The reality of disabled student segregation in NYC

They don't actually care what someone needs

A lot of people don't know how some disabled students are segregated, especially because in NYC some disabled students get included in something called "ICT classes" which people colloquially refer to as "Inclusive classes" (which they aren't). And other people say that the small, segregated class meets the needs of disabled students because they're small.

Let me share our experience if you aren't already aware of how this works. When A- was 3, he was evaluated for preschool. The evaluation was a run through of various tests - to see what scores he made on different skills - and based on this evaluation we were told what placement he would get - which would be a segregated classroom of 6 kids or 8 kids.

This is not a discussion, or a suggestion. This is a telling of what you get, in writing, that if you want to fight with you'll need a lawyer. You cannot say "ah thanks for that suggestion! We'll take an ICT class instead please! Thank you!". They will laugh at you and say "no." Although we did not fight it, the documentary Forget Me Not lays out 3 families of kids with intellectual disabilities in NYC who do hire lawyers, but still lose. (The main family ultimately moves, which is basically what everyone in NYC who wants their kids included ultimately do).

Now... some may argue that they're offering our kid what our kid needs.

Except... they aren't. If they were offering him what he NEEDED they would be finding a placement that has large windows and natural light, which his OT wrote a letter about his deep need for. They'd be offering him a place with an enclosed outdoor space for outdoor movement when needed. They'd be offering him a place where the teachers and the speech therapists are trained in Gestalt Language Processing. They'd be offering him a placement that focuses entirely on self-directed learning, and provide him with a one-on-one not because of health and safety issues but because as a multi-modal communicating, self-directed learner, he requires someone to pay very careful attention to the nuances of his body and vocalizations to help him access the curriculum. They'd be offering him a specialist to cater the curriculum to his learning (which in NYC you can almost never get for a 6 or 8 classroom because you're already considered to be in a small classroom and of course, all those 6-8 kids are the exact same). His NEED is actually not to simply be in a room that happens to have less people in it. In fact, he goes to the children's museum on one of the most crowded days of the year and is happy.

But nobody's asking us what he needs. Nobody cares about that. They're taking a low score, deciding he isn't worth educating or that he'd be too disruptive to all those other kids trying to learn, and he's being shuffled away. And then they're pretending they care about his needs. Except nobody asked us what he needed, ever, or we would have told them all those things.