Senate Bill S8030

                                 BILL NUMBER:  S8030

 TITLE OF BILL :  An act to amend the education law, in relation to
mandate relief in the city school district of the city of New York

 PURPOSE :

An act to amend legislation that granted the New York City Board of
Education a variance of up to 50 percent in the maximum number of
students assigned to a resource room, now called special education
teacher support services, or related service group. This legislation
would return student to teacher or specialist ratios and resource room
caseload limits to previous levels and achieve parity with the rest of
the State of New York.

 SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS :

Section 1 amends subdivision 3 of section 4403 of the Education Law to
give authority to the Commissioner of Education over specific rules
and regulations pertaining to the physical and educational needs of
children in relation to maximum group size. The bill removes the
provision that allows a variance of up to fifty percent of the maximum
number of students for instructional groups in a resource room
program, a related service group, and the total number of students
assigned to a resource room teacher.

              

Section 2 gives effective date.

 JUSTIFICATION :

In 1995, the State Legislature passed and the Governor signed
legislation requiring the Commissioner to allow the School District of
the City of New York to implement a fifty percent increase in the
maximum size of an instructional group in a resource room program and
the total number of students assigned to a resource room teacher.
With this mandate relief measure, the default size of a resource room
group in New York City increased from 5 to 8 and the default caseload
of resource room teachers increased from 20 to 30 students at the
elementary level and from 25 to 38 in departmentalized middle and high
schools. In the rest of the State, for the past twenty-one years, the
maximum number of students in a resource room or related service group
has been 5 students and the maximum caseload for a resource room
teacher has been 20 students at the elementary level and 25 students
in middle and high schools. Although the fiscal conditions that were
the impetus for the mandate relief have vastly improved, the New York
City provision has stayed firmly in place.

Shortly after this measure went into effect, Mark Alter and Jay
Gottlieb of New York University conducted a study on the impact of the
increase in the group size on resource room students. The authors
concluded that the increase from 5 to 8 had a detrimental impact on
reading achievement.

Comparisons between the numbers of students with disabilities in New
York City scoring at or above proficient (level 3 or 4) on the New
York State English Language Arts and Math exams for the past several
years demonstrate that students with disabilities in New York City
need and deserve more instructional support than they are currently
receiving. Overall, only 6.9% of students with disabilities in grades
3 through 8 scored at the proficient level on the 2015 New York State
ELA exam compared with 36.8% of their non-disabled peers. The numbers
are only slightly better for students with disabilities in Math, where
11.3% of students with disabilities scored proficient in 2015 as
compared with 41.8% of their non-disabled peers. Moreover, the
performance gap between students with disabilities and their

non-disabled peers is growing, not decreasing. Between 2013 and 2015,
the gap increased 2.3% in ELA and 4.3% in Math.

Additionally, there have been multiple changes in the delivery of
resource room services in New York City in the past twenty-one years.
In fact, New York City no longer has a resource room program. In 2008,
New York City was granted an innovative waiver to implement a service
called Special Education Teacher Support Services. SETSS provides
specially designed and/or supplemental instruction to support the
participation of a student with a disability in the general education
classroom and/or consultation to the student's general education
teacher.

The combined effect of these changes has made the delivery of SETSS
services to a group of eight students even more challenging than it
was in 1995. One of the main casualties has been functional grouping
according to academic, social and emotional, physical and management
needs, required by the Commissioner's regulations and essential for
effective small group instruction. Today, in New York City, functional
grouping is nearly impossible to achieve. If we expect to improve the
performance of students with disabilities on state ELA and Math
assessments and close the achievement gap between students with
disabilities and their non-disabled peers, it is imperative that they
receive services matched with the intensity of their individual needs.
The time has come to undo the detrimental impact after twenty-one
years.

 LEGISLATIVE HISTORY :

New Bill

 FISCAL IMPLICATIONS :

To be determined

 EFFECTIVE DATE :
This act shall take effect immediately