Palos Verdes Criticized on Schooling of Disabled Girl

After a month-long investigation, state officials have concluded that the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District is still not providing all the special services needed by a severely handicapped girl who is attending a regular kindergarten classroom.

They gave the district 15 days to comply with all of the requirements set by a state hearing officer last fall, when he ordered school officials to place 6-year-old Stephanie Stratford in the Rancho Vista Elementary School in Palos Verdes Estates.

However, district officials said Wednesday that the Sacramento report has been largely superseded by developments since early February when Susan Hollingshead, a state investigator, visited Rancho Vista to observe Stephanie in the classroom and report on measures already taken to accommodate her needs.

“We have continued to work toward full compliance during this interval, and we believe that the problems have been substantially resolved,” said district spokeswoman Nancy Mahr.

Response to Complaints

Responding to two complaints raised by the girl’s parents, Mahr said Stephanie has been officially enrolled at Rancho Vista, and further training and experience have improved a classroom aide’s ability to handle the girl’s medical and educational needs.

Unresolved issues include special arrangements for Stephanie’s transportation to and from school, Mahr said, and for providing a substitute classroom aide when the regularly assigned aide is not available to care for the girl.

Mahr said the district hopes those issues can be worked out in further meetings with Stephanie’s parents, Allan and Nancy Stratford. An attorney for the Stratfords, Joan Honeycutt, said the couple is currently traveling in Europe. A grandmother and a nurse are looking after Stephanie and the three other Stratford children, Honeycutt said.

Stephanie, who is almost entirely paralyzed from the neck down as a result of a spinal tumor, goes to school in a motorized wheelchair that she operates with a chin control. The chair is equipped with a respirator attached to a tracheotomy tube in the child’s throat. She is fed through a tube in her stomach.

Described by her parents and school officials as a bright child who is eager to learn, Stephanie holds paint brushes or a special stylus in her mouth to paint or write. She turns on a light attached to the wheelchair when she wants to answer a question posed by the teacher to the class.

Last December, the state Department of Education joined Stephanie’s parents in a lawsuit against the district after the Stratfords complained that school officials were not following the hearing officer’s instructions. But in mid-January, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge said the state had to conduct a formal investigation before the court could rule on the lawsuit.

The results of the investigation are in a 27-page, single-spaced report of the complex case, which began last fall when the district refused to enroll Stephanie at Rancho Vista. The district contended that her educational needs would be better served in established classes for the handicapped.

In her first year in school, when she was 5 years old, Stephanie attended county-operated kindergarten classes for the physically handicapped at Jefferson Elementary School in Redondo Beach that mainly serves students without handicaps.

Mahr said the county program is designed to “mainstream” handicapped youngsters with normal children to the extent possible, while providing specialized care to suit individual needs. She said Stephanie would be a first-grader this year if the child had continued at Jefferson.

However, a state hearing officer concluded in September that Stephanie should be allowed to attend her neighborhood school with her two brothers. The district has appealed the decision in a federal court, but agreed in the meantime to place Stephanie at Rancho Vista.

Disputes soon arose, mostly over delays in officially enrolling Stephanie as a student and over the training of a classroom aide hired to watch over the girl and assist her in classroom activities.

From the district’s standpoint, Mahr said, Stephanie’s placement at Rancho Vista presented unfamiliar problems, and school officials wanted to proceed cautiously in tailoring a program to suit the child’s educational and medical needs. She said the district also is concerned about its potential liability in handling a high-risk student.

The state report outlines repeated and often frustrated efforts by the district to arrange meetings among the parents and medical and school personnel to work out a plan for Stephanie. Extensive efforts also were made to get precise instructions from Stephanie’s physician on how to provide routine care and what to do in the event of a medical emergency, Mahr said.

However, the Stratfords and the state agency viewed the district’s elaborate preparations as obstacles to Stephanie’s success in a regular classroom. They said the state hearing officer provided all of the guidelines the district needs and accused school officials of creating unnecessary problems and delays.

“Certainly, Stephanie is physically different,” said Patrick Campbell, the state’s director of special education, in a letter to the Peninsula district. “It is unusual to see children with wheelchairs and respirators in the regular classroom. (But) I believe we have a responsibility to see that this phenomenon is less unusual and that otherwise qualified and capable handicapped children not be discriminated against. . . .

“The extra care that Stephanie requires is a small amount for society to give in return for a productive, integrated pupil.”

Both sides in the dispute agree that Stephanie is doing well at Rancho Vista, although the state agency insists that more should be done to enable the child to participate more fully in classroom activities.

The next step in the case is a March 25 meeting, when the parties involved will review the district’s compliance with the state’s orders, said Joyce Eckrem, an attorney for the state agency.

Under a federal law enacted in 1977, she said, a school district is legally obligated to provide anything that a handicapped youngster needs, once the state determines that a regular classroom is the “most appropriate and least restrictive” educational setting for the child.