Impartial Hearings for NYC Special Education Services Are Not Effective for Parents Making Sacrifices

Many parents of the five boroughs say they are struggling to provide their kids with necessary special education services from the city. A May report from the New York City Department of Education revealed that impartial hearings, which are meant to resolve parent disagreements with schools and provide their kids with necessary special education services from the city, have been plagued with complaints of too few hearing officers to be effective. The report found that parents and guardians filed almost 7,500 due process complaints through Feb. 21 of the recently ended school year, and complaints rose more than 50% over the previous three school years. Yoav Gonen reported on this issue for The City.

Amber Decker, a family peer advocate, or someone who has ‘lived-experience’ as the parent or primary caregiver of a child with a social, emotional, behavioral, mental health, or a developmental disability and receives training in order to empower other families, said hearing officers have been ignoring her for three months regarding a complaint she filed on behalf of a parents of a child who attends Public School 40 in Manhattan. This complaint seeks speech therapy as well as paraprofessional services for a first grader. The hearing officers, Decker said, claim they’ve been too swamped and have refused to take on the case 31 times.

“These kids are just languishing waiting for impartial hearings,” Decker told The City. “It’s a disaster.” This has been common amongst various parents who seek special education services for their children.

Usually, parents request these hearings for one of three reasons: Their child either is not receiving mandated services, requires services the school is not willing or able to provide, or needs a different type of setting or school in order to get their necessary educational support.

The City released a survey asking parents and others to reach out and share their experiences with the impartial hearing system. The biggest trend seen in complaints was how time-consuming and difficult it ends up being to get their children the support they need. Parents noted how low-income families tend to be at a disadvantage since they cannot typically afford to hire lawyers to assist them in navigating the hearing system. These families are also unable to pay the money needed for a school or privately provided service up front, in hopes of getting reimbursed afterwards by the Department of Education. Under the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, all children are supposed to be guaranteed a free and appropriate public education.

One mother, who wished to remain anonymous due to a non-disclosure agreement she reached with the Department of Education, told The City that she spent $60,000 on evaluations of her child’s needs, legal fees for an attorney to broker the official complaint, and tuition for a private school where she registered her daughter in August 2018. The due process complaint, which was filed that same month, sought reimbursement from the Department of Education, yet did not get approved for the tuition payments until May. Even with the approval, the mom said the funds have yet to be provided.

This is just one of the sacrifices parents have made in order to provide their children with special needs with the necessary educational accommodations. The mom’s daughter hadn’t been taught to read in the Queens public school she was previously enrolled in by age 7, but learned to do so after one year of being in a private setting for kids with special needs.

“I’ve basically depleted my life savings with legal fees, evaluations and the $41,000 tuition this year,” the mother said, but most importantly, she added, her daughter, ”is thriving – and can finally read.”

Rockaway dad Fred Rodriguez claimed he spent about $14,000 of his savings in order to get his son Connor, who has Down syndrome, out of P.S. 101 in Forrest Hills and into the Tiegerman School on Long Island. Rodriguez said he moved his son out of P.S. 101 after winning his impartial hearing against the Department of Education three years ago.

“We fought for our child since day one, and because of that he has grown to the point where he’s quite high-functioning,” Rodriguez said. “If we would have given up, he would have been a different child. And a lot of parents give up because the city wants to make them run around in circles.”

Rodriguez considers himself to be “one of the lucky ones.”

“If we didn’t have the finances, I would have had too take out a loan – which would have been even more of a financial burden,” he said.

These challenges in obtaining necessary services and reimbursements is nothing new, but rather has been a problem for the city for over a decade. According to the state Education Department, New York City has been out of compliance of federal special education rules for the past 13 years.