Schooling of Paralyzed Girl to Be Investigated

State officials will begin an investigation next week into complaints that the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District is not providing adequate classroom services for a severely handicapped 6-year-old girl who is attending a regular kindergarten.

The move follows a judge’s refusal Monday to intervene in the case because there has been no formal state investigation into complaints made by the parents of the girl, Stephanie Stratford.

U.S. District Judge Alicemarie Stotler had been asked to order the district to fully comply with a state hearing officer’s decision that Stephanie can successfully function at the Rancho Vista School in Palos Verdes Estates with the help of a specially trained classroom aide.

The Peninsula district, which contends that the girl’s needs can best be met in a school for the physically handicapped, is challenging that decision in a separate lawsuit.

But in the meantime, school attorney Sharon Watt said, the district is doing more for Stephanie than the hearing officer wanted. She told the judge that the state Department of Education, which joined in the suit against the district, should have conducted a formal investigation into any complaints before seeking the court order.

Joyce Eckrem, an attorney with the state board, and Joan Honeycutt, a Stratford family lawyer, said proceedings by the state hearing officer in September should have satisfied legal requirements for a formal investigation.

But if the district wants another investigation, Eckrem said in an interview, “they will get it.” An agency investigator, Susan Hollingshead, will arrive in the district early next week and should complete her report in about two weeks, state officials said. Stephanie, who is partly paralyzed from the neck down as a result of a spinal tumor, attends class in a motorized wheelchair that she controls with her chin. Her mother, Nancy Stratford, says that a special aide hired by the district to assist her daughter has not been properly trained. Delays in officially enrolling Stephanie also show the district’s unwillingness to help the child succeed in a regular classroom environment, Stratford charges.

District spokeswoman Nancy Mahr said that the classroom aide has received special training, and that the delay in enrolling Stephanie is due to a lack of information on her medical needs.