The New York City school system is struggling to provide enough resources for special education, educators and researchers say, and with state budget cuts likely on the way soon, the problem seems only to be get worse.
Geoff Gloak, spokesman for the New York State Commission on Property Tax Relief, said that the final report of the ad hoc special education committee, due to be released on Dec. 2, would contain “recommendations regarding special education costs and mandates.” Gloak would not say which specific measures the committee was considering before the release of the report, but a preliminary report suggested that the New York State Department of Education might cut funding for special education services in areas in which New York exceeds federal requirements.
Some educators, though, say that the state is already not doing enough for special education students.
“They need so much that it’s never manageable,” said Arlene Allen, a special education teacher at PS 152Q in Queens.
Even in the best of times, special education presents unique challenges, but Allen said that the current situation is far from ideal. She currently teaches a mixed group of fourth and fifth graders—and since stringent testing rules require special education students to take the same standardized tests as their mainstream classmates, Allen must teach her class twice as many lessons in order to cover both grades’ curricula. That also means that her students receive only half as much grade-appropriate instruction.
Allen’s special education students are not the only ones feeling the effects of shrinking budgets. According to Russell Rosen, a professor at Teachers College, cost-cutting measures are hurting deaf and hearing-impaired children as well. Rosen, who is also deaf, wrote in an e-mail that “it is cheaper to send special education children to local schools than to special education schools. The result is that DHH [deaf and hard-of-hearing] students are underserved.”
Gloak said special education programs have faced difficulties because of a lack of follow-through in government funding. “The federal government never fully funded the special education mandates that they had put out,” Gloak said, referring to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Passed by Congress in 1975, IDEA required states to conform to a detailed set of requirements on special education. In return, the federal government would provide special education funding. But Gloak says that Washington has failed to keep up its end of the bargain.
Gloak also said that the state would not cut services. “The commission recognizes the huge importance of these services, and it’s not talking about cutting services.” Instead, he said that policymakers would save money by “finding efficiencies” and “reducing regulations” to give individual schools more flexibility.
But Allen complains that her students are already suffering. “We used to have special ed buses,” she said. “Now they cut some of the buses. Twenty-three special ed kids are in one bus. Twenty-three kids. Sometimes those kids don’t even reach home until 5:30 [in the evening], and they pick them up at 6:30 or 7 o’clock [in the morning].”
The principals of PS 125 and PS 146 declined to be interviewed for this article.
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