Dive Brief:
- Spanning two years, a new federal investigation finds that the majority (some 83%) of New York City’s elementary schools aren’t accessible to children with disabilities, violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.
- The city has now been asked to provide a timeline of corrective actions within the next 30 days, and six of the city's school districts were found to “not have a single school that is fully accessible,” the New York Times reports.
- A 14-page letter from the federal government to the city noted that one parent of a child with disabilities “was forced to travel to the school multiple times a day, every school day, in order to carry her child up and down stairs to her classroom, to the cafeteria, and to other areas of the school in which classes and programs were held.”
Dive Insight:
The full 73-page report of barriers to students with disabilities takes 11 districts to task, finding that all but one were not considered fully accessible. Other states have taken varying approaches to ensuring accessibility. This past July, the U.S. Department of Justice found that the state of Georgia's segregated schools also violated the ADA.
For some families of students in special education programs, charter schools can be an attractive option. In Maine, over 20% of enrollment in the state’s seven charters is comprised of special ed students, as opposed to 10% nationwide.
