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The Puerto Rico Association of Providers of Related Services in Health and Education (APPSSRE) filed a lawsuit in court, claiming that it was not complying with the rates set by the Department of Education (DE) since 2015 for interim remedial providers for special education students.
The action was taken through a request for intervention in the long-pending case of Rosa Lydia Vélez, who for more than a year had been asking for equitable interim relief services for special education students.
In raising the positive legitimacy of its intervention in the proceedings, APPSSRE said that its members provide therapeutic services related to health and development aspects to special education students under the Ministry of Education’s Temporary Remedial Unit (URP) as part of compliance with the Child Rights Act in the fields of occupational, physical, speech and language, educational, aquatic, psychological, hearing, vision and optometry in the Rosa Lydia Vélez case.
They argued in their legal appeal that the Department’s actions and inactions have consistently resulted in large numbers of children who qualify under the law and regulations being deprived of necessary services.
In its plea to the court, APPSSRE said the rates the school board pays service providers under the interim remedy have “remained almost absolutely stagnant since 2015, without reasonable adjustment to account for the cumulative effects of inflation on our economy over the years, and without funds allocated for emergency situations (storms, earthquakes and epidemics),” Children’s ServicesThis results in lower compensation than the average fees charged to specialists who provide treatment services to other PR government agencies or through educational institutions that contract with DE.”
They estimate that the cost of their services has depreciated by 30% over the past decade.
“The Honourable Court must intervene and hear the parties in this historic case and those who appeared before it, lest it continue to leave it to the discretion of the Department of Education to keep the cost of children’s services stagnant at almost below fair levels. The Agency, through its legal representatives, outlined the “market value of special education that qualifies for interim remedies.”
The organization has held demonstrations and communications on its claims since last year, but the issue has not yet been resolved.
Ruth Concepción, president of APPSSRE, explained that by filing a request for intervention with the judge in charge of the litigation, Rosa Lydia Vélez, they seek tariff justice that supports the profitability of their company while showing that it will lead to an increase in the supply of quality and stable services for students in special education programs.
Concepcion claimed that the government has delegated the responsibility of guaranteeing services during the pandemic to providers without providing federal aid intended for the continuity of those services. “While we are still suffering from the economic impacts of the pandemic, inflation, and other factors, DE is operating under unprecedented wealth and using special pandemic funds to subsidize mandatory and recurring services that are not budgeted for in the general fund budget. On the other hand, the government, in a contradictory and questionable way, defends and endorses contracts and fees within DE that waste budgets and have little to do with DE’s raison d’etre,” Concepcion told students at Metro.
As for the start of the new school year, the APPSSRE president said they do not have high expectations. “We anticipate that the Ministry of Education will continue its culture of violating the rights of students in special education programs, that they will increasingly go beyond themselves, systematically hinder access to services, and demonstrate misguided compliance with their obligations to such vulnerable populations.
In the first two weeks, we will hear from DEs to justify and/or minimize their inability to provide students with a dignified start to the school year that is different than how it ended,” he said.
Concepcion regrets the temporary focus of some politicians on the situation at the Ministry of Education. He adds that these are also the cause of the crisis that prevails in Germany. “As long as violations of the rights of special education students go unpunished and contracts that spend educational funds on everyone except students continue to be normalized, the population we serve and their families will continue to suffer the worst institutional abuses possible,” he lamented.
Challenges of Special Education
Last week, Yanira Raíces, secretary of the Department of Education, acknowledged the challenges of special education resources in an interview with Metro Puerto Rico. Specifically, he mentioned hiring teachers who specialize in children with autism. This was also recognized by the president of the Teachers Association, Víctor Bonilla, who called on schools of education to train more teachers specialized in this population.
Regarding T1, which helps special education students, Raíces said they have already recruited 85 percent of the staff.
“Special education is always a challenge,” Rais said last week.
The Case of Rosa Lydia Velez
The lawsuit, which has been going on for more than four decades, began in 1980 when Rosa Lydia Vélez sued the Department of Education for not providing the educational services needed by her daughter, Isamar Malaret, who was born with cerebral palsy. In 1981, the lawsuit was certified as a class action, affecting all students in special education.
More than two decades later, in 2002, the court ordered DE to report annually on compliance with actions related to providing services to class members. Failure to comply with the order was subject to thousands of dollars in fines per day. However, last October, the ED won a victory, eliminating direct monitoring from 11 provisions.
At the time, parents and students involved in the process raised alarm about the impact that reduced Department of Education monitoring would have on the services they must provide to the special education student community.
There are more than 80,000 special education students in Puerto Rico.
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