UFT President Michael Mulgrew today sent a letter to New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa outlining educators' concerns with the inability of New York City to provide mandated special education services this school year.

Commissioner Rosa agreed that the state will hold a meeting with the New York City stakeholders to review the problems, Mulgrew said in the letter.

A full copy of the letter can be read online and excerpts from the letter are below:

The DOE has failed to hire enough paraprofessionals and OT/PT providers this school year to meet the needs of students with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) and students in D75 programs.

When asked why the mandated services were not provided, the DOE claims it doesn't have the funding to make the necessary staffing changes. However, the Office of Management and Budget counterclaims that the education department is being sent the necessary funds. Mandated services need to be funded and used. One agency blaming the other is not helping our students. We are asking you to make it clear to both agencies that they have to stop playing these games.

To make matters worse, the DOE has proven incapable of providing stakeholders with the exact number of vacancies for paraprofessionals, OT/PTs, and other job titles that serve special needs students, as well as where these vacancies are concentrated. The DOE tells us despite the mandated nature of these services, they are unable to provide totals of these job titles given their current data collection systems.

We are now collecting this information ourselves. We are still in the process of gathering additional data, however, we have heard endless accounts from our members that suggest this is the worst year we have seen for paraprofessional and OT/PT shortages.