Access (Still) Denied

An Update on the Physical Inaccessibility of New York City Public Schools

Black and white photo of the main entrance to a public school. The door is behind a locked gate and roughly a dozen concrete steps.

Introduction

More than 30 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibited discrimination on the basis of disability, physical barriers to full inclusion remain widespread in New York City's schools — and as a result, New Yorkers with disabilities continue to be excluded from buildings that are central to public life. For the child who cannot attend their neighborhood school because every entrance sits atop a flight of stairs, the parent who has to miss every concert and school play because the auditorium cannot accommodate their wheelchair, or the school social worker whose employment opportunities are constrained by the lack of accessible bathrooms, the ADA still exists in name only.

Since 2019, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) has taken important and long-overdue steps towards improving school accessibility. The current five-year Capital Plan, now in its final year, allocated $750 million for school accessibility projects. Yet given both the sheer scale of the system — there are more than 1,400 DOE buildings, many of which are more than a hundred years old — as well as the City's abject failure to prioritize ADA compliance in the years immediately following the law's passage, much work remains to be done. The investment made in 2019, while sizeable, was nevertheless only a down payment towards the ultimate goal of full accessibility. As described in more detail below, as of the start of the 2023-24 school year, only 31.1% of schools are fully accessible.

This November, the DOE will put forward its proposed capital spending for the next five years. The City should use the 2025-2029 Capital Plan to build upon the progress that has been made and commit at least $1.25 billion to the goal of improving school accessibility.

How we got here: A brief history

In January 1992, eighteen months after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law, Title II — which requires state and local governments to ensure individuals with disabilities have equal access to public programs and services — went into effect. From that point forward, New York City was legally required to adhere to federal accessibility standards when constructing or renovating facilities, as well as to make reasonable modifications to ensure individuals with disabilities are not excluded from programs due to the inaccessibility of the built environment. With respect to public education, the City did not treat this new mandate with any sense of urgency.

As the ADA turned 25, the dearth of meaningful school options for students with accessibility needs began to draw greater public attention.

December 2015

Following a two-year investigation into the physical accessibility of elementary schools, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York  reported  that the City had failed to meet its obligations under the ADA. In a letter describing the investigation's findings and requiring the DOE to take corrective action, the U.S. Attorney's office noted that in addition to failing to make "basic, relatively low-cost fixes" to existing buildings, the DOE "routinely ignored" federal guidelines for accessible design in building alterations undertaken after 1992.

Highlighted text from the first page of the U.S. Attorney's letter to the DOE: "nowhere is it more important to tear down the barriers to equal access than with respect to the education of our children. But today, in New York City, 25 years after the passage of the ADA, children with physical disabilities still do not have equal access to this most fundamental of rights."

June 2018

In response to sustained pressure from parents, students, and community members affected by barriers to access, the Fiscal Year 2019 City budget allocated $150 million over three years for school accessibility projects. Even with these additional funds, however, less than 1% of the DOE's $17.2 billion in capital spending between 2014 and 2019 went towards improving school accessibility.

October 2018

As part of a broader campaign led by the  ARISE Coalition , Advocates for Children of New York (AFC) released a data brief,  Access Denied , that analyzed City data and found that fewer than one in five public schools was fully accessible to students, parents, and educators with physical disabilities. In Brooklyn District 16, there were no fully accessible schools at any grade level.

Cover of the New York Daily News on October 10, 2018. Headline reads "City Fails Most Needy: Only 1 in 6 schools fully accessible for disabled students."

November 2018

The DOE  released  its proposed Capital Plan for 2020-2024 and included $750 million for school accessibility projects.

June 2019

The 2020-2024 Capital Plan was adopted. It invested $750 million in school accessibility, with the goal of making one-third of buildings fully accessible by 2024.

Defining a "fully accessible" school

To help families compare schools and understand their options, the City classifies schools as fully accessible, partially accessible, or not accessible and publishes  Building Accessibility Profiles  (BAPs) that provide more detailed information about barriers within individual buildings. Each BAP assigns a building a numerical ranking on a scale from 0 to 10; a score of 9 or 10 means that all educational primary function areas within the building are accessible. These buildings are considered "fully accessible," though they may or may not be ADA compliant.

BAP ratings of 1-8 reflect "partial" accessibility, though there is enormous variation within this category. A score of 1, for example, simply means it is possible to enter the building and access some parts of the ground floor. A building that receives a 5 out of 10 has a fully accessible ground floor and at least one elevator, but the elevator may not provide access to all floors of the building and there may not be any accessible bathrooms or classrooms beyond those on the ground floor. For purposes of this analysis, we have categorized all schools with a BAP rating of 1 or 2 as "functionally inaccessible," as these schools do not have any accessible ground-floor classrooms and are thus not a true educational option for a student who uses a wheelchair.

The current state of school accessibility in New York City

According to the latest City data, the Department of Education operates more than 1,400 buildings that are each home to one or more schools or programs in 2023-24. Of those for which accessibility status is available:

  • 454 buildings (34.2%) are fully accessible (a BAP rating of 9 or 10).
  • 263 buildings (19.8%) are partially accessible (a BAP rating between 3 and 8).
  • 65 buildings (4.9%) are not fully accessible but are in the construction pipeline for accessibility improvements under the 2020-2024 Capital Plan. Some of these projects will bring buildings to full accessibility, while others will improve the degree of partial accessibility.
  • 547 buildings (41.2%) are functionally or fully inaccessible and are not currently in the pipeline for renovations.

In other words, inaccessible buildings still outnumber fully accessible buildings.

Click on a dot to learn more about the building. Map is best viewed on desktop; some features may not be fully functional on mobile. Note: Some charter schools and 3-K/Pre-K for All programs are housed in buildings that are not operated by the DOE; they are not included here.

As shown on the map above, many buildings are home to multiple schools, and some schools are split across more than one physical site. For example, a school might have both a main campus as well as an annex building that houses all pre-K and kindergarten classes. Many schools in District 75 (the Citywide special education district serving students with significant disabilities) have a half-dozen program sites, which may serve different grade levels or offer different specialized services and programming. Looking at schools rather than buildings, and assigning accessibility status based on each school's primary address:

  • As of the start of the 2023-24 school year, only 31.1% of schools (494 out of 1,587) are fully accessible (not including 3-K/pre-K centers, District 79 programs, or charter schools).
  • Another 73 schools (4.6%) are in buildings that are in the pipeline for accessibility-related upgrades funded by the current Capital Plan.
  • 615 schools (38.8%) are functionally or fully inaccessible, and — short of additional funding — there is no immediate plan for bringing them any closer to ADA compliance.

Accessibility by community school district

In eleven of the City's 32 community school districts, at least a third of schools are fully accessible. As many as five additional districts will reach the 33.3% benchmark once the accessibility projects currently in the pipeline are completed.

Unfortunately, however, this means that the City will end the 2020-2024 Capital Plan with at least 16 districts in which two-thirds of schools are not fully accessible. District 24 (which encompasses Ridgewood, Corona, Glendale, Elmhurst, Maspeth, and Middle Village in Queens) will be the only district in which at least half of DOE schools are fully accessible.

Click on any school district on the map to view more information about accessibility in that district.

While unacceptably low, these numbers do represent significant progress. AFC's earlier report, Access Denied, found that at the beginning of the 2018-19 school year, there were only four school districts in which at least a third of schools were fully accessible. In seven of the City's 32 school districts, less than 10% of schools were fully accessible in 2018. When the renovations made possible by the current five-year Capital Plan are complete, no district will be in this category.

The path forward

As the current Capital Plan winds down, New York City must recommit itself to the task of making schools accessible for students, parents, educators, and community members with physical disabilities. While full ADA compliance remains a long-term goal, the progress made since 2018 makes clear that the persistence of physical barriers to inclusion and integration is an active policy choice rather than an inevitability. The current administration is not responsible for the City's failure to make the appropriate investments in the 1990s and 2000s, but it does have the power to determine what happens next — whether we move closer to a system in which no child is turned away from their school of choice simply because they use a wheelchair, or whether the promise of the ADA remains unfulfilled for yet another generation of students, family members, and staff.

The City should allocate at least $1.25 billion for school accessibility projects in the 2025-2029 Capital Plan, with the goal of making at least 50% of buildings that serve as the primary location for a school fully accessible. With this funding, we estimate that the DOE will be able to bring an additional 150 to 200 buildings to full accessibility by 2029, through a combination of relatively modest upgrades to buildings with partial accessibility as well as more substantial renovations to buildings that are entirely inaccessible.

In July 2030, the country will mark the 40th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The decisions made in coming months will determine just how much New York City has to celebrate.

NOTES

1 · Data on building accessibility and projects currently in the construction pipeline are courtesy of the DOE Office of Space Management and the School Construction Authority. We are particularly grateful to Tom Taratko and William Herrera in the Office of Accessibility Planning for their assistance and collaboration. For more information on BAP ratings, accessibility in admissions, and requesting accommodations, visit the  DOE's website .

2 · The DOE assigns each physical structure a unique 4-character building code for identification purposes (e.g., a school annex will have a building code distinct from that of the school's primary building, even if both facilities are at the same address). For purposes of this analysis, each code is counted as one building, regardless of whether it is a primary or secondary location. Buildings for which information on accessibility is not available were not included in the denominator when calculating overall percentages, though they do appear on the first map; most of these buildings house district 3-K/pre-K centers, school annexes or mini-schools, Pathways to Graduation (P2G) high school equivalency programs, or Alternate Learning Centers (ALCs) for students serving suspensions. Buildings that house public school programs but are not operated by the DOE (such as facilities owned or rented by charter schools) are not included in the denominator and do not appear on the map.

3 · District-level percentages do not include 3-K/pre-K centers, District 75 or 79 programs, or charter schools. At the time of our 2018 report, the DOE was still in the process of surveying all school buildings and publishing BAPs. Over the past five years, as the DOE has refined and standardized its practices for conducting surveys and assigning BAP scores, a handful of buildings that were once thought to be fully accessible have been more accurately re-classified as partially accessible (i.e., a BAP rating between 1 and 8). As of 2023, many buildings thought to have no accessibility still lack full building profiles; it is possible that, once surveyed, some may receive a rating higher than zero and will thus move into the partially accessible category.

For more information on the data and methods used for this analysis, contact  Sarah Part , Senior Policy Analyst at Advocates for Children.

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About Advocates for Children of New York (AFC) Since 1971, AFC has worked to ensure a high-quality education for New York students who face barriers to academic success, focusing on students from low-income backgrounds. Learn more at  www.advocatesforchildren.org .