Special
Ed Parents Make Emotional Plea for Change |
By Jorge Casuso
April 4 -- Some had kept it in for years, afraid to speak
out or silenced by confidentiality clauses in agreements with the
School District. But Thursday night, emboldened by a report that
vindicated their struggles, special education parents finally let
it all out in public -- the anger, the hurt, even the tears.
The District, they told a solemn School Board, had failed their
children. And it had made parents ashamed, frustrated and powerless
to help the sons and daughters with disabilities who were neglected
in school, bullied by classmates and shunned by the system.
“I have been blamed, lied to about board policy, slandered,”
said the mother of an autistic child, one of the 15 parents who
testified. “We’re simply asking for basic services.
Help my son at Samohi who has not had a friend in four years.”
“My son is failing,” Luis Mestizo told the board, struggling
to express himself in English. “My people, they don’t
want to come because they don’t believe in the system. I am
not feeling frustrated. I am feeling angry.
“When the student is failing, don’t blame the student,
the parent, blame yourself,” he said.
Tricia Crane, a special education activist, cried when she told
the board that the consultant’s audit report justified what
she had been telling the board for years -- that it was not good
policy to force parents to bargain for their children’s education
behind closed doors, then bar them from disclosing the terms of
their agreements.
“I read the report and went home and wept,” Crane said.
“All we have tried to bring to you has been validated. This
is my moment of catharsis. I might be done with this. I don’t
think I can take it anymore.
“I have watched my friends brutalized by this regime,”
Crane said. “It has to stop.”
In a quiet, but emotional, speech applauded by the audience, Board
President Oscar de la Torre confessed that the district “had
somehow lost empathy for children who have special needs and families
who are struggling.”
De la Torre was the only one of the seven board members who recommended
that the board scrap its process to enter into settlement agreements
with parents who must negotiate services for their children.
He noted that the report -- which found the local school district
had entered into 140 such agreements over the past three years,
compared to few if any for most California districts -- would not
have been done without pressure from the City Council, which threatened
to withhold more than $500,000 in funds if the District did not
revisit its policy.
“I think today is a very pivotal point in our school district,”
de la Torre said. “The truth of the matter is it took the
City Council to intervene to get this report.”
The policy -- instituted four years ago by Deputy Superintendent
Tim Walker under the direction of former Superintendent John Deasy
-- has continued, despite a moratorium placed by the board, and
is clearly not working, de la Torre said.
“We have to find a process that is supportive,” he
said. “It has to do with hiring and who you hire and leadership
from the top and accountability. It’s going to take a resolve
from this board to make that happen. We need to empower parents
in the process.”
De la Torre’s speech capped a discussion that saw board members
praise the report, but did not result in any direction to staff,
which they said they trusted to come back with recommendations on
April 17.
“I don’t think we’ll take this report and shelve
it,” said Board member Maria Leon Vazquez. “We are here
for the students.”
Council member Bob Holbrook, who attended the meeting, said he
expected the board would do more before the council takes up the
funding issue at its next meeting.
“I’m disappointed,” said Holbrook, a former school
board member. “I’m puzzled that they didn’t give
staff direction to eliminate the main problem. They should have
given (Superintendent Dianne Talarico) clear instruction.”
The testimony and board discussion capped a presentation by consultants
who spent 12 weeks interviewing District officials, principals,
teachers and some 100 special education parents to evaluate the
District’s special education program, which serves 1,571 students.
The report found that although the District met and exceeded many
of the criteria, its policy of entering into agreements with parents,
though legal, was not commonly used and not necessarily good practice.
“I think you run a wonderful system for most children,”
said Louis Barber, the consultant whose team produced the report.
“The problem is there are some children who are not getting
the services they should be getting under the program.”
The confidentiality clauses make it difficult to evaluate a student’s
progress and make placing students transferring to another district
more difficult, consultants said. The policy also breeds distrust.
“There is a feeling that things are not transparent in the
District, that thing are being done behind closed doors,”
said consultant Tammy Van Buck, who is an attorney.
“You have to try to reach agreement,” she said. “If
you can resolve it without going through a settlement agreement,
that’s best for kids.”
“Settlement agreements are not good process,” Barber
said. He suggested that the District hire a liaison or ombudsman
who can help parents navigate the often-confusing system.
But most importantly, Barber said, the decisions have to be made
by staff and parents “on site” and not by administrators
in the district office.
“The most important thing is that you begin to empower principals,”
he said. “It’s almost grassroots. It has to happen at
the site, where they say, ‘We’re going to have a reading
lab, a math lab’. . . and then the staff owns it.
“The change that needs to occur is about attitude,”
he told the board. “Every child must be embraced. Get all
the staff on board. . . That’s the piece that makes a difference.”
Talarico promised “to get a partial preliminary something
to you” by April 17, but said staff needed more time to formulate
“a full response.”
Parents told the board they expect nothing less than a total change.
“There has to be a healing process, because there’s
a tremendous amount of pain,” said Hyman Katz. “There’s
an opportunity for the district to step up.”
“There is a systemic problem in this district,” one
parent said. “If you ignore this report, you do it at your
own peril.”
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