Education Department's special-ed help mostly goes to the city's rich
Wednesday, December 15th 2010, 4:00 AM
The city Department of Education spent $140 million last year on private school tuition for more than 3,000 special-education pupils - most of them from the city's wealthiest neighborhoods.
Such tuition payments for children with dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism have increased fourfold since 2005, school officials say, and the cost could approach $200 million by next year.
Taxpayers support up to 80% of pupils at some private schools, where headmasters pull down huge salaries.
Meanwhile, children of low-income and working-class parents remain stuck in underfunded and sometimes chaotic special-education programs in regular public schools.
In Manhattan's District 2, which covers the upper East Side, midtown and Greenwich Village, the city paid private school tuition for 769 students last year, the most of any community school district, Education Department records show.
Meanwhile, District 6 in Washington Heights and Inwood, which has half the population of District 2, had less than a 10th as many private school placements - just 64.
District 3 on the upper West Side had 441 placements, but Districts 4 and 5 in East Harlem and Harlem had only 78, although they had a larger combined student
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