A directive has been given by a Manhattan federal judge: The nation’s largest school system has to move faster to “provide crucial services to public school students with disabilities.” The order followed two decades of litigation.

The city is now required to put into place dozens of recommendations from a special monitor. You can find the recommendations on the Advocates for Children‘s website.

The order is the outgrowth of a lawsuit the department settled in 2007. In that lawsuit, advocates and parents of kids with disabilities sued the department because they were forced to wait months to obtain services or payments even after being awarded them in hearings. They won the lawsuit, but the delays kept growing.

You can read more about the order in outlets including The New York Times, Chalkbeat and Gothamist.

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