In Bonton, NJ, Linda Mauriello helps young people with disabilities to prepare to enter the workforce after they leave school. They learn to establish professional objectives, create curriculum and build relationships at work. Sometimes they receive help to find internships and receive support at work as well.
A student with multiple disabilities trained in a school cafeteria, was hired and is still working there five years later. A student with trained autism at local Walgreens, learning time management and working with customers. He was hired and is now in charge of opening the store.
Mrs. Mauriello is a big fan of the program. “My students have really benefited from that,” he said.
But hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities who are eligible for similar assistance do not receive it. Federal and state governments spend approximately one billion dollars each year for these services, but most parents, and even some school officials, do not even know that the program exists.
In 2023, New Jersey had the lowest proportion in the country, approximately 2 percent, of eligible students who receive help, according to a Master Report analysis of government data.
For 10 years, the New Jersey program has languished. And the State Decentralized School Government System has hindered efforts to bring services to schools.
Interviews with dozens of defenders, educators and parents represent a confusing bureaucratic maze, one that leaves tens of thousands of students without services.
New Jersey officials recognize the problem.
“We know that there are not enough people who are fully aware of all our services,” said Charyl Yarbrough, a commissioner of employment accessibility services in the New Jersey Labor Department and interim director of the State Vocational Rehabilitation Services Division . “Nobody wants to be a better saved secret.”
Throughout the country, only 40 percent of people with disabilities from 16 to 64 are employed, although experts say most are able to maintain jobs. The Congress created the school age training program a decade ago, channeling money to the United States.
But only about 295,000 students received some type of services, from an estimated 3.1 million that are eligible, in 2023, the most recent year for which national data is available. In New Jersey last year, that number was 1,370, of more than 80,000 eligible students. The state of New York has not been much more successful: it is attending about 5 percent of its eligible students.
When labor training programs reach students with disabilities, defenders say they are often inappropriate and that states face little responsibility for their deficiencies.
“If young people have the opportunity to expose themselves to the world of work, and receive services in advance, they can work independently in the community,” said Maureen McGuire-Kuletz, co-director of the Rehabilitation Center of the George Washington University Research and Education of advice. “That was hope. If it arrived early, then some challenges later would not exist. ”
Although the officials of the United States Department of Education recognize that the so -called transition services prior to employment should be available for all students with disabilities, they point out that the law does not require that all access services. Not all students choose to receive them, and some may be receiving the help they need from their schools, said Danté Q. Allen, the commissioner of the Department’s Rehabilitation Services Administration until last month, in an email.
In New Jersey, the state government generally uses external contractors, mostly organizations and non -profit universities, to provide such training. He spent $ 14.6 million in federal and state funds in this training in 2023, last year for which there are complete data available.
But many parents do not know what their children are eligible and how to get it.
Bridgette Brece’s son went well with the practical work in his high school in Burlington County, NJ, but his disabilities hindered reading, and fought with exams based on textbooks.
Concerned about her future, Mrs. Brece tried to get career aid before graduation. He saw a Facebook publication on the State Vocational Rehabilitation Agency, which serves exactly to that purpose. But she says that a counselor told her that her son was not eligible until he turned 18, which was not true.
After graduating the past spring, he found a job as a driver of a towing truck, in which he was good and enjoyed. But the company required that all employees receive periodically saved shifts for emergencies during the night. His anxiety disability terrified him to lose a call, so he did not sleep for several nights in a row and had to quit smoking.
Prior training for employment, which could have received during high school, could have taught him how to request accommodation or how to explore works that fit their skills and interests. But he never received that. His mother, like most parents in New Jersey, had no idea that the program existed. Now he has requested Social Security benefits, something that none of them would like.
“He’s embarrassed,” he said. “My heart breaks for the child. He wants to work, he wants to do good. I would only want us to have received help while he was still in high school. ”
Maureen Piccoli Kerne, who began a transition program at a secondary school in Ridgefield, NJ, says that advice before employment placement is crucial.
“It’s important because then they know what they like to do,” he said. “They know what their strengths are. They know how to ask for adaptations at work. ”
He recently worked with a young woman who loves libraries. His disability of development prevented him from attending a traditional university, but took online courses to become a library assistant and got a job in a public library in Long Island.
“I was so excited about courses,” Kerne said. “She has a job that loves and is being productive, and that is what can happen when you work with young people early.”
For more than 30 years, the Federal Education Law has required schools to help students with disabilities to plan their transition out of high school. But there is often a gap between what a school can provide and the type of training or advice that a student needs. That is where the services prior to employment are supposed to help.
Before 2014, state vocational rehabilitation agencies mainly worked with adults. That changed when Congress ordered agencies to offer services oriented to all students with disabilities, starting at age 14.
Most New Jersey students never get the option.
Local teachers say it is difficult to reach the counselors of employment training overloaded and, when they do, delays leave parents and students who wait months for services. Some counselors say that they find it difficult to reach school staff members, and that some local schools claim that they are already providing everything their students need.
Some New Jersey schools have forged good relations with state counselors, which help students find test experiences. And some schools provide high quality transition services on their own, without the help of the State’s vocational rehabilitation agency. But in most cases, that disarticulated system is broken.
Ten years after the federal program was established, “everyone is still fighting,” said Gwen Orlowski, executive director of Disability of New Jersey. “It’s just dysfunctional.”
The law demanded that vocational rehabilitation agencies spend on minus 15 percent of your federal money in employment services for young people. But many states were asked to be asked to offer services to thousands of additional people without an increase in the budget.
There are few consequences for mass gaps in access to services; Policy defenders blame the lack of supervision by state and federal agencies. The rehabilitation services administration carries out annual reviews of vocational rehabilitation agencies, but some states are not solving problems.
“We have been wanting greater supervision,” said Julie Christensen, executive director of the Association of people who support employment first. “It shouldn’t be the wild west.”
Federal education officials say that existing supervision mechanisms are leading to an improvement. In 2021, 23 states spent less than 15 percent required by law. That number fell to 10 states in 2022, the most recent year for which the data is available.
Zoe Sullivan, a last year student at CollingSwood High School who has Down syndrome, had been saying since he was in ninth grade that wanted to go to a four -year -old residential university program, but his mother, Kim Brooks, said no one in the Really listened school.
“I want to go to a university,” Zoe said, sitting in a coffee near his home. “I want to take classes and learn to be independent.”
Last spring, Mrs. Brooks discovered, by accident, about a non -profit university preparation program for students with developmental disabilities: she saw it in a friend’s Instagram publication. She has rushed to send requests to programs that she and Zoe have found only through mouth to mouth and research hours.
“It’s like a secret society,” Mrs. Brooks said. “You don’t know what you don’t know. We really lost many years. “
This story It was produced by The Hechinger reportA non -profit independent news organization that covers education.
