NYC DoE SESIS - IEPs and RSAs for Outside Services

The New York City Department of Education has a new computer system to write IEPs and track progress.  It is a horrible system that steals time from kids everyday as the therapists have to make computer entries for every child they see, every session they see them.  The therapists used to do this by hand in 30 seconds or so after each session.  These notes now need to be entered into a computer that is often not in the room where they are treating kids.  In addition, a session with multiple children means multiple entries, so that a 30 minute session may be cut to 15 or 20 minutes so that the therapist has time to go to the resource room and enter their notes before the next session.

My latest discovery is that SESIS has no way to enter related services (therapies) that are to given outside school into the IEP.  In the last few years the DoE has been fighting parents to eliminate these services.  They are most often for children who need so much therapy that it would take them out of the classroom for too much, causing them to miss excessive instructional time.  The old method - by hand- allowed the IEP to be individualized for what each child needed.  By making it impossible to record a proper IEP in the SESIS system that the DoE had designed for them, parents will be further pressured to give up the services their children need.

Parents - don't sign an IEP that you don't agree with!