Zhuang on racial disparities in private school tuition reimbursement

And also, by race, I look at the data.

It's 75% students with disability in public school system are black and brown, black or Latino.

And also, for the private school tuition reimbursed went to black and Latino students.

Only 24%.

Is that correct?

And most of tuition reimbursed, 71% going to white students.

Is this data correct?

So in terms of the students who are by demographic ethnicity in public school settings, I think you said 75% are black?

Black or Latino.

A little bit closer to 50%.

50%.

A little bit closer to that.

However, I do want to acknowledge your question and your comment and be very clear

that the Division of Inclusive Accessible Learning, which is a division I work in, but New York City Public Schools at large and certainly this mayoral administration are very focused on equity and integration of public schools.

Our chancellor has said very clearly about true integration, and that includes students with disabilities.

So this is something that is very, very paramount and something that we are working on across the board as well.

So what's for the last year, city has been reimbursed for the special needs kids education more than $72 million.

71% went to white family.

But in New York City system is 12.5 of students with disability in New York City schools are white.

What is city doing to ensure students with disability who are not white get?

The help they need.

Thank you for asking that.

That is a focus of our work.

And just a few of the things that we have done as a city.

One, I want to share that we have opened fully inclusive districts for autistic children in neighborhoods and communities that were historically under-resourced and unserved.

And in those districts, every student who's coming into kindergarten receives a seat at a high-quality program close to their home, one of our specialized programs called AIMS or Horizon.

And those were intentionally opened in districts.

5, 12, and 14 just to start because those districts often don't get, they're sometimes districts that don't get resources needed.

We have also hired and trained over 900 intervention teachers who focus on literacy

and reading for children, and those teachers work primarily with students who have historically been marginalized, black and brown students.

That is a primary focus in their work as well.

Another thing that we have done is built out our assistive technology.

There used to be certain neighborhoods where you saw a lot of assistive technology requests and then other neighborhoods where you saw very few.

few and we've intentionally done training and outreach to families and teachers and school staff in those districts and we've seen those numbers really rise so leveling the playing field around literacy

assistive technology for our students and building programs in communities that historically have been under resourced all of that said council member we certainly have work to do

and I'm excited about our work with First Deputy Chancellor Janta and her team on this kind of equity and inclusion for all students moving forward.

We know that we have what's called an over-referral problem of black and brown, specifically boys, being over-referred for special education.

We're really clear on that.

And that is something that is paramount, training our school psychologists, training our school leaders, and working through that so that

the right children get the right services the right way, where and how they need them, not based on race, ethnicity, or family income.

So lastly, I just want to share one other thing.

We opened 80 called sensory gyms, seed sites across New York City.

In the past, before we opened these four years ago, we continued to make more and more.

We started with 10.

This year we ended with 79.

Before that, only families who had the money to pay privately or had the...

opportunity to sue New York City public schools got that kind of service and support.

What we did is we built 79 of these that are free of charge in neighborhoods so families can access that for free and not have to sue or pay privately.

So we are working at this very important issue from a lot of different ways.

I have one more question.

I have one more question.

And also, I represent a large immigrant community.

A lot of time, parents come to my office saying, hey, I have to travel one and a half hour to bring my kids to Queens to go to a special needs school.

Yes.

And do you have data to show how many kind of kids in New York City have this type of situation?

Yes, we do have data on students who are enrolled in District 75, which is the citywide district for children with some intensive disabilities.

And very often, those children are going to school far from home because the program is not located in their neighborhood.

And what we are building and the three districts that I mentioned, and we are expanding our specialized programs to be close to home so children don't have to take the bus, get up at 7 a.m.

And take the bus for an hour.

But we do have data on those programs as well as students currently enrolled in District 75.

Do you also have the data for the family?

Because I represent large immigrant family.

A lot of family doesn't speak English at all.

From the data I see, research data, not DOE data, saying one of five kids'family speak English as a second language, special needs kids do not have service.

Is that correct?

That is not the data that I have, and around one in five families who are not English speakers not receiving services.

Data said never receive services.

Never.

If those are children who've been evaluated for service and never receiving it, I would very much want to look into that because that's not something that we see in the data set that we have.

And because a lot of times the family doesn't speak English, they don't know how to access the data.

Even they do not know where to report this situation.

Yeah, and we have, there's a lot of resources that we have for families who do not speak English,

or even families who are new to New York, how they can get services quickly for their child without even any documentation.

And we would love to have conversation with you, any other council members, on what we should do more, better, to get that word out to families, because those services do exist, and we want families to have

feel that they can ask.

And sometimes we hear that families are fearful to ask based on sometimes immigration status or if they are not comfortable with the English language.

And we want to do everything possible.

And if we have to do, we certainly would be willing and happy to do more to reach more families.

One thing I do want to say since we have the first deputy chancellor and her team here is that the first stop for any family is their school.

And if a family is not receiving service support that they need, the first place that they should go and be supported is in their child's school as well.