We would like to thank the New York City Council’s Committee on Education for holding this important oversight hearing on the City’s FY2026 Executive Budget. My name is Lori Podvesker, and I am the Director of Policy at INCLUDEnyc. For over 41 years, INCLUDEnyc (formerly known as Resources for Children with Special Needs) has helped hundreds of thousands of NYC families navigate the complex special education service and support systems.
We commend the City for restoring funding to programs that would have expired soon due to one-year-only city funds, such as 3-K, the Mental Health Continuum, restorative justice, and community schools. We also praise the City for continuing to fund the new preschool special education classes that opened last year. However, this is not enough to address the need for the City to invest and baseline additional funds to adequately provide preschoolers with evaluations, special education services, and appropriate classes for all preschoolers with a suspected or known disability.
According to this Council’s related report on the Fiscal 2026 Preliminary Plan, as of just two months ago, over 600 preschoolers with disabilities were waiting for placements, and 5,887 preschoolers were not receiving all their mandated special education services or receiving any services at all. We recommend that the Department of Education and the City:
- Allocate funding to NYCPS Pre-K Centers and schools with 3-K and Pre-K programs so that young children receive their mandated special education services, where they go to preschool
- Hire more staff to help preschool parents with the evaluation and Individualized Education Program (IEP) meeting process
- Hire more NYCPS service providers and teachers, with an emphasis on hiring bilingual therapists and classroom teachers
In addition, we applaud the City for investing a historic $750 million in school accessibility in the last Capital Plan (2020-2024), as it allowed for significant progress to be made, as about a third of schools are now physically accessible. Therefore, the $800 million allocated for school accessibility projects in the current Capital Plan (2025- 2029) is insufficient for the City to keep up with the work done over the last five years, as it does not consider inflation. As a result, in tandem with the Council, we urge this administration to increase this investment by allocating an additional $450 million in the 2025-2029 Capital Plan, for a total investment of $1.25 billion. So more students can be included and fully participate in their school communities.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. We look forward to working together and partnering with you to improve equity and access for all young people with disabilities in New York City.
Sincerely,
Lori Podvesker
Director of Disability and Education Policy