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It’s time to fix a de Blasio era special-ed policy that’s killing NYC’s budget

Mayor Zohran Mamdani says New Yorkers face a choice: Tax the wealthy or raise property taxes to close a $5.4 billion budget gap.

He left out a third option. “Due process” cases in the Department of Education alone account for $1.54 billion of that gap — 10.3% of the entire shortfall.

Federal law did not create that bill. City Hall did.

IDEA is the federal law that guarantees students with disabilities an appropriate public education. When districts fail, parents can place their child in a private school, pay tuition out of pocket and seek reimbursement through a due-process hearing.

But reimbursement is not automatic; a hearing officer must agree that the district failed and that the private placement is appropriate.

Due process was created to fix failures in public schools, not become a billion-dollar alternative to the public school system. Yet the average reimbursement averaged $101,757 per student in May 2025, more than three times what the city spends per pupil in its own schools.

Before 2014, the city would require parents seeking tuition reimbursement to proceed through full due-process hearing and often appealed adverse rulings, an approach consistent with the federal law.

But in 2014, the de Blasio administration chose a different strategy and moved away from a litigation-first strategy, signaling that denial would be “the exception, not the norm.”

As a result, many private placements continued year after year through settlement or pendency rather than through renewed litigation testing whether the DOE’s updated programs could provide students with an appropriate public education.

That is not how the law was ever meant to work.

My recent Manhattan Institute report shows that this spending went from $47 million in 2005 to $1.3 billion in 2025. That’s not a federal mandate growing. That’s local policy failure.

If this was a federal law problem, every state would look like New York. In 2023-24, New York filed 517 due-process complaints per 10,000 students. Texas filed 7.6. and California 38.4. NYC alone accounted for 98% of all statewide filings in 2020-21. IDEA applies equally to all states.

Now, Mamdani says he needs $558 million for his 2026 FY budget. This is on top of the $935 million in already-approved funding for due-process cases.

City Budget Director Sherif Soliman has suggested the answer may be to invest more in special education, so that fewer students need private placements. That goal is right.

In 2023-2024, DOE reported that 13,003 students were not fully receiving the services required under their Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), the legally binding plans that specify the support each child with a disability must receive.

However, if the administration wants to invest more in special education, it must start by fixing the system.

The most immediate fix is straightforward. Ensure that continued private placements are regularly and substantively reviewed. Right now, many placements continue year after year through settlement or pendency rather than through full testing of whether DOE’s updated programs could not provide FAPE. That has to change.

But the problem starts even earlier. Most preschool special-education evaluations aren’t done by the DOE. They’re conducted by state-approved private agencies, and parents can submit their own private reports as well. Those evaluators assess clinical need, but they are not responsible for determining how those needs can be met within a public school setting.

Fix that pipeline first. Expand in-house evaluation teams. Require real review before high-intensity placements are locked in.

If the Mamdani administration moves forward with its free childcare plan without fixing this structure, it will be scaling up the very system that’s already driving billion-dollar due process spending.

Mamdani ran on equity. But due process cases are the least equitable line in the city’s budget. Access depends less on the child’s needs than on a family’s ability to hire a lawyer and front private school tuition. In 2021, the Upper West Side recorded 14.8 cases per 1,000 students. Queens averaged fewer than 1. Staten Island 0.6.

That is not a federal framework working as intended. That is an inequitable system that the city built.

The mayor presents two paths: taxing the wealthy or taxing homeowners.  There is a third: Fix policies that created the bill.

The city knows what drove these costs. It’s time to own that and fix it without requiring taxpayers to pay more.

Jennifer Weber is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

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