interagency Foster Care Task Force, including the three recommendations focused specifically on education, and the need for DOE staff focused on the unique needs of this population. Read our testimony [PDF]
11.23.2020 | Today, Advocates for Children of New York (“AFC”) and Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP filed a class action complaint in federal court against the New York City Department of Education (“DOE”) and New York State Education Department (“NYSED”) on behalf of students with disabilities who have not received an appropriate education during the time of remote learning as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The plaintiffs are asking the Court to require the DOE to create a system to provide make-up educational services to address the resulting learning loss.
When schools closed their physical spaces due to the COVID-19 pandemic, tens of thousands of students with disabilities in New York City were – and still are – unable to access appropriate services and programs during remote learning. The loss in education and progress for these students becomes more pronounced every day that they do not receive all of the services mandated on their Individualized Education Program (“IEP”) in a way that is accessible and appropriate in consideration of each student’s disability. For students with disabilities who are English Language or Multilingual Learners, or whose parents do not speak English, the challenges of accessing remote learning have been even more significant.
Chrystal Bell, one of the parents named as a plaintiff in the litigation, has a son who is deaf, blind, and non-verbal. As Ms. Bell explains, “My son cannot see, hear, or speak. How can he be expected to learn sitting in front of a computer all day, when he has no way to interact with his teachers or understand what they’re asking of him? My child just turned 21 and will now be considered too old to remain in his DOE high school. Without compensatory services, he will have lost more than a year of his education that he will never be able to get back.”
Under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”), school districts must provide a free and appropriate education (“FAPE”) to all students with disabilities. When the school district fails to do so, the law requires that they must provide “compensatory services” to make up for the education and therapies that the student lost. Although the widespread inability of the students to access their IEP-mandated services and program during remote learning has resulted in a denial of FAPE in violation of the IDEA, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and New York Education Law, the DOE has not announced any plans — in the eight months since schools closed – to develop a system for identifying which students with disabilities require compensatory services, determining what services they need, and providing those services.
The complaint filed today asks that the DOE create an expedited and efficient process to provide make-up services for the instruction and services students with disabilities have lost during the period of remote learning, rather than requiring that each of the tens of thousands of parents of students with disabilities litigate individually to receive the services their children need and require.
Kim Sweet, Executive Director of AFC, explained, “Tens of thousands of students with disabilities have gone months without appropriate educational services, with many losing the progress they had made. These students should receive the compensatory services they need as quickly as possible, without having to jump through cumbersome legal hurdles that will favor families able to afford lawyers and leave economically disadvantaged students behind.”
“We’re pleased to partner with AFC on this important class action, to attempt to rectify the disparities in education that students with disabilities have encountered in New York City due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Joshua Kipnees, Partner at Patterson Belknap. “City students with disabilities have been denied access to an appropriate education for the better part of a year, and we hope that today’s complaint brings justice and essential compensatory services to these students as quickly as possible.”
View the press release [PDF]
Read the class action complaint [PDF]