What NYC Officials Admitted About Special Ed Funding
A recent City Council preliminary 2027 budget hearing revealed much about the current state of special education in New York City. In a word: confounding.
First, DOE officials can claim that 92% of special education students receive their mandated services. At the same time, they also admit that only 75% of preschoolers with IEPs get services.
Both statistics are true. Both come from the same Department of Education. And the gap between them tells you everything about how the system measures success versus how families experience failure: 25% of preschoolers with IEPs get no services at all.
To be fair, much of the testimony was encouraging—the commitment of the educators and administrators to the children is unquestioned. And Chief of Special Education Christina Foti didn’t retreat from the DOE’s failure to provide services for so many preschoolers.
Getting seats for every preschooler with a disability was among former Mayor Adams’ highest-profile efforts. Hundreds of children are still languishing without one, despite a legal requirement to offer them seats.
Said Foti at the hearing: “We recognize that [75%] number is far from 100% and as we receive those additional supports, we will ensure you that children will be assigned and will receive their mandated services.”
The “additional supports” Foti mentioned was a reference to increased funding that’s being released. She told the Council they expect numbers to improve as new teams and staff come on line. “We’re seeing our compliance rates increase over time,” she said. “Hiring is happening this year via the current investments. We're going to expect to see our numbers look much better in the upcoming school year.”
DOE admitted that among preschoolers with IEPs (ages 3-5):
62.9% receive all of their related services
12.7% receive some of their services
24.4% receive none of their services yet
Some background: When a child turns 3, families move from Early Intervention (birth–3, run by the Health Department) into preschool special ed (Committee on Preschool Special Education, CPSC, run by DOE). DOE officials acknowledged that this “handoff” works best when someone can walk with each family through the process.
As one senior official put it, the transition really needs a “personal touch”:
“The handoff from early intervention to CPSC needs a personal touch via the CPSC workers and outreach coordinators that work directly with families,” said Foti. “Now, when those CPSC workers have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cases, that personal touch is a little different than when… an administrator is able to work hand in hand with a family.”
Another DOE official described the DOE early childhood team that helps with this transition as a “small but mighty team”—a nice phrase, but also a reminder that families are relying on a small group of people to manage a very big job.
New Funding = More Evaluation Teams, More Staff
The good news: recent City investments are allowing DOE to hire more people focused on preschool special ed. DOE testified that they are adding:
About 80 new evaluation teams
About 47 additional administrators and other essential staff
20 preschool assessment teams that can work in children’s home languages and communities.
In DOE’s words:
Said Foti: “This what is going to make the handover as smooth and supportive as possible for families.”
Earlier, she highlighted that when funding comes through, DOE can open more programs and hire more staff:
“When we have funding, we open up 11,600 specialized programs seats. When we have funding, we hire 500 related service providers this year, 800 special education preschool seats, 20 preschool assessment teams that speak children's languages in their communities.”
DOE also reported that, thanks to these investments, they have already increased the number of preschool evaluations by 600 cases this school year.
Preschool Seats and Waitlists: 1,802 New Seats, 100–150 Kids Still Waiting
On the classroom side, Foti said that new funding allowed them to open 1,802 preschool special education seats. “We opened 1,802 seats via the most recent investment, making sure that every student with a disability in preschool was able to start school on time.”
DOE says they are opening new classrooms on a rolling basis during the year and enrolling children as seats become available.
Why NYC's Special Ed Budget Has a $5.4 Billion Gap
This all comes down to funding, and the funding shortfall is serious. Two weeks ago, when Mayor Zohran Mamdani revealed a $5.4 billion budget gap, he blamed a huge portion of that on “due process cases,” also known as Carter-case spending, which cost the city $1.3 billion in 2025—nearly double the budgeted amount, and accounting for nearly a quarter of the city’s shortfall.
From FY16 to FY24, these due process cases surged from 6,000 to 26,000, with $400 million spent on IESP cases alone in FY24.
Some background: These due process cases fund tuition, litigation and re-litigation for Carter cases—private school for students that the DOE can’t accommodate. Spending for these cases alone has grown from $47 million in 2005 to over $1 billion in recent years, with about $1.3 billion in 2025.
The average cost of a Carter case is $100,000 annually‚ while autism cases cost $144,000. The DOE is looking to reduce these costs and improve accountability.
Is Carter spending taking money away from preschool special ed?
We don’t have proof that the City is literally moving money out of preschool special ed to pay for Carter cases. But the huge cost of Carter and other due‑process spending is clearly putting pressure on the same overall budget that’s supposed to fund preschool evaluations, services, and seats
NYC Special Education Budget: Key Facts Parents Need to Know
The DOE told the City Council that due‑process spending (including Carter and related cases) is now about $1.49 billion a year.
Separate analyses show Carter spending alone has grown from $47 million in 2005 to over $1 billion in recent years, with about $1.3 billion in 2025.
DOE leaders said around $1.5 billion a year is going to:
Private school tuition (Carter cases) and
Services in private or religious schools (IESP cases).
At the same time, in preschool special ed:
DOE admitted that only 62.9% of preschoolers with IEPs are getting all of their related services.
24.4% are getting none of their related services yet.
About 100–150 preschoolers are still waiting for the right special‑ed class.
They also said they’ve only recently gotten enough funding to:
Hire 80 new evaluation teams, 47 additional staff, and 20 preschool assessment teams, and
Open 1,802 new preschool special‑ed seats.
DOE officials themselves told the Council that if more of that $1.5 billion stayed inside the public system, they could create more specialized seats and services in DOE schools, including earlier and closer‑to‑home support.
Solutions to NYC's Special Education Funding Crisis
According to an op-ed in the NY Post, written by two members of the conservative think-tank Manhattan Institute: Mamdani should “revamp procedures related to ‘Carter cases.’”
They write that “families that sue to receive these reimbursements — at an average of $101,757 each — are disproportionately well-off” and “able to afford attorneys and to front six-figure tuition outlays before they’re reimbursed.”
“Currently, under a policy of Mayor Bill de Blasio, these families sue once and then get automatic annual renewals. If they had to reapply and make a case for reimbursement each year, the city would likely save.”
My family’s experience
My wife and I are in a subset of Carter cases (Connor funding), and we have to reapply and make a case for tuition reimbursement every year—we’re not automatically renewed, as the NY Post opinion piece claims. That means we pay lawyer’s fees—several thousands of dollars—and usually recover only a portion of them. Like many families, private school is the only way our son can get the accommodations he needs. Without a private school option we’d be lost, and our son would have zero chance of contributing in any way to society. As it stands, we hope he’ll be able to live a semblance of an independent life.
Under the Adams administration, for two years the DOE never even made us an offer for a District 75 placement. That was the first time we’d experienced that. For two years during the Adams administration there was no IEP meeting. It’s still uncertain how the Mamdani administration will handle due process cases. We’ll have more on that soon.
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