Staten Island parents blast school district chancellor about poor special education services

From Staten Island Live:

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Taking advantage of a rare opportunity to sound off in front of Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, more than a dozen parents from Staten Island’s special education community expressed their anguish last night over a system they say is failing their children.

They were among about 300 people from across the city who attended a five-hour-plus Panel for Educational Policy meeting at the Michael J. Petrides Educational Complex, Sunnyside.

Though there was no official business on the agenda relating to the Island, local parents took advantage of Klein’s visit to talk about the lack of programming for children diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a type of autism.

“Disabled children are the new minorities — they’re different, but they’re not less,” said Arlene Alvira, a parent from PS 69, New Springville, who has been requesting a summer program for her son for three years. “If they don’t get a summer program they regress in those two months ... then they have to start all over again in September.”

Most children with Asperger’s syndrome perform on grade level and are intellectually gifted, but require instruction in the everyday interactions that come as second nature to most people, such as making eye contact and engaging in conversation. Because their disabilities are subtle, parents said programs must be created for them instead of pushing them into classes where they don’t belong.

Some said they have been eager to get their children into PS 4, Arden Heights, the only school on the borough with a special kindergarten class in which students with Asperger’s are placed alongside their general education peers and given intensive support to help them transition into school routines.

But because the class only has eight seats, parents have been told to go to programs they say won’t meet their children’s needs.

“My son needs more attention and a smaller setting,” said Johmaalya Adelekan of West Brighton, who implored the panel to create more similar programs. “But because the DOE has no place for him, I’m forced to seek private education options.”

Parents also pointed out a lack of middle school programming for students with Asperger’s.

A tearful Russ Lerner of Rossville told the panel his seventh-grade son has been in a general ed class throughout his educational career, but that the school staff at the Marsh Avenue Expeditionary Learning School, New Springville, is now trying to place him in a special ed school because he has behavioral problems the staff doesn’t know how to deal with.

“I don’t blame the school and I don’t blame the principal,” Lerner said. “I blame the Board of Education for not giving schools the right training.”