Group Criticizes Schools' Policies for Disabled

Small high schools created as a part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Children First program are denying entrance to students with disabilities, according to a report issued Oct. 20 by the advocacy organization Parents for Inclusive Education.

PIE, which monitors the Department of Education's special education policies, objected to the fact that smaller schools are denying admission to students who require separate classrooms for more individualized study. The report alleges that the schools' policies allow them to initially exclude students with "more than minimal special education needs."

The document also reported that some schools already past the permitted two-year time frame for establishing programs did not have adequate provisions for students with learning disabilities.

Under the direction of Department of Education Chancellor Joel Klein, more than 200 new small schools have been created since 2003, 184 of which have been secondary schools. Each of the schools offers a specialized curriculum for students with disabilities that parents and prospective students must apply for in order to gain admission.

Monica Ayuso, a parent of a student with special needs, applied to the Young Women's Leadership School in Queens. Her daughter was denied admission because the school did not have the resources to accommodate her daughter's speech impairment. Ayuso noticed that parents who did not disclose their children's disabilities had their children admitted.

Ayuso said that some parents have resorted to covering up their children's disabilities in an attempt to gain admission to the new schools, a tactic that she said she saw others employ at a school in her neighborhood. She said the application process "made you not disclose to the school your child's true ... characteristics" until the child was accepted or rejected.

According to education department data, the new high schools are trailing in special education enrollment by 3.2 percent when compared to their traditional counterparts. While the schools must accept students with disabilities, the two-year window allows some leeway in how soon they must build more personalized special education programs.

"In the first couple of years of their existence, they don't have the capital, the money behind them to support special needs," Ayuso said.

Officials, however, are optimistic about the new schools.

"In every category except self-contained special ed, which are improving at a rapid rate, small schools are on par with the rest of the of the city. ... These schools are part of the solution and, in the big picture, are serving these students better," Kelly Devers, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, wrote in an e-mail.

But some parents view the schools differently. According to JoAnne Scichilone, former chair of the Committee on Special Education in Queens, parents are rarely aware that these new schools exist, let alone that their children can apply for admission to them.

"If there's no push to have these programs ... no one is going to do anything. ... [The Department of Education is] just going to keep pushing the kids, lumping the kids together in these certain schools that [already] have these programs," Scichilone said.