| Releases
& Statements
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 15, 2007
Contact: John Collins, Press Secretary
(212) 669-4193; (917) 496-4587
Release #: 006-2007
Gotbaum
Releases Report on City’s Unresponsiveness to Parents of Children
with Disabilities
DOE
fails to respond to more than half of requests for help by investigators
MANHATTAN
– The City is failing to provide basic information to parents
of special education students - and ignoring phone calls asking
for help - a new report from Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum reveals.
The report, Waiting for Help, shows that the Committees on Special
Education (CSE), the Department of Education (DOE) entities responsible
for processing and maintaining special education cases, and parent
coordinators failed to respond to more than half of nearly 400
requests for assistance by Public Advocate investigators. Response
rates were especially low for non-English inquiries.
Public
Advocate Gotbaum called for the City to help families by improving
responsiveness and access for non-English speakers, saying, "When
their children are having problems at school, parents want help,
not the run-around. By not returning phone calls, the City is
failing parents. The Department of Education must work to help
parents and students instead of leaving families in the dark."
Investigators
in the Public Advocate’s office posed as parents and called
all of the CSEs and satellite offices as well as 300 of the 1,200
parent coordinators. Investigators were instructed to inquire
about basic special education services and procedures, and then
document how often they were able to reach the appropriate party:
Requests
for Help |
Party
Reached |
Party
Not Reached |
%
Failures |
398
|
195
|
203
|
51%
|
The
report also showed that CSEs are largely inaccessible to non-English-speaking
parents: the DOE failed to respond to half of callers requesting
help in Spanish and more than 70 percent of callers requesting
help in Mandarin Chinese.
City
Council Member Robert Jackson, Chair of the Education Committee,
said, “The findings of the Public Advocate's report mirror
the complaints and desperate pleas for help that I receive in
my community offices from frustrated parents. Without understating
the enormity of the task it faces, the Department of Education
continues to fail our neediest students and their families."
During
the course of the investigation, staff also uncovered that 311,
New York City’s telephone hotline for information on City
services, systematically referred calls regarding special education
services and procedures to parent coordinators, not CSEs. The
Public Advocate’s Office has found parents coordinators
unresponsive to the needs of parents in two prior reports.
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