PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Mayra Garcia, Director of iHOPE School, on School Bus Transportation Issues
4:31:13
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139 sec
Mayra Garcia, Director of iHOPE School, testified about severe transportation issues affecting their medically fragile students. She highlighted how these problems are causing significant absences, missed therapies, and potential loss of tuition reimbursement for families.
- 68 out of 130 students have collectively missed over 400 school days due to transportation issues
- Students face problems such as missing routes, lack of travel nurses, and excessively long bus rides (2-3 hours)
- Transportation delays are causing students to miss crucial medical interventions and therapeutic services
- Families risk losing tuition reimbursement due to high absences caused by transportation problems
Mayra Garcia
4:31:13
Thank you so much for having me.
4:31:15
My name is Maya Garcia.
4:31:16
I am one of the directors at the IHOP School, which is a private school serving some of the city's most medically fragile student.
4:31:23
Primarily students with brain injury who are nonverbal and non ambulatory.
4:31:27
All of our students use OTT transportation to them from school, from all over the five boroughs.
4:31:33
Our population's main concern has has been shared a lot throughout today.
4:31:38
We have a 130 students enrolled.
4:31:40
And as of today, 68 of those students have had collectively over 400 absences just in this beginning of the school year related to transportation issues.
4:31:51
At the beginning of the school year, we have students with out routes, without transportation tires, without travel nurses, although it is pursuant to their IEP mandate.
4:32:01
As a result of this, students have missed weeks of school and counting, Some students are on the bus.
4:32:08
Those that do have routes for 2 or 3 hours arriving home extremely late.
4:32:13
These students have daily these Caesars.
4:32:16
They have high maintenance medical needs.
4:32:20
They have scheduled medications that must be administered at a certain time of the day, and they're missing these interventions due to the blessings of these.
4:32:29
Students with severe disabilities are missing time for educational and mandated therapeutic services.
4:32:35
On top of that, these private school students who cannot be served by the public school have families who are advocating for tuition reimbursement from the DOE for these private school placements.
4:32:47
Yet, not only are these students missing time in school, but now the parents are at risk of losing their tuition reimbursement due to these high attendance issues, which are caused by transportation.
4:32:59
So it's an extremely unfair process, and it's completely out of the parents control as much as we, the score, the parents advocate for changes.
4:33:08
There's immense delays causing huge attendance issues for all of these families, but they cannot transport their students to them from school independently due to them having wheelchairs and not having the travel support that they need with the students.
4:33:25
Thank you for having us today.
4:33:27
We hope that there's some resolution after this hearing, and I'm available to answer any questions as
