Fwd: [Autism_NY_News] Death at PS 369 - Brooklyn

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Date: Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 7:05 PM

Subject: [Autism_NY_News] Death at PS 369 - Brooklyn

To: Autism_NY_News

*PLEASE FORWARD, CIRCULATE WIDELY:*

A disabled student died at his District 75 school, PS396, in Brooklyn

yesterday after experiencing breathing difficulties, according to this NY

Post article.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/boy_dies_at_school_526SDmglOx2FqYeew\

gz8WK

..

During the swine flu epidemic, I checked and it turns out that there were a

huge no. of school nurse vacancies in District 75, and an even greater no.

of vacancies in schools above the elementary level which had D. 75 programs

sited in them. Despite the fact that it turned out that swine flu was -

without argument - extremely dangerous for children with just any

disability, and the death rate from swine flu for all children with

disabilities was exponentially higher than for kids who didn't have

disabilities, the NYCDOE did not put nurses into all of the schools with D.

75 programs. Since at least 10% of all NYC kids have asthma, and most of

these are not classified by the NYCDOE as having disabilities, having school

buildings for kids of any age without nurses was - and is - simply

negligence of the grossest kind. It was during the height of the swine flu

epidemic and it is now.

Needless to say, the Bloomberg administration has been trying to sharply

decrease the number of nurses in NYCDOE schools. Liberals, conservatives,

progressives - it doesn't matter. Having schools without nurses in 2010

puts all NYCDOE children, no matter what kind of school their parents have

chosen, at very serious risk. It's appalling to see a Mayor who pushes a

pro-public health image taking budgetary and programming steps which mean

that children could needlessly die in school.

If anyone has any information re the PS 396 death, please get it to me off

list and I'll try see if there should have been a school nurse there, and if

so, whether there was one or not, NYC children would be a heck of a lot

safer if we had more school nurses. If that means more money in the

NYCDOE's budget for school nurses, and less money for a gazillion new small

schools, whether regular public or charter, so be it!

I am waay sick of an administration which pretends to be a public health goo

goo's dream and then behind the scenes, cuts services which are critically

necessary to protect the lives of children. As a professed bean counter, I

checked the NYCDOE and NYC Dept. of Health web sites where swine flu issues

were being reported and discovered that both the NYCDOE and NYC DOH treated

reports of swine flu in D. 75 programs as though they contained information

of the highest interest to Al Quaeda. Classified!

Again, if anyone has any information or contacts re D. 75's PS 396 Brooklyn,

please get it to me offlist and I'll follow up and make any information I

receive available to all.

Dee Alpert, Publisher

SpecialEducationMuckraker.com

sappell@...