QUESTION
How is NYC addressing teacher and staff shortages to comply with the smaller class size mandate and support students with disabilities?
2:14:26
·
171 sec
The NYC Department of Education is implementing various strategies to address teacher and staff shortages and ensure compliance with the smaller class size mandate, particularly for students with disabilities.
- Quality programming for students with disabilities is being created to mitigate costs and meet students' needs more effectively.
- The city faces a shortage of special education teachers and service providers, attributed to insufficient supply from higher education.
- Alternative certification programs are employed to address the immediate need for special education and related service providers.
- Despite increased numbers of social workers and speech teachers compared to 10 years ago, demand still exceeds supply.
Rita C. Joseph
2:14:26
We talked about that, but I wanna quickly ask, what is the plan to hire retain teachers, related staff to ensure compliance with smaller class size mandate?
2:14:34
Because we also know that we have about a 1000 preschool students with disabilities right now that are not in schools.
2:14:41
And we know those are the same children that will become Ocada cases.
2:14:46
And Ocada cases are currently ballooned at $2,200,000,000.
2:14:50
So how do we plan to do that?
2:14:52
To make sure that we are retaining teachers, hiring related services staff to ensure compliance with the small smaller class staff.
2:15:00
Smaller class size mandate.
Dan Weisberg
2:15:03
I mean, it so couple of things.
2:15:05
I wanna mention, chair, you know, one programmatic initiative, which the the chancellor talked about recently coming out of the special education working group, And and that is to create more quality programming close to home for students with disabilities.
2:15:25
And the we're we're talking about inclusive programming, mainstream programming as opposed to segregated programming in in many respect.
2:15:34
So that's one answer.
2:15:36
That that's in it that, you know, back to to council member Krishnan, you know, that's an area where if we are able to invest in quality programming, it should, at least the the cost will be mitigated because you're right.
2:15:51
Carter cases are extremely expensive.
2:15:53
If if we have a family that needs to send their child to private school with high tuition and, you know, give the cost to to us.
2:16:01
That's very costly as opposed to having that child come to our school.
2:16:04
With a quality program that's going to serve the needs of the children.
2:16:07
So that's one of the things we are looking to do much more of, and that will help with the shortages that we have right now.
2:16:18
Beyond that, we have the same issue with Specialty education teachers with the latest service providers, there is a shortage coming out of higher education, and that's true for latest service providers, OTs, PTs, speech improvement teachers as it is for secondary stem teachers.
2:16:36
There's not there's just not enough supply coming out of higher ed.
2:16:39
And that's that's an issue not just for us, for the state, etcetera.
2:16:42
So we have to work on that to try to scale up successful programs on a higher ed space But in the meantime, we can't wait for that.
2:16:49
And so we have to have alternative certification programs, which we do for related service providers as well, This again is a national short and the demand continues to expand.
2:17:01
So it's not as if we've got fewer speech teachers, fewer social workers, than we did 10 years ago.
2:17:06
We got many, many more than we used to, but it still is not meeting the demand.
2:17:11
So that's that's the challenge we have.
2:17:12
You're a 100% right.
2:17:14
We're gonna have to think out of the box be created about that.