Educators:
Please take a moment to read the following linked article about NPS’s mistreatment of our district's most vulnerable population, Students with Disabilities (SWD’s).
So let's get this straight: In January, 2012, NPS got dragged into court by the Education Law Center, one of the most active advocacy groups in the state, for its failure to service newly-classified students within NJAC-mandated timelines. NPS, in turn, promises that their compliance to STATE-MANDATED service provisions for these students will increase to 95%. Since the last time the district sauntered into court, the compliance rate has ACTUALLY DROPPED FROM 48% TO A MONITOR-VERIFIED 17%! Wait… Run that by us again?!
We guarantee you that the powers that be will try to spin this and blame OUR HARD WORKING CST members, but the truth of the matter is that over the past few years, the NTU has repeatedly heard from numerous administrators and school staff about this ongoing and seemingly never-ending compliance nightmare that has been NPS and SPECIAL EDUCATION. Yes, SPECIAL EDUCATION students and the district's seeming lackluster approach to educate them has become Cami's (and now Cerf's) dirty little secret. Judging by the increasing number of students who STILL cannot be verified to be receiving timely services, perhaps the district needs some help in understanding why this is?
We can start with the fact that CST's throughout the district are grossly understaffed (Read the article. Even the Plaintiff’s monitor’s agree). Indeed, there are several schools that have only partial and/or part time CST's assigned to them despite its special education student population warranting more. Additionally, NPS appears incapable of retaining qualified related service providers including Speech and Language Pathologists, Occupational and Physical Therapists, as well as certified special education resource teachers. Because of this, both newly-classified and previously-classified students rarely receive the IEP services they REQUIRE within mandated timelines.
As you may know, since its inception, One Newark Enrolls and its woefully inadequate Family Support Center continue to be an educational purgatory for any SWD. Walk in with an IEP for specific services and you’re pretty much guaranteed to be “school choiced” to a building that doesn’t have the capacity to deliver any of them.
SHAME ON NPS!! NEWARK CAN DO BETTER!!!
In Solidarity,
Newark Teachers Union