Related Services Authorizations: Separate, Unequal
The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act is a federal law that mandates school districts identify and evaluate children with disabilities in their schools. Part of that obligation is to create an IEP, or Individualized Education Program.
The IEP dictates to the teacher and the school what kind of special education services that child is entitled to, including related services that might be provided outside of the classroom. Related services can take the form of speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, individual counseling, and special education teacher support services.
The unfortunate reality is that many of New York City's public schools don't retain a robust enough staff to provide all of these services themselves. That doesn't mean that a child at that school is not entitled to related services if it is on his or her IEP. When an onsite provider isn't available, the school should give the parent a Related Service Authorization, or an RSA, which acts like a voucher; the parent can then bring it to a provider and redeem it for a certain number of hours per week or per month of that service.
It sounds great in theory, but in practice, they are very hard for parents to use — especially in NYC’s outer boroughs, like the Bronx. The practitioners who do accept these RSAs either have no availability, seldom return calls from parents, or are unwilling to travel from their office to more remote school districts and neighborhoods. That leaves parents with a choice between two really undesirable options: a) long travel times to bring their children to the service provider several times a week, or b) letting their children go without these vital services.
In 2017, this issue was highlighted in a report from the New York City Public Advocate, Letitia James. It focused mostly on a few neighborhoods in the Bronx and identified serious issues with the practice of giving out RSAs to parents in these school districts. The data from the Public Advocate showed that there was a disparity in the effectiveness between poor school districts and school districts with more money, and they found that in poorer school districts a smaller percentage of students were able to find a provider.
It acknowledged that some of this was because of difficulty with the parents being able to coordinate travel, childcare, and work. It also acknowledged that some of the problems with the RSA system is because it’s effectively the solution of last resort — a parent needs to exhaust all other avenues of getting these services before they're eligible for RSAs in the first place. That means that kids can go months without actually receiving their services, and it can be months before parents even receive the RSAs, let alone get them fulfilled and used at a provider.
This is a pertinent issue that we often see our clients grappling with. We see parents, especially in the outer boroughs, struggling to find a provider who will accept them and who will work with their schedule. It's our position that these pragmatic concerns and these systemic problems shouldn't dictate a child's access to the services they're entitled to.
One of the things we talk about with parents is how they can solve this problem and interface with the system in order to get a better outcome for their child. To get started, contact us.
Jonathan Gottlieb
Partner
195 Montague Street
14th Floor
Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201
Jonathan@GottliebFirm.com
(646) 820-8506