Understand

We seek to foster a budding environment where you can connect to ever-growing resources that help you understand how best to support your child and your family.

Educate

We aim to connect families to sources of support and advocacy, so that you feel strengthened through shared experiences and are empowered to make the most informed decisions for your child.

Provide

We strive to incorporate unbiased, community-vetted resources that assist families in taking action. Share with us all you have learned to help your child soar and help bolster others in our community!

About Urban Exceptional

Urban Exceptional is a not-for-profit 501(c) 3 organization founded by Rachelle N. Spielvogel, a mother of two boys, both of whom entered the early intervention system in NYC at two years old. After several years of intervention services, her first son entered a mainstream setting for kindergarten, and her second son transitioned into a special education program.

Raising two young children in NYC with varying developmental needs and learning styles has led to many hours spent researching options related to evaluation and intervention services, schools, activities, camps, as well as meeting other families along the way with similar experiences and concerns. A consistent theme shared among these parents was the challenge of a system fraught with vague and fragmented information regarding early intervention and education, a lack of transparency and even misdiagnosis by service and treatment professionals, as well as the general anxiety of feeling unaware, uninformed, and unsupported at the outset.

Urban Exceptional is a project to change all of this by providing a forum for parents to learn as much as possible at the very first sign that their child may have developmental delays, social challenges, or learning differences, so that no parent feels alone in this journey and all children can thrive and flourish.