09/12/2024
To all my friends and family:
I am writing to express my urgent concern regarding what has been transpiring this week with the Board of Education and their failure to issue Related Services Authorizations (RSAs) for not only my daughter, Lauren, who is legally blind and requires vision-related services but also other children with other services. These services are granted during an annual meeting and are listed in the Individualized Education Services Program (IESP).
We need to make noise.
We need to be heard.
In previous years, the Board sent out a request at the end of the school year for parents to complete a “Letter of Intent,” which essentially confirms that we are choosing to place our child in a private school rather than a public one for the upcoming school year. This year, however, not everyone received this letter. Only “some” people did, and it remains unclear how the decision was made as to who received it. As a result, some parents in the private school sector have received their contracts for services, while others, including myself, have been left without critical resources.
IESPs are specifically designed to enable students like Lauren to make progress and achieve their full potential. RSA vouchers are meant to provide services outside of school hours, especially for students in private schools where public school providers cannot deliver services directly. By withholding these RSAs, you are denying access to services that public school students routinely receive. The same accommodations should be extended to students in the private school system, as has been the practice for years.
For Lauren these RSA vouchers are vital for her to have access to Braille instruction, which she does not receive during school hours. This creates a glaring disparity between the services afforded to public school students and those available to my daughter, compounding her challenges.
Sending a visually impaired child to school without a Braille teacher, technology instructor, or orientation and mobility teacher is like sending a sighted student to school without books, expecting them to sit, listen, and complete nothing because they lack the necessary tools to succeed. This analogy vividly illustrates the importance of these services to Lauren’s education and underscores the injustice of denying her access to them. These are her legal rights under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). She is entitled to a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), regardless of whether she is in a public or private school. Her vision teachers are the ones who provide this access, and denying their services is a violation of her federal rights.
I have chosen to continue living in the State of New York because I was always assured that this was the best place for my daughter to receive the highest quality services. However, this assurance is no longer being proven true. The recent challenges we are facing with the denial of essential services for Lauren, despite the legal guarantees, make me question the reliability of the support system I once believed in.
