It’s Not a Perfect System, But We’re Here to Help
Recently we've been having a lot of parents reach out without real, specific goals of what they hope to accomplish. They’re feeling general sentiments of discomfort, confusion, and rage. These feelings are often directed towards the Department of Education (DOE), their local school district, or even a specific person in their school. I recently had a parent reach out to me and say they wanted to sue their school, the State Educational Agency, the teachers individually, and maybe even the mayor — because she was so angry at the way her special needs child is being forgotten and failed by the public school system.
After speaking with her for a while, I validated a lot of those feelings. I think she had reason to be rageful, she was being mistreated and she was worried about her child, and this is set against a backdrop of a world in chaos and flooded with uncertainty. After speaking with her, I was able to help her translate those feelings into potential courses of action. I was able to give her opportunities and to help her see what her options are. I explained to her that while some of those potential cases are outside of our normal practice area — things like suing the mayor or individual people at the school district — some are not, and some are ones that we're really familiar with.
I told her that we routinely litigate against the New York City Department of Education for their failure to provide special needs children a free and appropriate public education. I helped her understand that, while we might not be able to achieve the outcome that she wanted in a perfect world (which was for the DOE to reform its bad behavior and start providing high-quality services), we told her that there are ways to make things right, ways that the DOE could repair the injury that they visited on her family and her child.
Often that comes in the form of a monetary award. That’s money that she could spend on remedial therapies to make up for the sessions of occupational speech or physical therapy that her son wasn't getting during the pandemic but was still entitled to — or it could be in the form of tuition reimbursement at a private special ed school that just is offering higher caliber instruction than the DOE schools.
I think I provided a lot of value for her to empower her, translating these feelings of impotence and rage into a number of options that she could then take in and digest. She can now think about what she wants to accomplish and what course of action she wants to pursue.
I encourage parents, even if they don't exactly know what they want, to reach out to us. Sometimes I can take a look at what has happened to them and what is currently happening to them and let them know what we can do about it.
Jonathan Gottlieb
Partner
195 Montague Street
14th Floor
Brooklyn Heights, NY 11201
Jonathan@GottliebFirm.com
(646) 820-8506