The Special Education Alliance

In an amazing victory for parents of special needs children in the Cherry Hill School system, the NJ State Department of Education has found that the School Administration under Superintendent David Campbell broke state law when, in its efforts to slash special education resources, radically changed how home instruction was given to special needs children.

“It cannot be understated how important this decision is,” states Stuart Chaifetz, President of the Special Education Alliance. “We, the parents of children with Autism and other disabilities, have been subjected to devastating cuts to special education resources by Superintendent Campbell and his Director of Special Education, Isreala Franklin. Now, with the state vindicating our claims that the Administration had been violating the law, we are beginning to fight back.”

Earlier this year, the Campbell Administration, in it’s ongoing effort to cut funding for special education, changed the language of IEPS (Individualized Education Programs) so that home instruction services, which are reserved for the neediest children, were no longer written with a set amount of hours of instruction, but now stated “Up to” a certain amount of time. This may seem like an innocuous change, but it was a crushing blow, for it meant that the district was now able to deny home services to families because “Up to” meant zero hours of service was acceptable. Thankfully, the State’s ruling changes this, and forces the Campbell Administration to provide the services that these children desperately need.

“Two weeks ago we were all shocked and disgusted by the discovery that a padded closet was being used for children with autism in Cherry Hill,” states Chaifetz. “We then uncovered the fact that dozens of children in the district were being denied their much needed therapies because Franklin and Campbell, who had been warned since last year that understaffing was a major crisis, had not hired enough staff. And now the State has ruled that this Administration has broken the law. The Board of Education must now stand up for families and children and take action.”

It is for all these reasons, and the many other wrongs committed against families with special needs children, that SEA is calling for the removal of Special Education Director Franklin and for the creation of a new oversight committee by the Board of Education, so that the grievous offenses committed against the most vulnerable of our children may finally be dealt with and corrected.

SEA will present the findings of the State to the Board of Education at its meeting this Tuesday, December 18th, at Cooper elementary school (1960 Greentree Road -Cherry Hill, NJ 08003). The meeting begins at 7 pm.