Copyright Hartford Courant
Bridgeport Public Schools officials are being asked to explain how they plan to better serve children with special needs to resolve a legal complaint to the state filed by the Center for Children’s Advocacy. The complaint, which was filed in June, alleged that the school district violated the rights of special education students by failing to provide them with an adequate education, including access to teachers who were certified to teach special education and speech and language services critical to their development. The Bridgeport school district is now required to provide state officials with a plan for how they will provide children with the educational services that were missed. The district must also contact parents of children identified by CCA and the state as having been denied services to get sign-off on those plans. Finally, the school district must appoint a staff member to manage implementation, with monthly reports on progress to state officials. The complaint is the fourth that CCA has filed against the school district since 2013. “What became clear to us at CCA is that the staffing shortage was a real, significant safety concern,” said Ilana Ofgang, an attorney for CCA. “For my clients, there was not academic progress, there was not access to free and appropriate public education, but before we could even approach advocating for those to be in place, there were major safety concerns because there was not enough staff.” The students in question have individualized education programs, or IEPs, “that recommend they be in self-contained classrooms receiving specialized instruction and supervision by a certified special education teacher, which means a teacher with very, very particular set of training and skills,” Ofgang said. Shortages of such educators, along with the support of paraeducators, resulted in an environment that ultimately resulted in bodily harm in some cases, like a child who was allowed to hit her head against a wall over 250 times without intervention, according to CCA. The resolution, released on Oct. 14 by the state Department of Education, mandates a series of required actions that must be taken before the year is over, with some actions requiring an earlier deadline of mid-November. Laura Tillman is a reporter for The Connecticut Mirror (https://ctmirror.org/ ). Copyright 2025 © The Connecticut Mirror.
