Dive Brief:

• A new lawsuit filed by NYC Public Advocate Leticia James against the U.S. Department of Education focuses on the Special Education Student Information System (SESIS), a tracking system that James alleges caused an estimated loss of $356 million worth of federal Medicaid funding, Capital New York reports.
• According to James, NYC spent around $130 million on SESIS over the last seven years, but poor tracking has caused the failure of reimbursement mechanisms. 
• The suit asks for a "summary judicial inquiry" into the tracking system, which was created in 2009 and is alleged to crash frequently.

Dive Insight:

Previously, NYC dumped another software system also created under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's three-term administration: the Achievement Reporting and Innovation System, known as ARIS. ARIS cost the city around $95 million and was used by only 3% of parents. After scrapping ARIS, NYC decided to move forward with a new bespoke encrypted data system administered directly by the department.

This isn't the only suit related to alleged discrimination against disabled students that NYC Public Advocate Leticia James is part of. She is also involved in the legal case against the charter school network Success Academy, which is also alleged to discriminate against students with disabilities. In that case, parents of current and former Success Academy students filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, saying that the schools deny accommodations to students with disabilities. Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz has wholly denied the claims.

James' previous suit against the DOE is focused on a lack of air conditioning on the school buses used by students with disabilities.