The Great Neck Board of Education has come out in opposition to a statewide bill, which if signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, would make districts responsible for funding the placement of special education students in private schools.
After passing through the state Legislature on the final day of its session last month, the bill would require district committees on special education to account for the “home life and cultural environment” of disabled students when making school placements, while also mandating that families be reimbursed within 30 days for the tuition payments of private institutions their children would be placed in, according to a resolution unanimously passed by the Great Neck Board of Education earlier this month.
“This creates an enormous financial penalty to school districts in the way it handles choices around special education,” Great Neck Board of Education Trustee Donald Ashkenase said.
District officials learned about the bill when Great Neck Public Schools Superintendent Thomas Dolan said it materialized in his office “very suddenly” on July 30. He said the bill was “disappointingly” sponsored by state Sen. John Flanagan (R-East Northport), who is chairman of the Senate education committee.
“The key component of it, as I understand it, allows parents to place their children in schools and then the school would be obligated to pay the parents back for that tuition within 30 days,” Dolan said of the bill. “There’s real question as to whether that’s even legal or not, but it obviously would place an undue burden on school district in terms of that financial responsibility.”
Dolan said the bill could be interpreted as “merely allowing people to make changes in the child’s education based on cultural differences,” which could be a good thing.
But that alone is not enough to make the passage of the bill desirable for district officials, Dolan said.
“We’re really concerned about the financial implications and even the way that it’s taking away some procedures that are in place that seem to be working fairly well,” he said.
If the bill is passed, it could lead to an upswing in parents sending their children to private schools only because the district would be forced to pay for it, Ashkenase said.
“Where do you think that money’s coming from,” Dolan said. “It would still come from the public schools. It is not as if this is done under the guise of cutting down on our budgets because we would still have the bill delivered to us.”
There currently is no time frame for Cuomo’s decision on the bill, but Ashkenase said “the Legislature can hold onto the bill for up to 60 days before it is sent to the governor.”
“Putting this in now, No. 1, when finances are a prime consideration of the state is a mistake, but beyond that even is the issue of overriding committees that are deciding proper educational patterns for kids and instead using some separate criteria without having discussed it – without having heard about it – without knowing exactly what is meant,” Great Neck Board of Education Trustee Lawrence Gross said of the bills. “It makes absolutely no sense.”
Along with the Great Neck Board of Education, the Nassau and Suffolk counties’ school board associations have come out against the bill, along with the state school board association.
Despite much of the fervor from school district administrators across the state in relation to the bill, Dolan said he doesn’t expect Cuomo to veto it.
“Based on his recent track record, certainly the odds are, he will not veto it,” Dolan said.
And that is precisely why it is important for district officials across the state to continue to “educate” Cuomo about the dangers of passing the bill, he said.
“We cannot leave any stone unturned, in my mind, to make a campaign that gets the governor’s attention on why this bill should be vetoed,” Dolan said.
State Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel (D-Great Neck) voted against the bill when it was presented to the Legislature on the final day of the session, while state Sen. Jack Martins (R-Mineola) voted in favor of it.
The bill passed in the state Legislature, 93-50, and in the Senate, 47-13.
“I voted no on this legislation,” the assemblywoman said. “I received very little notice and information about the bill before we voted. I also received strong opposition from special education schools and 4,201 schools in my district as well as the New York State School Boards Association.”
Martins’ spokesman Joe Rizza declined comment on the bill for this story.
