PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Amanda Pogany, Head of School at Luria Academy of Brooklyn
5:22:11
ยท
3 min
Amanda Pogany, Head of School at Luria Academy of Brooklyn, testifies about challenges faced in providing special education services due to changes in the NYC Department of Education's policies. She highlights the school's inclusive model for students with special needs and expresses frustration with the DOE's apparent lack of communication and support.
- The school has not received expected transmittals for related services or P4 forms, despite submitting required documentation on time.
- Luria Academy chose to continue providing services to students, resulting in 6,422 classroom hours of support, with 3,000 hours the city is refusing to reimburse.
- There is a lack of related service providers, including mental health counselors, due to the policy changes.
Amanda Pogany
5:22:11
Hi.
5:22:13
My name's Amanda Pogany, and I'm in my 13th year as the head of school at Luria Academy of Brooklyn, a progressive day school in process states.
5:22:22
I'm here today because it has felt to us that the New York City Department of Education is playing politics with our students and threatening our ability to provide them with their mandated services.
5:22:34
The thing I am most proud of at Lurie Academy is our special education model.
5:22:40
1 third of our students have special needs, and city approved IESPs.
5:22:46
Our unique inclusion model means that these 125 students are fully included in classrooms and our community.
5:22:55
This model of being a school where everyone gets what they need is at the heart of our mission.
5:23:02
Last spring, our parents who typically, for every year in my experience for 13 years, would have received their parentally placed forms directly via email from the DOE, did not receive them.
5:23:16
Now I know it felt intentional.
5:23:20
We located the forms online.
5:23:22
We alerted the parents, and we reminded them to submit their forms by the June 1st deadline.
5:23:27
We submitted all of our forms within 48 hours of that deadline.
5:23:32
In the past, this time line would not have been an issue.
5:23:36
Over the summer, we did what we were supposed to do.
5:23:39
We contracted providers based on our students' government mandates, expecting the same support from the city that we had received every year.
5:23:50
The majority of these students have been receiving city funded services for years without issue.
5:23:55
There was no reason to think this year would be any different until everything was different.
5:24:01
At the end of August, we had not received any transmittals for related services or p 4 forms.
5:24:10
Parents' phone calls went unanswered and emails completely ignored by
Althea Stevens
5:24:15
the
Amanda Pogany
5:24:15
CSE.
5:24:17
It simply wasn't an option to me, perhaps it was to the DOE, for our most vulnerable children to go without their services, especially with no start date in sight.
5:24:32
I committed to these children and their families that they would get what they need because in the past, New York City has ensured that they would get what they need.
5:24:42
I needed to make a choice.
5:24:44
I chose the children.
5:24:46
I chose their self esteem, their academic growth.
5:24:50
I asked the sets providers to start working.
5:24:53
That was my job, and I did my job.
5:24:56
I honored our students' mandates.
5:24:59
I did my job with the expectation that the DOE would do theirs.
5:25:04
Between the months of September December, our sets providers supported students for 6,422 in classroom hours, 3,000 of which the city is now refusing to reimburse.
5:25:19
An additional consequence of this last minute policy change is continued lack of related services, related service providers available to meet our students' mandates, including the ongoing absence of mental health counselors.
5:25:34
Our providers deserve to be paid for the work they did.
5:25:38
They fulfilled students' mandates as approved by the city on their IESPs, and our students deserve makeup opportunities for services missed.
5:25:48
This is about the children.
5:25:50
Let's keep them at the center and give them what they need and what they deserve.
5:25:55
Thank you.