Parents of disabled children are fearful that the city’s ambitious new plan to integrate special need students in regular classes will result in ever more confusion – and may not offer them better opportunities.

That’s the message from some 50 people -- including a girl in a wheelchair -- at a meeting of the Citywide Council on Special Education (CCSE) at MS 51 in Park Slope. They braved a tornado Thursday night, and walked around a thick tree thrown by the storm across the main entrance of the school, to hear a panel describe how the reforms might work – or not work.

These policy reforms started with the school year last week in 265 of the city’s 1,600 schools. The goal: move special education students to general-education classes, while still giving them the support and services they need to fulfill their Individualized Education Plans (IEPs).<!--more-->

For panelist Laura Rodriguez, the DOE officer in charge of special education, the plan offers an exciting vision. Tens of thousands of children, long segregated from their peers because of special  needs, can now join all the other kids and share a school experience. “Research shows that children who learn with general-education peers have greater success picking up skills,” she said. “Right now a lot of kids have no interaction with those other kids.” Special education students will be able to get a general education, after all.

But parents say the vision is a long way from reality. Rosalyn Sanchez described how her daughter, Ashley Santiago, who has spina bifida and uses a wheelchair, could not go to her eighth-grade class at IS 143 in Manhattan, nor receive her prescribed support services, because an elevator  has been out-of-order since July.  Lydia Bellahcene, a parent at P.S. 15 in Brooklyn, detailed how her daughter continues to receive physical therapy in a corner of a locker room.

Parents said they are confused about who is in charge of special education since the DOE dismantled school districts and replaced them with networks (which may include schools from several boroughs.) Anne Marie Caminiti, an advocate in Staten Island withParent to Parent New York, said the recent reorganization is bound to puzzle or handcuff parents advocating for their children. “There’s 60 networks and 5 clusters,” she said. “I’m a professional, and I still don’t know who’s in the network. Or whose network is in which cluster.’

CCSE member Patricia Connelly, who moderated the meeting, said a risk exists that the school system will move children into general education classes but fail to give them the specialized services to which they are entitled by law.

Rodriguez (shown below), while not having all the answers to parents’ questions, did stay until the end of the meeting and promised to attend future CCSE meetings. “I hope in 12 months that many issues that we mentioned today we will have collectively figured out,” she said.

Do you have a story about how any of the 265 principals are implementing the special education reforms? We’d like to hear from you. Please share your story below.