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Mirdella arrived in New York City from Peru two years ago, hopeful she’d find a public school that could support her son, who has autism. The Peruvian schools offering the services he needed were private and too expensive.
The mom secured a special education learning plan from the city’s Education Department in September, guaranteeing her 4-year-old son, Matheo, a seat in a small specialized classroom and a range of therapies.
That learning plan, however, has been gathering dust.
Matheo, who is non-verbal, has spent months at the cramped Manhattan shelter where the family lives awaiting a spot in a program. He is among hundreds of children who waited this fall for a preschool seat nearly two years after Mayor Eric Adams promised one for every child with a disability — as required by law. The ongoing lack of seats is likely to raise questions at a Thursday City Council oversight hearing on special education.
“He’s not really doing anything in particular,” Mirdella said in Spanish. She requested her family be identified using their middle names for privacy reasons. “It’s basically February, and he still isn’t in school.”
Adams has taken some action on the issue, setting aside funding for salary bumps to bring special education preschool teachers who work at community organizations to be more in line with starting salaries of their public school counterparts. The city also invested $55 million this school year to open new preschool seats for children with disabilities, opening 456 new slots in September, Education Department officials said, with roughly 280 more in the works.
But 450 children are currently stranded at home without seats, department officials confirmed. Meanwhile, Adams’ preliminary budget for next school year did not renew the $55 million for new classrooms, raising fresh concerns that the number of students sitting at home could creep back up.
“Providing these classes is not optional,” Randi Levine, policy director at Advocates for Children, an organization that helps low-income families navigate the special education system, wrote in an email. “Given the City’s legal obligation, the new preschool special education classes should have been among the first programs to get long-term funding.”
Red tape stymies families — and providers
Mirdella said she has been struggling for months to get answers from the Education Department about when Matheo could begin school.
She said she ran into bureaucratic hurdles, including requests from the city to submit the same paperwork multiple times.
Mirdella enlisted the help of Advocates for Children, which began reaching out to the Education Department in October on behalf of Matheo, said Betty Baez Melo, the organization’s early childhood education project director, who has been working with the family.
Education department officials said they identified a program in December that was ready to enroll Matheo and claimed that delays after that stemmed from the parent’s interest in weighing other programs.
But Mirdella disputes that, saying she was ready to enroll Matheo and didn’t receive a clear indication from the city that she could send him. Around that time, Baez Melo inquired with the Education Department about why the city appeared to not have a placement ready.
“The DOE hasn’t specifically said what the challenge has been,” said Baez Melo, referring to the delay in placing Matheo in a program.
In the meantime, Mirdella is doing her best to keep Matheo engaged, coaxing him to mimic words like papá and devising painting activities. It’s a struggle to keep him focused at home all day, especially as she cares for her other 11-month-old child, and Matheo sometimes has outbursts.
“He doesn’t know how to make circles or say ‘water,’” Mirdella said. “I know he can do it if he has therapies.” His learning plan calls for regular sessions with speech, occupational, and physical therapists, which he isn’t yet receiving.
As many families are still going without the programs they’re entitled to, some nonprofit organizations that form the backbone of the city’s preschool special education system say they often struggle to bring new classrooms online.
Jeanne Alter, the chief executive officer at Kennedy Children’s Center, which operates preschool special education programs for about 350 children in Manhattan and the Bronx, said she’s been waiting months to open more seats.
The organization won the green-light from the state to open three new classrooms back in September, but has been mired in red tape getting approvals from multiple city agencies, including the Fire Department and Department of Buildings. She doesn’t anticipate being able to open the classrooms until March.
“Here we are: ready, willing, and able since August, and nobody cares,” Alter said. At the Thursday City Council hearing, she plans to call on the city to create a task force to address bureaucratic hurdles providers are facing. “I have 20 kids who I know are just sitting at home waiting for these classrooms to open.”
Transportation problems create another setback
Mirdella felt a sense of renewed hope in recent weeks after receiving word from the Education Department that they were setting up transportation for her son to get to school.
But the family soon hit another snag. Mirdella is depending on a yellow bus to take Matheo to school, and city officials did not immediately assign him to a route.
In the meantime, the Education Department offered to pay for a rideshare. When Mirdella tried registering for the rideshare account this week, the code she got from the city appeared to be invalid, though an official later told her it would take 24 hours to begin working.
Rideshare, however, isn’t a sustainable solution. Matheo has mobility challenges, requiring his mom to hoist him into the car and accompany him to school with her 11-month-old in tow while her husband works, Mirdella said.
The process of getting Matheo a seat, along with transportation, has left Mirdella feeling discouraged.
“We thought this country was really inclusive — that if a child has needs or a condition or has medical needs that they would get attention,” she said. “It’s been really disheartening.”
After Chalkbeat asked the Education Department about Matheo’s case, an official reached out to Baez Melo, as Mirdella’s advocate, informing her Matheo would be eligible for yellow bus service starting Thursday.
Still, Mirdella indicated that she had not heard from the Education Department about transportation arrangements, including what time the bus would arrive.
Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.
