Join #TeamOscar and support The Fund!

In November 2021, our family was thrown into a crisis when our then four-year-old son, Oscar, was expelled from our local public preschool. Before this, Oscar had been struggling to function in a mainstream classroom. After a lengthy evaluation process, he was diagnosed with a handful of conditions and delays. As a child classified with a disability, Oscar is legally entitled to early childhood services— and risks falling further behind developmentally without them— and yet none of the public therapeutic programs that our local school district referred him to had space. After months of waiting, we felt no choice but to enroll him at a private school for children with sensory differences, Otto Specht School in Chestnut Ridge, NY, and begin a long and costly process of seeking tuition reimbursement from our local school district.

Oscar is thriving at Otto Specht— and the district has yet to offer us a reasonable accommodation for the upcoming school year— and so we intend to keep him there.

We'll use the money we raise here to continue paying Oscar's tuition for as long as we need it. Then, when we don't— because the district offers us a reasonable public placement, or we sell our home and move him to a new school district — your donation will go towards the Fund for the Accessibility and Affordability of Education, a fund that allows Otto Specht to offer tuition assistance to families in need, including partial or full deferrals to families like mine. You can also make a tax-deductible donation directly to the school at https://www.ottospechtschool.org/take-action.

Thank you for your support,

Melissa