Black and Brown communities throughout New York City, especially those that are also immigrant and working class, have seen needed special education and gifted and talented programs cut, and our students are suffering as a result.
Special needs programs
Access to special education is biased in every way in favor of wealthier students and against those from marginalized backgrounds.
Even though white students only comprise 12.5% of students with disabilities, according to the City Council’s fiscal year 2026 budget review, they make up 71% of these students who receive private school tuition payments. The families who benefit from those payments are also much more likely to live in wealthier zip codes. Black, Brown, and lower income students deserve to get these funds too, but unfortunately, oftentimes their parents simply don’t have the resources to apply and fight for the money. We elected officials need to be their voice.
In addition, lower income students in the outer boroughs often need to travel long distances to access programs. Imagine that your child needs to attend a particular school for their condition, but the nearest school that teaches in a way tailored to that condition is in another borough. To get there and back home, your child spends as long as four hours on the bus each day. Sometimes it takes so long they arrive at school late and miss classes. Why should any child have to endure that? This isn’t hypothetical; it’s reality for some families even though such lengthy commutes are against the law.
And we are not investing in the professionals necessary to ensure the special education available meets our need. As Chalkbeat New York reported, paraprofessionals, who support students with special needs both inside and outside the classroom, have a starting pay of $34,000, making the career often impossible to pursue in a city as unaffordable as New York.
Gifted and talented programs
Before Mayoral control of schools, in 1984 Brooklyn Tech’s student body was 63.5% Black and Hispanic. There was no test prep for the SHSAT; students benefited only from strong accelerated coursework in elementary and middle-school gifted and talented programs like Intellectually Gifted Classes (grades four to six) and Special Progress (grades seven to nine) classes, as New York Post education reporter Susan Edelman has documented. 1984 was not an isolated example; from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, Black and Hispanic children made up close to half or more of Brooklyn Tech’s students, 52.8% as late as 1994.
Sadly, many Gifted & Talented programs were dropped in Black and Brown communities during the Bloomberg administration and have not come back, denying these children access to the same opportunities their peers from other races and ethnicities receive. Between 2009 and 2013, the DOE dropped 60 gifted and talented programs, roughly 30% of the programs at the time, mostly in poorer, racial-minority neighborhoods in the outer boroughs; only about 140 programs remain. Edelman’s reporting also found that as of 2019, 10 city districts with more than 90% Black or Hispanic students had only one gifted and talented program in the entire district.
Even where these programs do exist, far too many families simply never know about these opportunities or don’t receive information in a language they can understand, so their children never have the chance to participate.
Too many politicians want to paint over the problem by just making the specialized high school numbers look better, when what we need to do is solve the root issues underlying disparities. If children aren’t equitably given the tools to succeed, how can we expect equitable outcomes?
That is why we are sponsoring Introductions 684 and 853, to help ensure that every family, regardless of the language they speak or neighborhood they live in, has access to equitable opportunities and that the city develops recommendations to expand access.
As Brooklyn’s first Chinese American Council Member and the son of an immigrant mother from Trinidad and Tobago, both of whom serve council districts that reflect our city’s culture and diversity, we will never accept any community being left out of decisions that shape our children’s future.
We must expand opportunity because talent exists in every neighborhood, every community, and every child. Our job is to build a school system that recognizes that talent and gives every student the chance to thrive and grow, wherever they are in their education journey. And by denying many of our children access to the education programs they need, we are failing them. That must end, and our children cannot wait.
Susan Zhuang and Chris Banks are members of the New York City Council.
