Our advocacy is having an impact!
Last fall, we reported to you again and again and again about our efforts to make sure that outstanding tuition reimbursement payments, promised in writing by the city, were paid to our clients. Some of you called into radio shows. Others wrote to their elected officials. And, as your attorneys, we called and sent weekly memos to the Department of Education, regularly reminding them about the status of outstanding stipulations from 2015-16.
Frustrated by the serious delays impacting our clients, in December we reached out to City Council Education Committee Chair Daniel Dromm and two longtime friends of special education families, Councilmembers Ben Kallos and Daniel Garodnick from Manhattan. We asked them to co-author a letter to the Mayor asking him to honor the commitments he made in his 2014 Special Education Initiative, in which he promised to reduce the burden on families of special education students by, among other things, expediting tuition reimbursements when the city decides to settle a case with a parent.
We are thrilled to report that Councilmembers Dromm, Kallos, and Garodnick sent a strongly worded letter to Mayor De Blasio on Friday, asking him to honor the commitments his administration has made to special needs families. We are very grateful to our elected officials for taking this action on behalf of our client families.