NYLAG Special Litigation Unit Director Danielle Tarantolo and Special Education Unit Director Jessica Selecky spoke with Law360 Senior Reporter Marco Poggio about the historic settlement in their class action lawsuit that will mandate timely accommodation hearings for New York City and State students with disabilities.
Five years after its initial filing, this settlement means that NYCDOE and NYSED will make systemic changes to improve their hearing systems, including improving their technological systems to make them more efficient; changing the way they handle resolution and settlements of complaints; providing oversight and training to hearing officers; increasing transparency into the system for families and advocates; and providing special protections for students whose hearing decisions are overdue.
“The longer students go without the supports they need, the more challenging it becomes to make up for lost ground. NYCDOE and NYSED disregarded our clients’ rights to timely hearings to secure special education services for too long,” Jessica Selecky, director of New York Legal Assistance Group’s Special Education Unit, said in a statement. “This lawsuit, and this settlement, are finally changing that.”
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Through the litigation, plaintiff attorneys argued the delays especially harmed indigent families because they cannot pay up front for private special education services and wait years to be paid back.
“For years, the agencies tasked with supporting students made families wait months or more to find out if their children would get special education supports, causing immense harm to these students’ educational and social well-being,” Danielle Tarantolo, director of NYLAG’s Special Litigation Unit and lead NYLAG attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a statement. “It’s unjust for even one family to experience this, but the systemic inequities at play were especially detrimental for lower income New Yorkers across the board.”
“These students really needed our help and were not being treated fairly,” said Tarantolo, who personally dedicated thousands of hours to the class action. “We made the institutional commitment that we would see this litigation through, even though we knew it would drain a lot of our resources and be very time-consuming.”
Read the full story published in Law360 on April 25, 2025.
