News & Media

11.30.2021 | Advocates for Children of New York (AFC) issued the following response to the NYC Department of Education’s posting of new data showing a need for more than 900 additional seats in preschool special education classes in the spring of 2022: 

New data released by the DOE show a projected deficit of more than 900 seats in preschool special education classes in the spring of 2022 for children with disabilities who have a legal right to such classes – even at a time when special education referrals and overall preschool enrollment are down due to the pandemic.  While the City and State have been expanding seats in general education prekindergarten classes, they have not met their basic legal obligation to provide preschool special education classes for children with disabilities who need them—leaving behind children with the most significant disabilities.

“The State and the City need to step up and address this legal violation,” said Kim Sweet, Executive Director of Advocates for Children of New York.  “This is the moment for the Governor and the Mayor to show they value young children with disabilities—that they will ensure there is a high-quality class for every child who needs one instead of leaving children on waitlists in violation of their legal rights.”

A bill awaiting action from Governor Kathy Hochul would help stop preschool special education programs run by community-based organizations (CBOs) from closing—a significant contributing factor to the shortage of seats.  In June, the New York State Assembly and Senate unanimously passed A. 8013 (Benedetto)/ S. 6516-A (Mannion) to provide preschool special education programs with a payment rate increase on par with the total school aid increase the Legislature approved for school districts—following years of underinvestment in preschool special education programs.  Today, more than 100 organizations sent a letter to Governor Hochul urging her to sign this bill.  With the Assembly, Senate, State Education Department, and more than 100 organizations united that preschool special education programs need equitable funding, it is time for the Governor to act. 

On the city level, we are pleased that Mayor de Blasio announced a new initiative to provide support to community-based organizations running preschool special education classes with the goal of having CBOs open 800 additional preschool special education class seats in the 2022-23 school year.  But the Mayor has not yet committed to paying teachers and staff at these preschool special education programs on par with their DOE colleagues, jeopardizing the ability of CBOs to open new classes.  CBOs are struggling to recruit and retain teachers and staff for the preschool special education classes they already run since their staff—who work over the 12-month school year serving young children with the most intensive needs in the City—could earn far more working in DOE schools.  The City must commit to increasing salaries so that CBOs will be able to attract the teachers they need to open new classes.

“Families of young children with disabilities wonder why there are no seats for their children, why their children’s teachers are paid less than other teachers, why their children always come last,” said Kim Sweet.  “The children waiting for seats are counting on the State and the City to act now.”

Read the press release as a PDF
Read the letter [PDF]

11.18.2021 | Advocates for Children of New York (AFC) issued the following response to the release of the New York City Department of Education (DOE)’s special education data report for the 2020-21 school year: 

The data released today show that 23,000 students with disabilities did not fully receive their mandated special education instruction by the end of the 2020-21 school year. While we are glad to see progress from January 2021, when more than 42,000 students with disabilities were not fully served, there were still more NYC students not receiving their full special education instruction in June than there were students enrolled in all of the Syracuse public schools. 

On paper, the report released today paints a better picture than prior years, when even more students were not fully served by the end of the school year. However, the numbers themselves fail to capture the full impact of the pandemic on students with disabilities, who often went without access to instruction or services for substantial periods of time, even if they eventually received services by the end of the year. Throughout the pandemic, we heard from families whose children had to wait weeks or months for an iPad and, in the meantime, received no instruction or services at all. Other families found that their children’s special education instruction or services simply did not translate over a screen, or that their children’s disabilities prevented them from accessing services remotely. Furthermore, the report shows a concerning decrease in the number of initial referrals for special education (9,457 in in 2020-21, compared to 21,922 in 2018-19, prior to the pandemic, and 16,097 in 2019-20), likely meaning that more students went without the help they needed.

Under federal law, the City has an obligation to provide students with disabilities with make-up services to compensate for what they lost, and to bring them to where they should be but for the disruption in learning since March 2020. One year ago, AFC filed a class action complaint in federal court asking the DOE to create a system to provide these make-up services (called “compensatory services” in special education law). However, the DOE has neither resolved the case nor taken adequate steps to ensure students get the services they need and to which they are legally entitled. 

While the DOE has announced that schools will be offering certain special education “recovery services” to some students after school or on Saturdays, the start date for actually providing these services has already been pushed back—the majority of schools have not yet launched their programs, and some may not do so until early December or later—and many parents remain in the dark as to what their school will be offering and when their child will be eligible to participate. 

The staffing and implementation of these recovery programs are being left to individual schools, meaning the type and quality of the recovery services available to any given student will vary based on the school they happen to attend. We are also concerned that many of the students hit hardest by the pandemic will not have access to these programs. For example:

• The DOE recently indicated that schools can choose to provide recovery services remotely, which will be of little benefit for those students who experienced regression precisely because online instruction was ineffective or impracticable for meeting their specific needs.
• Children needing bilingual services were especially likely to have missed out last year—for instance, the data show that 17% of students needing bilingual speech therapy did not receive a single session of this service in 2020-21, compared to 5% of students recommended for monolingual speech therapy—but many schools will not have bilingual providers available after school or on Saturdays.
• The DOE has not yet committed to providing bus service for after-school or Saturday services, despite the fact that many students will be unable to participate without busing due to the nature of their disabilities or because they live in shelters or foster homes far away from school. 

While special education recovery services, as currently outlined by the DOE, can be part of the solution, they will not be sufficient to meet the needs of all students with disabilities following multiple years of unprecedented educational disruption – or to meet the City’s legal obligation. We fear that the City is leaving families with no choice but to file administrative hearings against the DOE to get the full make-up services their children need and have a legal right to receive—putting further stress on an already over-burdened system, delaying the students’ access to these services as they navigate a hearing system that often takes more than a year, and favoring families who have the time and resources to hire an attorney and navigate a lengthy process. 

“The DOE’s plan for supporting students with disabilities in the aftermath of COVID-19 continues to fall short,” said Kim Sweet, AFC’s Executive Director. “It is critical that every student with a disability gets the extra help and make-up services they need, in a way that works for them and their family, without having to fight with the DOE to get them. The clock is ticking, and unmet needs from the pandemic will only snowball the more time passes.” 

View the press release as a PDF

10.18.2021 | Today, Advocates for Children of New York (AFC) released a new policy brief documenting the pandemic’s heavy toll on school attendance for students living in homeless shelters and calling on the New York City Department of Education (DOE) to direct federal COVID-19 relief dollars to overhaul the education support system in shelters, starting with hiring 150 shelter-based DOE community coordinators. 

The brief, which examines monthly attendance data released by the DOE pursuant to Local Law 10 of 2021, shows that students in shelter had significantly more difficulty accessing an education than their permanently housed peers during winter and spring 2021. Between January and June, overall monthly attendance rates for students in shelter were lower than those for any other student group and trailed attendance rates for students in permanent housing by 10.6 to 14.1 percentage points, depending on the month. While the lack of internet access in some City shelters undoubtedly had an impact on remote attendance, the attendance rate for students living in shelter who opted for blended learning (some days in school and some remote) was just 2.3 to 4.3 percentage points higher on their in-person days than on their days of remote learning. 

There were especially high rates of absenteeism at the high school level: 10th graders living in shelter missed more than one out of every three school days in winter and spring 2021, while 9th, 11th, and 12th graders in shelter were absent more than 25% of the time.

While the attendance rates of students in shelter during the pandemic were particularly troubling, barriers to consistent attendance are not new.  In both 2018-19 and 2019-20, more than half of students living in shelter—94% of whom are Black or Hispanic—were chronically absent, missing at least one out of every ten school days. 

Unfortunately, this trend has continued into the start of this school year; the average attendance rate of students in shelter during the first couple of weeks of school was only 73%. 

“Children get one shot at a quality education, and every day a student is absent is a day of instruction they can never get back,” said Jennifer Pringle, Director of AFC’s Learners in Temporary Housing Project. “These alarmingly low attendance rates make clear that the DOE’s current shelter-based support system is not sufficient. There need to be dedicated, well-trained staff on the ground in the City’s shelters who can help students reconnect with school and access the educational supports they need to get back on track.” 

At present, there are not enough staff working in shelters who have the skills and knowledge necessary to help families navigate the school system, address barriers to attendance, and resolve educational problems: just 117 shelter-based DOE Family Assistants are tasked with supporting the roughly 30,000 students who spend time in shelter each year. The number of Family Assistants has not grown over the past decade even though thousands more students are now spending time in the shelter system than in years past. As there are more than twice as many shelters as there are Family Assistants, these staff must divide their time among multiple shelter sites and are stretched very thin. The Family Assistant position is also very low paid ($28,000 for 10 months), making it difficult to recruit and retain qualified staff for the role. 

Fortunately, New York City is poised to receive tens of millions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief funding specifically to address the needs of students experiencing homelessness—and the City has not yet decided how to allocate these funds. AFC, in partnership with 25 organizations, is recommending that the DOE use this funding to hire 150 new community coordinators to work on the ground in the City’s shelters and help students get to school every day. 

These coordinators would proactively assist families with getting school placements, bus service, and special education services in place as quickly as possible upon entering shelter and for the start of each school year; ensure that students are attending school regularly and help address barriers when students are not getting to school; and connect students to after-school programs, tutoring, counseling, and other supports. 

“New York City has long struggled to meet the needs of students living in shelter, and the pandemic has only exacerbated the many challenges these young people face,” said Pringle. “The good news is that the City now has funding to hire a new team of professionals who can help students succeed in school and break the cycle of homelessness.” 

Read the data brief [PDF]
View the news release as a PDF

06.30.2021 | Today, Kim Sweet, Executive Director of Advocates for Children of New York (AFC), issued the following statement in response to the announcement of the Fiscal Year 2022 city budget agreement:

Following 15 months of unprecedented disruption in public education, we are pleased that the final budget includes a number of education investments originally announced in the Mayor’s budget proposal—such as special education services, preschool special education, social workers, and 100% Fair Student Funding—as well as new investments in literacy curriculum and integrated mental health support for students.

But with $7 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funding coming to the DOE, we believe the City should have done more to target the needs of the students we work with every day. Today’s budget agreement reflects missed opportunities to address longstanding inequities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, while also leaving us with insufficient information about how the DOE will use a significant portion of the $7 billion.

Funding for English Language Learners and Students who are Homeless, in Foster Care, or in Juvenile Detention: We are deeply disappointed that the final budget does not allocate any of the DOE’s historic influx of state and federal funding for targeted programs or services to support English Language Learners, students who are homeless, students in foster care, or students in juvenile detention—students who were hit particularly hard by the closure of school buildings during the pandemic and will need extra help in the coming year.  Since much of the federal funding is still allocated in broad, undefined categories, left to the discretion of the Administration and DOE to decide how to spend, we, along with our coalition partners, continue to call on the City to invest:

• $100 million for targeted support for English Language Learners, many of whom did not receive legally required English as a New Language or bilingual instruction during the pandemic, and $45 million for a multilingual communications and outreach plan to communicate with immigrant families and those whose primary language is not English.
• $20 million to hire DOE community coordinators to work on the ground in shelters to help students who are homeless reconnect with school and access educational supports.
• $1.5 million for a DOE office focused on students in foster care and $5 million to guarantee bus service for students in foster care so they can maintain school stability.  Currently, the DOE does not have a single staff member focused on meeting the unique needs of students in foster care.
• $5 million to expand access to Career and Technical Education, College and High School Equivalency, and Vocational Programs for students in juvenile detention.

Special Education Services: While there is federal COVID-19 relief funding allocated for make-up special education services for students with disabilities, the DOE has still not released a plan for how it will provide these services.  Families want to know how their children will get the special education instruction and services they need to make up for what they lost during the pandemic—services they have a legal right to receive.

Literacy: We appreciate the investment of $27 million for evidence-based literacy curriculum to help ensure NYC students learn to read, but this amount falls short of the $50 million recommended by the City Council and advocates.  In addition, the budget does not include any additional funding for evidence-based literacy interventions for students who need additional support in reading.  Every year, AFC hears from hundreds of families concerned that their students are not learning to read within NYC public schools, and the data show that less than half of 3rd through 8th graders are reading proficiently with alarming disparities based on race, disability, and housing status.

Mental Health and Social-Emotional Support: We appreciate the investments of funding for 500 new school social workers and $5 million for the Mental Health Continuum, a model for providing intensive, integrated mental health supports in high-needs schools.  The Mental Health Continuum model includes school partnerships with hospital-based mental health clinics, a call-in center to advise school staff about students in crisis, mobile response teams with mental health professionals who respond to students in crisis, direct mental health services, school-based mental health clinicians, and whole-school training in Collaborative Problem Solving, an evidence-based, skill-building approach.  However, we are deeply disappointed that the budget invests only $12 million of the federal COVID-19 relief funding in restorative justice, far less than the $53 million the Council had recommended or the $118.5 million needed for expansion to 500 high schools this year.

Preschool Special Education: We appreciate that the budget includes a new investment in preschool special education.  But, with 1,200 children waiting for seats in legally mandated preschool special education classes as of the end of the last school year, we are disappointed that the budget does not include funding to address the shortage of preschool special education classes until Fiscal Year 23 and does not extend salary parity to teachers of preschool special education classes even in FY 23.  3-K and Pre-K will never be “for all” until the City addresses the shortage of preschool special education classes.

Even in our darkest days, education has always been our best hope.  For a just and equitable recovery, the City must ensure the federal COVID-19 relief funding meets the needs of all City students—especially those most impacted by the pandemic who need specialized support more than ever this year.  We will keep advocating as the DOE finalizes its plan.

View the press release as a PDF