Inclusive Schools

Inclusive Schools NYC and Disability Pride


Disability Affinity, Inclusion, and Disability Pride Student Clubs 

This 2024-2025 school year, New York City Public Schools is launching a citywide network of Disability Affinity, Disability Pride, and Inclusion Clubs to celebrate the identities of our students with disabilities and support a culture of belonging and community! This initiative is under the banner of InclusiveSchoolsNYC. These clubs are open to all students. Club leaders should click the link to the list serve sign up form.

Annual Student Inclusion Summit 

The Inclusive Education Student Summit is an annual spring event that brings together students with and without disabilities to gain new perspectives about disability rights, deepen thinking on accessibility, and create positive change through hands-on activism. Student participants listen, learn, and lead the way towards a more inclusive world. These NYC Public School leaders and their faculty advisors convene to create action plans with the goal of growing accessible and inclusive school communities.  

The Summit is held once a year and offers in-person and virtual participation. Themes and topics often align to National Inclusive Schools Week(Open external link). The event is co-hosted by New York City Public Schools and Parents for Inclusive Education (PIE).

Inclusive and Interdependent Language Initiative 

The words we use are critical: how we refer to people is how we think about them. Language and how we talk about people creates our social frameworks and tells us how to treat others around us. With that in mind, we created the Inclusive and Interdependent Language Glossary as a community resource 

By creating a glossary of inclusive terminology that matches student preference and best practice, and implementing these language changes both internally at NYC Public Schools and externally with the families and students that we serve, we can help create an environment that is truly inclusive and interdependent at its core. 

The glossary is a living document that will be updated regularly in response to stakeholder feedback, especially student feedback, via an accompanying rolling online survey: IILI Glossary SurveyIILI survey Haitian Creole 

If you identify as a student with a disability and you would like to contribute to our language initiative to reimagine the language we use to describe students with disabilities and special education, please submit to the survey. 

Disability Pride Visual Arts Contest  

Students submit visual art each spring to participate in the annual Disability Pride Visual Arts Contest. The contest celebrates people with disabilities in their struggle for equity, access, opportunity, and inclusion. People with disabilities are proud of their identity and their accomplishments and the theme “Nothing About Us Without Us.”  

The 10 finalists and one grand finalist will be invited to an event in the spring and have their artwork showcased. Recognizing that art is an invaluable means of expression and communication, teachers and families are encouraged to have meaningful conversations in their classrooms and homes around disability pride and history as they participate in the contest.  

 “Nothing About Us Without Us” Art competition winners have work displayed in MTA Stations and Trains on Digital Displays for Disability Pride Month.

Students in kindergarten through 12th grade submitted individual and group artwork in line with this year’s theme, “Nothing About Us Without Us.”  

This year, for the first time ever, the ten finalists and one grand finalist will have their work displayed across all Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) subway stations and train cars during the month of July to celebrate Disability Pride Month.