Forest Hills Special Education Program Struggles Amid DOE Delays

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — After years of pandemic-related disruptions, a special education program in Forest Hills is nearly ready to resume group instruction, but it's still waiting on the Department of Education in order to start helping students.

The Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School in Queens has enough staff for its group classes — an feat that's proven challenging for many other schools — but the education department's expanded program to help students with disabilities was pushed back to Dec. 6 from its Oct. or Nov. start date, Chalkbeat and The City reported.

The special education academic recovery program is geared to help the highest-need students in citywide schools catch up after pandemic disruptions, but a bumpy rollout has left special education teachers and parents more in the dark than usual, the outlets said.

In Forest Hills, for instance, the Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School doesn't know the city's plan for providing after-school and weekend services like speech, occupational, and physical therapy — which it isn't set up to provide itself.

“I have no idea who is going to provide that service, when it’s going to happen, or how it’s going to happen for families,” Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School's co-principal Pat Finley told Chalkbeat and The City.

Education department officials are in the process of hiring 300 occupational, physical and speech therapists, who will then be assigned to schools with shortages, the outlets reported.

Finley told reporters that he's frustrated with the city's "scattershot" implementation of its special education recovery program.

“I’m certainly not against the idea of special ed recovery services,” he said, adding that he just wants clearer communication. He said that the implementation so far seems "not thought out and not thoughtful of the challenges schools already face on the ground.”

Other schools told Chalkbeat and The City that they've struggled with transportation, and some parents said that they still don't know if their children will be eligible for the program, or if it will fit their needs.

Read the full article "NYC Delays its Massive Academic Recovery Program for Students with Disabilities" here.