Betsy Combier
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| Eva Moskowitz founded the Success Academy charter prides itself on not pushing out students with special needs. |
Education
Success Academy parent's secret tapes reveal attempt to push out special needs student
The Upper West Side Success Academy charter school has touted itself for not trying to push out kids with special needs or behavior problems, but a parent has audio to the contrary.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, August 30, 2013, 2:30 AM
Call them the charter school tapes.
The parent of a special education kindergarten pupil at the Upper West Side Success Academy charter school secretly tape recorded meetings in which school administrators pressed her to transfer her son back into the public school system.
The tapes, a copy of which the mother supplied the Daily News, poke a hole in claims by the fast-growing Success Academy chain founded by former City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz that it doesn’t try to push out students with special needs or behavior problems.
Nancy Zapata said she resorted to the secret tapes last December and again in March after school officials used their “zero tolerance” discipline policy to repeatedly suspend her son, Yael, kept telephoning her at work to pick him up from school in the middle of the day and urged her to transfer him.
The News reported earlier this week that the Success network, which boasts some of the highest test scores in the city, also has far higher suspension rates than other elementary schools and that more than two dozen parents were claiming efforts to push their children out.
“There was a point when I was getting a call every day for every minor thing,” Zapata said. “They would say he was crying excessively, or not looking straight forward, or throwing a tantrum, or not walking up the stairs fast enough, or had pushed another kid.”
What school officials did not do, Zapata said, was provide the kind of special education services that her son’s individual educational plan, or IEP, requires.
That plan calls for daily speech therapy and occupational therapy for Yael. It also requires him to be placed in a smaller class, one staffed by both a regular teacher and a special education teacher.
At one point in the tapes, a Success official can be heard telling Zapata:
“We’re technically out of compliance because we aren’t able to meet what his IEP recommends for him.”
Asked about those remarks, a Success official would only say both the School District’s Special Education Committee and Success Academy now believe Yael should be transferred to a District 75 special education school.
In the tapes, however, another Success administrator is heard acknowledging that Yael’s tantrums are related to his speech disability.
“He is getting really frustrated when people can’t understand what he’s communicating, and you can’t blame him for that,” the administrator tells Zapata.
In a second meeting, the mother asks why Success admitted her son through a lottery but is not providing him all the services he needs.
“If they have those special education needs, you’re absolutely right that they need to be fulfilled,” an official replies, but then quickly adds that the network doesn’t offer smaller special ed classes in kindergarten.
“We will help them find the [appropriate] DOE placement,” the official says.
In other words, lottery or not, kindergarten kids like Yael who need smaller classes should find a public school that has one.
But Zapata has resisted the pressure to transfer her son.
When she accompanied him to the first day of school at Upper West Side Success last week, she was informed Yael will have to repeat kindergarten — the same grade that doesn’t have the special education class he needs.
“They’re trying to frustrate me enough to take him out,” Zapata said, “but I’m going to fight it.”
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