Former Mayor de Blasio has left successor Eric Adams with a parting grenade – last-minute changes to the system for resolving disagreements over special-education services, The Post has learned.
Adams, who was sworn in after midnight on New Year’s Eve, faces a lawsuit filed last week seeking to halt what one lawyer called “a betrayal of families of children with disabilities.”
Without warning or announcement, de Blasio overturned a special-ed system that has been in place for decades. The city is violating a court order to give at least 45 days notice before launching such a plan, says the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court.
Families of disabled children who complain that the Department of Education is depriving their kids of mandated services or the right placement are entitled to a hearing. An “impartial hearing officer” can order the DOE to grant remedies such as physical or speech therapy, one-on-one instruction and tuition at a private school.
On Dec. 27 de Blasio issued an executive order to transfer the hearings to the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings.
One lawyer called de Blasio’s actions ‘a betrayal of families of children with disabilities.’ NDZ/STAR MAX/IPxOATH judges are city employees with an inherent “conflict of interest,” say lawyers Gary Mayerson and Elisa Hyman, who sued on behalf of five unnamed parents and their kids.
“They can’t be biased. They can’t have the city be able to fire them,” Hyman said.
Current hearing officers, hired by the state, serve as independent contractors.
The OATH handles city employee discipline, licensing, zoning and real-estate violations, but it has never tackled education.
The city is hiring 25 new “special education hearing officers” to work at OATH. Salary: $140,000. Qualifications include at last two years in “education, special education, disability rights or civil rights.”
De Blasio leaves the pending lawsuit to Mayor Eric Adams, pictured last night prior to his swearing-in. Bloomberg via Getty ImagesThe DOE said the plan will cut wait times for families.
“We are proud to partner with the State and OATH on this collective effort to better serve New York City families,” said spokeswoman Sarah Casasnovas.
The lawyers said kids will suffer. “For the past two years, New York City’s special-needs students and their parents have had to deal with the ongoing threat of the pandemic, the difficulty of remote instruction and more,” Mayerson said. “The city’s reckless plan to transfer the hearing process over to OATH is the absolute last thing these kids need.”
The move comes as cases mount. The DOE faces a backlog of roughly 9,400 special-ed complaints, Chalkbeat reported.
