An Important Report on the Problems Obtaining Due Process in Special Ed Cases: please click here view/ download the report
Complaints filed against the New York City Department of Education by parents of special education students have skyrocketed since 2014 — sparking a “crisis” that leaves some kids without essential service for months on end, a state-commissioned report found.
The flood of parents battling the public school system for support is threatening to overwhelm a dispute-resolution system suffering from too few hearing officers and inadequate space to hold hearings, according to the external review obtained by THE CITY.
Complaints jumped 51% between the 2014-’15 and 2017-’18 school years, the report found. That surge has continued into the current school year, with 7,448 complaints filed as of late February — more than the total for the entire prior school year.
The average complaint was open for 202 days in 2017-’18, according to State Education Department data.
Growing complaints have caused a “crisis” that could “render an already fragile hearing system vulnerable to imminent failure and, ultimately, collapse,” Deusdedi Merced, of Special Education Solutions, wrote in a 49-page report obtained through public disclosure law and provided to THE CITY.
“That it has not yet collapsed is remarkable given the staggering numbers of due process complaints filed in New York City.”
Yoav Gonen goes into details in his article SURGE OF COMPLAINTS BY PARENTS OF SPECIAL EDUCATION STUDENTS SPARKS ‘CRISIS’. Read it here.
