By Camryn Sanchez
At the beginning of the school year, families of students with disabilities were desperate for funding for the Yonkers Special Education Department. Now at the end of the semester: they are angry.
Yonkers activist Nnenna Akoma-Ononaji created a petition in August addressed to Governor Cuomo and other local officials requesting 20 million dollars to aid the Yonkers Special Education Department. As of now, Akoma-Ononaji has received no response.
As a person with a disability and the parent of a child with a disability, Akoma-Ononaji works hard to ensure that the Yonkers community has the resources it needs for the good of its students. “We don’t want to continue to hear there is not enough funding or resources to provide for the needs of our community,” she says. “We appreciated our legislators but there is so much work to be done especially now during this pandemic… If you don’t advocate you won’t get the proper services.”
Yonkers mother Beatrice says that this is a problem that has been ongoing for her child’s entire life. “My son is 19 years old. He was only 18 months when he was diagnosed with autism. We’ve been having the same problems,” however she adds that the COVID-19 pandemic has made special education much more difficult. “For our children it’s very hard especially right now with the kids at home learning from the computer. It is really hard for them and hard for the parents. That’s why we are trying to get help. The government needs to know that we are really struggling with our kids.”
In-person resources for special education students typically include speech therapists, counselors, aids, and much more. Virtual learning and a general underfunding of the special education program has left parents in the lurch.
Mariaelena Perez is an administrator of Milestones With Love, a Yonkers charity designed to support families with children who have disabilities and founded by Akoma-Ononaji. Perez is also a former special education student and the aunt of a child with a disability. “With the pandemic things have gotten so much worse for parents with kids with disabilities,” says Perez. Her sister Adda also lives with a disability, and is now in charge of her eight year old daughter Sarah’s online learning. Perez says that her niece requires the aid of an adult who can assist her with her schoolwork as she does in in-person school. Adda Perez says she is worried by the city’s lack of response to Nnenna’s petition. Her daughter is not used to online learning and does not understand why she cannot see her friends and teachers. Adda says she wants a teacher for her daughter who can meet with her in-person. “A special teacher who could sit down and explain to them how it is how it’s supposed to be going on now, to explain it to her how she understands because I explain it to her, and in ten minutes she’ll be forgetting about it.”
At school Sarah had an aid she was adjusted to: “She [Sarah] lost the ability of being able to speak her way through and having someone to come back to when she doesn’t understand things because my sister doesn’t have the education to be able to teach her child. It’s literally two people who can’t read or speak well teaching each other therefore Sarah is having no progress,” says Mariaelena Perez. “Not being able to have all these different programs that she’s used to having and just being locked in the house all day long as well it’s just changed her completely.”
Akoma-Ononaji explains that students can actually retrogress without adequate services. “Now with COVID we are seeing the rise in students facing the potential to regress, and lose the skills they have gained during in-person service provided education.” Akoma-Ononaji is also the parent of a student with a disability. “As a parent having to be that teacher at home, I love my children, but we weren’t trained to be teachers. Now we’ve got to follow through on the IEP [Individualized Education Program] at home, do all of the things that are required in the school. But we don’t have the staff for that, trained personnel in the house, in the apartment to assist us.
Issues that the entire Yonkers student community has been facing such as lack of computers, lack of internet access, and the stress of isolation are magnified in the disability community. “You really need a village to help you with the child, and when COVID hit your village disappeared. Now you’re left with your child that you can’t communicate with and don’t really understand and it’s really difficult,” says Perez.
Beatrice talks about another Yonkers mother with five children -three of whom have disabilities: “She only has one computer. And the computers that they offer at the Yonkers public schools they are limited with one per family. You can imagine it’s hard for parents. Who have not just two kids but more than two kids. I requested the computer for my daughter and I’m still waiting since September.”
Perez and Akoma-Ononaji work hard through Milestones With Love to make other parents aware of resources available to them. Although Akoma-Ononaji credits the Yonkers special education department with doing a “marvelous job getting up to speed and getting up to compliance with state guidelines,” the fundamental lack of funding in the program concerns her. “The special education department is not financially where it’s supposed to be. I am pleading to the governor, to the mayor, to the senators, legislators, and to the community to please not sell our special needs children short… and to allow our special needs children to receive the best education they can.”
Editor’s Note: one name in this article was changed to protect the anonymity of a child
