Your personal story is the most powerful message you can send. 

You don’t need legal language — just write from the heart. 

Use the prompts below to guide your letter. Feel free to adapt or skip sections based on your own experience. 

 1. Tell Your Story 

• Describe your child’s challenges and needs. 

• Share how special education and related services have helped your child learn, communicate, and thrive. 

• If you feel comfortable, explain how missing services have affected your child and family. 

2.  List the Services Your Child Receives (or Should Be Receiving) 

Examples include: 

• Speech Therapy 
• Occupational Therapy (OT) 
• Physical Therapy (PT) 
• Counseling 
• Para Support or SETSS 
• Vision Services 
• Hearing Services 
• Assistive Technology 

Note if certain services are hard to find — for example, bilingual providers, vision teachers, or teachers of the hearing impaired. 

3.  Explain What Happens When Services Aren’t Provided 

• Describe any times services were delayed, missed, or not provided at all. 

• Explain how this affected your child’s academic progress, communication, behavior, or emotional well-being. 

• If you had to secure services privately, share how this created financial or emotional strain on your family. 
• If your child depends on assistive technology, describe how delays in getting equipment make it impossible to function in school. 

4. Why Taking Away Due Process Is Dangerous 

• If you have used an impartial hearing, explain how it was the only way to compel the district to deliver services or reimburse you. 

• If you haven’t used one yet, share why you may need that option in the future. 

• Make clear that without this right, districts could promise services on paper but never actually provide them — and parents would have no way to enforce the plan. 

• Emphasize: Public school children keep this protection. Nonpublic school children lose it. That’s not fair — same disabilities, fewer rights. 

5. The Cost and Stress on Families 

• Describe the time, money, and emotional toll that comes with caring for a child with disabilities. 

• Explain how being forced into complex complaint processes or court — with no guarantee of help or reimbursement — is unrealistic and harmful. 

Optional Example Paragraph 

Feel free to personalize and adapt this sample: 

As a parent of a child with special needs, I am deeply alarmed by the proposed amendment to Section 200.5. If you remove my right to a neutral hearing when the district fails to provide my child’s IESP services, there is no real way to hold the system accountable. My child will be left without critical support, and I will be left facing months of delay, confusion, and frustration — with no fair chance to be heard. Public school families would keep this protection. My child, only because they attend a nonpublic school, would lose it. 

⚠️ Privacy Tip: 

Please do not include your child’s full name or identifying details in your letter. 

Schools and service providers play a critical role in explaining how this proposal would destabilize special education delivery. 

Letters from professionals add valuable system-level insight — especially when written in a professional, factual tone. 

Below are key points you may wish to include in your comment: 

 1. Impact on Service Delivery and Program Stability 

• Impartial hearings for IESP implementation currently serve as a vital backstop — ensuring that districts ultimately fulfill their legal obligations. 

• Without this enforcement tool, districts face fewer consequences for non-implementation, and many services will remain “on paper only.” 

• The result: greater uncertainty for families, providers, and schools, and more children going without essential supports. 

2. Provider Shortages and Market Effects 

• There are already serious shortages of qualified providers, especially in areas such as: 

• Speech therapy 

• Occupational and physical therapy (OT/PT) 

• Bilingual services 

• Low-incidence specializations such as vision and hearing 

• Removing due process protections will further discourage providers from contracting with districts, worsening shortages and reducing service continuity. 

• Schools will find it even harder to secure and retain consistent, qualified professionals. 

3. Limitations of ERES and NYSED’s State Complaint Process 

• The Enhanced Rate and Equitable Services (ERES) unit is run by NYCDOE’s Office of General Counsel, staffed by the same attorneys who represent the district against parents in impartial hearings — creating an inherent conflict of interest. 

• ERES decisions are made on paper only and typically take about 60 days. Parents who disagree are then referred to the state complaint process, which can take another 60 days or more. 

• During these months, students remain without services. 

• The NYSED complaint process: 

• Is not an oral hearing, disadvantaging parents who struggle to communicate in writing. 

• Is procedurally complex and often referred back to the same district that denied services. 

• Is rarely effective for individual cases and typically limited to broad systemic issues. 

4. Administrative Burden and Litigation Risk 

• Removing due process for implementation disputes will not reduce conflict — it will shift it to the courts. 

• Families will turn to judicial actions and complex litigation, creating more cost, delay, and administrative burden for both schools and districts. 

• The absence of a clear, enforceable process will leave schools caught between compliance mandates and family needs. 

Simple Message from Schools and Providers:

You can state plainly that this proposal will: 

• Reduce access to services for children with disabilities 

• Increase instability in staffing and programming 

• Shift costs and burdens onto families and schools — instead of fixing the system 

You don’t need to be a lawyer to reference key legal and policy points. 

Use clear, plain language — even one or two of these arguments can make your letter stronger. 

 1. Violates New York’s Promise of Equal Treatment 

Legal basis: 

New York Education Law § 3602-c requires that the district of location develop an Individualized Education Services Plan (IESP) for a parentally placed nonpublic school student “in the same manner and with the same contents as” a public-school IEP, and it explicitly cross-references § 4404, which governs due process hearings. 

By removing implementation disputes from due process for IESPs — while retaining full due process rights for IEPs — this amendment breaks that parity and contradicts the law’s cross-reference to § 4404. 

Simpler version you can use: 

New York law says private-school students with disabilities are supposed to get services in the same way, and with the same protections, as public-school students. 

Public-school students will still be able to go to a hearing when services aren’t provided. Private-school students will not. 

You can’t remove the enforcement tool for one group of children and still call it equal treatment. 

2. Defies Decades of Decisions and Practice 

• For decades, State Review Officers (SROs) — the state’s special education appeals body — have consistently recognized that parents can bring impartial hearings when districts fail to implement IESP services. 

• No SRO decision has ever ruled that IESP students lack implementation rights. 

• A new regulation cannot simply erase rights long recognized in law, guidance, and established practice. 

3. ERES Is Not a Real Replacement 

• The Enhanced Rate and Equitable Services (ERES) process is run by the district’s Office of General Counsel — the same office whose attorneys represent the district against parents in hearings. 

• This is a built-in conflict of interest. 

• ERES outcomes overwhelmingly favor the district, and families face: 

• Long delays (often 60+ days) 

• No independent, neutral decision-maker 

• No guaranteed right to appeal 

• For most families, ERES is not a path to services — it’s an exercise in futility. 

4. The NYSED Complaint Process Doesn’t Protect Individual Children 

• NYSED frequently refers complaints back to the district that denied the services in the first place. 

• The process is paper-only, disadvantaging parents who are not strong writers or whose first language isn’t English. 

• It is complex, slow, and inaccessible for most families who can’t afford legal help. 

• At best, it can address broad systemic problems, not individual students’ urgent needs. 

5. Creates a Second-Class System for Children with Disabilities 

• Public-school students will continue to have full due process protections. 

• Nonpublic-school students — with the same disabilities and needs — will lose those protections entirely. 

• This creates a two-tier system that conflicts with basic principles of equal protection and educational equity. 

• The amendment doesn’t fix the real problems — provider shortages, payment delays, and administrative inefficiency. 

• Instead, it hides those problems by making it harder for families to enforce the law. 

Stripping parents of these rights sends a message that saving money matters more than protecting children with special needs. 

 Final Summary You Can Adapt 

The proposed amendment to Section 200.5 is inconsistent with Education Law § 3602-c, contradicts decades of SRO precedent, and would materially weaken enforcement of IESP services for tens of thousands of students with disabilities. 

ERES and the NYSED state complaint process are not adequate substitutes for impartial hearings and do not provide the independence, remedies, or accessibility that due process guarantees. 

For these reasons, the amendment should not be adopted in its current form.