TESTIMONY
Paulette Healy, Member of District 75 Community and Disability Advocate, on the Digital Divide and the Impact on Students with Disabilities
2:21:24
·
3 min
Paulette Healy highlights the ongoing digital divide affecting New York City families, particularly its impact on students with disabilities during remote learning days.
- Emphasizes the need for continued access to Wi-Fi-enabled devices beyond pandemic contracts.
- Discusses personal experiences of her children's challenges with remote learning during a snow day.
- Stresses the importance of advance consent for teletherapy and reading students' Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) at the year's start.
- Calls for proper adaptation of online materials to meet the needs of students with IEPs and non-English speakers.
- Supports the inclusion of language access as a critical component of educational policy.
Paulette Healy
2:21:24
Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify today.
2:21:26
My name is Paulette Healy.
2:21:27
I'm a member of the District 75 community and a disability advocate.
2:21:32
I'm raising 2 children with disabilities, one of them being a district 75 student in high school.
2:21:38
I am submitting written testimony with a lot more data than I will present to you today.
2:21:42
But I did wanna amplify just a few things.
2:21:46
The digital gap that was existed that was in existence in New York City with our families, it hasn't gone away.
2:21:53
So when we're talking about, like, having remote snow days, you know, the the WiFi enabled laptops and Chromebooks that were given during the pandemic, those contracts have expired.
2:22:04
So they're they're no longer WiFi enabled, and families who are struggling to either, you know, pay for WiFi or pay for food on the table.
2:22:12
That shouldn't be a decision that that our family should be making today.
2:22:16
And these are the kind of things that we need to continue fight for to to fight for.
2:22:21
When the DOE is looking to take a monolithic type of approach when it comes to climate controlled days that our children are not able to go to school.
2:22:31
From a personal standpoint, my 2 children that were home that day, one of them was able to get on to remote learning.
2:22:39
No problem.
2:22:39
The other child could not get on to save his life.
2:22:42
And that's with constant contact with the school administration and trying to get on and 1200 children from my children from my child's high school were not able to participate, you know, on that day.
2:22:55
And quite honestly, they shouldn't have had to.
2:22:57
Like, it it it was a snow day.
2:22:59
They should have gone out and gotten on sleds and had snowball fights because that's what they should be celebrating when we have snow you know, that's that's abundant enough for us not to send our children to school.
2:23:11
I also wanted to resonate the sentiment from the previous panel language access needs to be an additional component.
2:23:18
I think that when if if this is the direction that we are going to take, we need to put into policy.
2:23:25
That students with IEPs, their IEPs need to be read in the beginning of the year, and that consent for teletherapy should be sent in the beginning the year in anticipation of of particular snow days that may happen occur, you know, that may occur throughout the year.
2:23:42
If we do it in the beginning and we don't need to use it, that's fine.
2:23:45
It doesn't go anywhere.
2:23:46
But if we are scrambling to try to, like, get consent the day before a snow day happens, children are not going to get their services.
2:23:54
And when we're talking about services, that includes an adaptation of material on Google Classroom.
2:23:59
You know, if we're going to provide it in the classroom on a smart board, you know, with the in applications that are utilized or have the child with their assistive certain dialing device in the classroom, then posting a worksheet on Google classroom is not gonna service our children IEPs.
2:24:15
It's not gonna serve as our children who are not English speakers.
2:24:19
And quite honestly, it shouldn't take three people to help one parent get a child logged on to Google Classroom because they don't speak English.
2:24:27
So thank you so much for the time, and thank you so much for having this hearing.