UPDATE: Since our story aired, 7 News Senior Reporter Eileen Buckley was notified by parent Jackie Soda that the speech teacher was restored to the school. She sent us an email she received from the Elmwood Village Charter School.
"Dear EVCS Days Park Families,
We are writing to inform you that, thanks to your advocacy, BPS has reassigned their Speech Language provider to EVCS Days Park beginning today, Tuesday 10/10. We are continuing to keep an eye on this issue, and we ask that you please reach out if you have any questions or concerns, and we will update you asap if anything changes.
Thank you for all your work on behalf of your students!
EVCS Administrative Team"
ORIGINAL: Some parents from the Elmwood Village Charter School are crying foul after the Buffalo Public School District pulled two speech therapists from their school.
The district is required by law to provide these therapists at the city charter schools. The district says it's dealing with a shortage of speech teachers. But as 7 New Senior Reporter Eileen Buckley learned not all charter schools in Buffalo lost their therapists.
“This is against the law. This isn't something the city can do to us here at the charter school,” remarked Jackie Soda, charter school parent.
Jackie Soda has two children at the Elmwood Village Charter School Days Park location in Buffalo. Her 9-year-old daughter Etta Hattler is in 4th grade and in need of speech therapy.
“She spent two years in front of the screen during COVID, and, you know, there wasn't a lot of interaction. There was a lot of being talked at — a lot of computer use. She has issues with — a little impediment, a lot of 'R's' and 'L' sounds,” explained Soda.
But recently the Buffalo School District removed two speech teachers from the charter school.
“It’s illegal. They can't do that. There's been a contract in place to have speech provided here through the district and we just need that reinstated. That agreement needs to be upheld,” noted Soda.
I asked the district why and in an email was told "BPS reassigned two therapists from Elmwood Village Charter School to other schools."
But the district also stated, "the number of students requiring speech therapy has increased since last school year" and the district "is actively working to hire speech therapists" and expects to have new ones on staff shortly.
But I wanted to find out for school families if this is happening at other city charter schools.
I visited Tapestry Charter School in north Buffalo to find out how they're handling the situation.
“So, at this point, they haven't tried to pull out the one that they've supplied for you,” Buckley asked. “No, they haven't,” replied Eric Klapper.
Tapestry Charter School Executive Director Eric Klapper tells me his school has two speech therapists. But his school hired one on their own and the other is provided by the city school district.
“We have requested and received a teacher from Buffalo Public Schools as you know, charter law, that the district provides those related services, and so we do have a teacher that’s a BPS teacher that comes to Tapestry and serves a portion of our students with IEP’s,” Klapper said.
However, Klapper says they need more help.
“We do have another very large caseload of students with IEP’s that we've requested an additional speech teacher per the law, and we are awaiting a response from the district on, you know, getting those teachers — we know that there's a shortage,” commented Klapper.
“It said about 54% nationally, as a 54%, shortage of speech-language pathologists in schools,” stated Dr. Wendy Paterson.
I sat down with Dr. Wendy Paterson, who is the dean of the School of Education at SUNY Buffalo State University. She says some of the shortage can be blamed on the rigors of the master programs.
“It's a difficult major. It requires almost a premed focus, that you're learning about child development. You'll learn about speech production, about hearing, hearing loss, and all the things that are part of speech-language, audiology, or pathology,” described Paterson.
But the other part is pure burnout in classrooms because students have a range of speech difficulties.
"And the burnout and leaving the profession doesn't really help. Speech-language pathologists can make a whole lot more money in the medical industry than they make in a school,” Paterson reflected. “The demanding workload is always cited and very much like social workers, caseload matters, and so for a speech-language pathologist, if you think about a school, you have one speech-language pathologist in a school, and often that person might be traveling very similar to any specialist teacher. With charter schools, particularly, who share in what the public schools are doing, that's going to be significantly challenging.”
Klapper noted that he believes the city school district is “well within their budget to provide these services” to the charter schools.
“I know that they're seeking out teachers, but they could certainly provide those services or reimburse us for teachers that we hire,” Klapper stated.
Right now, 42 Elmwood Village Charter School parents are considering legal action against the district to regain speech teachers.
