I don't know if it will do any good, but I sent the
following letter to every news organization, VESID,
Senators, Congressman, Bronx president, and child advocate
office that I had the patience for. It follows:

To Whom It May Concern: SETTS is the way that the DOE
provides special education service to non-public school
students, including charter school and parochial school
students. It is a crafty instrument which allows Mayor
Bloomburg and Chancellor Klein to take the slower learners
out of the charter schools and parochial schools and put
them into special ed in public schools. This is how they do
it: They refer the school age child (over 5 yo) in charter
school/parochial school for special ed services for 5 hours
per week of resource room at the IEP meeting. Then they
give the parents an outdated list of providers to call. The
list is 2 years old or more. It's up to the parents to find
someone on this list to provide this special ed service as
a freelancer. Their system is rigged so that none of these
students ever get special ed services. The DOE pays the
speech teacher, OT, PT, teacher of deaf and visually
impaired 90/hour. The pay for the special ed teacher is
41/hour, no one on the list or anywhere else will do it.
Too much travel time and not the market rate for this job,
and the DOE takes 3-5 months to up to a year, to pay the
teachers. Special ed 1:1 services from agencies doing SEIT
(3-5 yo) or EI (under 3 yo) pay more, 65-90/hour. The
non-public school children never get their tutoring. So the
child then flunks the grade, and the parents are told to
put him/her in public school where he can get special ed
services. The DOE then gets a lot of federal money for the
special ed student, more than the tutoring session for 5
hours a week. The bonus is that the slower learners are
taken out of the charter school and tracked (illegal) to
public schools. It's win-win, as far as showing how great
statistically the charter schools/parochial schools are
doing. This is just one of the ways that Bloomberg stacks
the deck against the public schools and their teachers.
(Much is written about how public schools teachers are
doing a bad job, etc.) The special ed students in charter
schools/parochial schools are not getting their equal
education as defined by federal law and ADA and IDEA. The
DOE excuse for the low pay is that they will pay the
special ed teacher more for a group of students, up to
70/hour, depending on how many children are in that group.
I have been on this list for over 2 years and I have been
called almost daily by parents looking for a SETTS
provider. I have never been offered more than one child at
a time. There is a possibility of hiring a lawyer to get a
“preferred rate” for the special ed teacher. The problem is
no one tells you about this option, and you have to be
wealthy enough to afford to hire a lawyer to pursue this.
It is an option for Park Ave. families, not people who are
desperately calling me from the Bronx. With a lawyer, the
teacher can get 90/hour, but one should not dream of
getting paid for a year. (highly discriminatory) Joel Klein
is planning to computerize this SETTS program, instead of
just giving the teachers the pay they deserve. The new
computers are going to run several million dollars. They
have no intention in giving the special ed services to
these children. That would defeat their purpose, the
steering of the special ed children into the public
schools, and to use their grades on tests as evidence the
teachers are doing a bad job. We know these children will
not score well. That is why they are in special education.
Sincerely, etc.

I have read in my CEC emailed news letters that in some
states, the parents have taken the school districts to
court, because they can't get services at the rate the
school district will to pay the providers. I thought I
would put this idea out there. I breaks my heart that the
parents are constantly calling me and asking me to work
with their kids, and I can't help them. I can't afford to
freelance at that rate. The PS to this is that I would have
never put my name on this list for the 41/hour pay rate.
They lied to me about the rate when they signed me up, told
me I would get 90/hour. The whole list the parents are
working from is invalid. Other teachers have also been told
the wrong rate, "by mistake" and then the parents never
stop calling you. It's very sad.

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