Demand Facilities for Incoming Special Education Population
With colorful signs and boisterous chants, parents and PTA members rallied outside PS37/ Great Kills High School on June 15th to demand a larger school with more up-to-date facilities to serve the growing population of special needs students.
“We need a new high school now” and “Disability isn’t a choice. Discrimination is. Stop now,” were among the messages for City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina and the Department of Education.
Advocates say with 10 eighth graduates this year and only four seats available, the problem needs to be solved now with a temporary facility for September. They are also pressing for a more permanent solution to serve their children and rejecting the DOE’s alternative to expand the District 75 program by providing seats at New Dorp High School. Their severely disabled teens, they say, need more supervision in a school with self-contained classrooms.
[Follow the story in the Staten Island Advance at SILive.com: City dragging feet on special ed school expansion.]
[Watch NY1 News coverage at NY1 Online: Parents Rally for New Special Needs School.]
