Shift to School-Based Special-Needs Services Is Failing Kids, Parents Say
(DNAINFO) Amy Zimmer — Deja Futrell received so many phone calls every day from her son’s school about his behavior problems that she eventually stopped answering her cell phone.
Her ninth-grade son had been diagnosed with an “emotional disturbance” — a special-needs category that meant he was supposed to be put into a “self-contained” class with no more than 12 students overseen by a teacher and a paraprofessional.
But his school, Queens Collegiate, didn’t offer such services, despite a mandatory requirement that schools handle the needs of every special education student instead of the former centralized process.