 |
| Preet Bharara |
Preet Bharara calls out city school system in scathing letter
December 21, 2015 | 5:43pm
After taking down dirty Albany politicians Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos, Preet Bharara has set his sights on the city’s Department of Education.
The Manhattan US Attorney fired off a letter to the Education Department’s general counsel Monday, calling out the city’s school system for still failing — some 25 years after passage of the American With Disabilities Act — to make most elementary school buildings fully accessible to disabled children.
Bharara demands a response that will provide an “outline and timeline of corrective actions that will remedy this unacceptable state of affairs.”
“Our investigation revealed that … the City is still not fully compliant, and children with disabilities and their families are being denied the right to equal access to a public school education,” Bharara said in a statement.
In his damning 14-page letter, he wrote, “Based on the City’s own statistics
and characterizations of its schools, 83% of public elementary schools are not ‘fully accessible’ to people with disabilities and six of the City’s school
districts … do not have a single school that is ‘fully accessible’ to people with disabilities.”
Continuing to blast the troubling situation, the letter, which came after a two-year probe, added that “children with disabilities are frequently denied the experience that many of their peers take for granted…. Instead, starting in kindergarten, these children are often forced unnecessarily to travel outside of their neighborhoods to schools where there are no familiar faces.”
Bharara also wrote that “the costs of this situation are acutely illustrated, when
Continuing to blast the troubling situation, the letter, which came after a two-year probe, added that “children with disabilities are frequently denied the experience that many of their peers take for granted…. Instead, starting in kindergarten, these children are often forced unnecessarily to travel outside of their neighborhoods to schools where there are no familiar faces.”
Bharara also wrote that “the costs of this situation are acutely illustrated, when
a parent so wants a child … in the local zoned school that the parent is willing
to go to the child’s school several times a day to literally carry the child up and down stairs.”
In response, the Education Department said that its most recent capital plan earmarked $100 million to accessibility projects.
“Our goal is to ensure that all our students have access to a high-quality education, and a student’s disability should never get in the way of their access to a great school,” said spokesman Harry Hartfield. “We are reviewing the United States Attorney’s letter and remain committed to increasing the accessibility of our school buildings.”
Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, said the access-problem for the disabled at the city’s elementary schools has been around for too long.
“It’s exciting to see the US Attorney take action,” Sweet said. “It’s been an issue for a long time.”
In response, the Education Department said that its most recent capital plan earmarked $100 million to accessibility projects.
“Our goal is to ensure that all our students have access to a high-quality education, and a student’s disability should never get in the way of their access to a great school,” said spokesman Harry Hartfield. “We are reviewing the United States Attorney’s letter and remain committed to increasing the accessibility of our school buildings.”
Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children, said the access-problem for the disabled at the city’s elementary schools has been around for too long.
“It’s exciting to see the US Attorney take action,” Sweet said. “It’s been an issue for a long time.”
Most New York City Elementary Schools Are Violating Disabilities Act, Investigation Finds
Benjamin Weiser, New York Times
A two-year federal
investigation has concluded that 83 percent of New York City’s public
elementary schools are not “fully accessible” to children with disabilities, in
violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
In a blistering letter to
the Education Department’s
top lawyer on Monday, the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the
Southern District of New York, said that the investigation also showed that sixschool districts, which serve more than 50,000 elementary students, did not
have a single school that is fully accessible.
“Nowhere is it more
important to tear down the barriers to equal access than with respect to the
education of our children,” Mr. Bharara’s office said. “But today, in New York
City, 25 years after passage of the A.D.A., children with physical disabilities
still do not have equal access to this most fundamental of rights.”
Mr. Bharara, in a brief
statement, said his office had asked the city for a response to the findings,
“including an outline and timeline of corrective actions that will remedy this
unacceptable state of affairs.”
The 14-page letter gives
the city 30 days to provide a response. The investigation had not been
previously disclosed publicly.
Harry Hartfield, a
spokesman for the Education Department,
said the department was reviewing the letter and remained “committed to
increasing the accessibility of our school buildings.”
Mr. Hartfield said that
the department had been cooperating with the investigation, and that as part of
its most recent capital plan, it had set aside $100 million for accessibility
projects.
“Our goal is to ensure
that all our students have access to a high-quality education, and a student’s
disability should never get in the way of their access to a great school,” Mr.
Hartfield said.
In the letter, which was
addressed to the department’s general counsel, Courtenaye Jackson-Chase, the
government said the disabilities law reflected a “comprehensive mandate” to
eliminate what had become pervasive discrimination against people with
disabilities, which denied them equal access to “critically important
government services and programs.”
“Our investigation found
that New York City’s elementary schools still are not ‘readily accessible to
and usable by’ individuals with disabilities,” Mr. Bharara’s office wrote, “a
population which includes not only students, but teachers and family members as
well.”
The letter described the
effect the violations had on families. Mr. Bharara’s office said that it had
spoken with one family that had gone to what the prosecutors called “extreme
measures” to keep a daughter enrolled in her local school, rather than subject
her to a lengthy commute to the closest “accessible” school.
“A parent of this
elementary school child was forced to travel to the school multiple times a
day, every school day, in order to carry her child up and down stairs to her
classroom, to the cafeteria, and to other areas of the school in which classes
and programs were held,” the government wrote.
The alternative for
children with mobility impairments was for the students to spend significant
time traveling to a school that could accommodate their physical disabilities,
the letter said.
“Requiring elementary
students with disabilities to travel extensively at the beginning and end of
each school day — a condition which is not imposed upon their peers — can
impose particularly onerous physical demands on these children,” the government
wrote.
The city had also not
complied with the requirements of the disabilities law as to alterations made
in schools since 1992, when the law went into effect, the letter noted.
In what it described as
the most “glaring example of the city’s failure,” the letter cited the
construction of an addition to a school in Queens in 2000 that was “riddled
with inaccessible features,” like an elevator that was not the proper width,
and noncompliant door knobs, bathroom “grab bars,” drinking fountains, sinks
and faucets. The school also lacked visual alarms in classrooms, as required.
“The city’s failure to
consider the needs of individuals with disabilities when upgrading and
renovating its existing facilities is inexcusable,” the government said in the
letter, which was signed by two senior lawyers in the office’s civil rights
unit, Lara K. Eshkenazi and Jeannette A. Vargas.
Mr. Bharara’s letter was
accompanied by a 73-page submission that offered a detailed list of violations in 11 schools across
the boroughs, 10 of which the city had designated as “not accessible” and one
it described as “functionally accessible.”
But the school designated
as “functionally accessible” lacked “certain crucial accessible features,” the
letter said, “raising a serious question as to the accuracy of the city’s
categorizations.”
In each of the 11
schools, the report said, the investigation identified alterations made after
1992 that were not compliant with the A.D.A., including fire alarm systems,
door hardware, toilet partitions, cafeteria seating, main office counters,
library furniture and playground areas.
In its letter, Mr.
Bharara’s office included four pages of what it said were the “minimum actions
necessary” to remedy the violations. As an initial matter, the letter said, the
city must develop a comprehensive plan to survey all elementary schools and
recommend a systemwide remediation plan to address the lack of accessibility.
“The city should make it
a priority to increase the accessibility of the first floors of school
buildings and the rooms used by all students, teachers, parents or other
visitors to the schools,” the letter said.
RECENT COMMENTS
bronxteacher
9 hours ago
Bravo! A first step in this tragic story. I hope he moves his focus to the countless violations occurring every day for our high school age...
RG
12 hours ago
As Americans we are unwilling to commit adequate resources to education, most students are underserved and the truly talented and gifted...
Lyn
15 hours ago
My daughter attends a special ed school and yet she can't access the cafeteria or playground - basically the best places to interact with...
· SEE ALL COMMENTS