Legislator Will Push School Programs for Handicapped

Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) said Friday that she will push legislation to renew programs for handicapped students, who she charged are being held “hostage” by the Democratic majority in the Legislature in a dispute over bilingual education.

“Special education (for the handicapped) is being held hostage because they (the Democratic majority) want to get bilingual and other categorical-aid programs passed in the same bill,” Allen charged Friday.

The move was prompted by a quiet partisan battle in Sacramento this month over an attempt by Democrats to revive the state’s controversial bilingual-education law by tying it to a bill for “special education” programs. Special education is the term for aid to all categories of handicapped students, ranging from the hearing impaired to the severely retarded.

The state’s law authorizing special education expired June 30. Supporters of the special education program have expressed fears that the state’s 400,000 handicapped students, including 28,000 in Orange County, will lose their programs if the law is not re-enacted this year.

‘A Chance of Passing’

A bill by Assemblyman Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria), which would continue special education programs as well as GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) programs, apparently died earlier this month when language reviving bilingual education was added by a state Senate committee. O’Connell announced that he no longer supported his bill because of the controversial amendment.

Allen said Friday that she will revive her own separate bill for special education, which will go before the powerful Assembly Ways and Means Committee on Monday. “My bill has a chance of passing before we adjourn Aug. 31,” she said.

The O’Connell bill--Assembly Bill 3077--had passed the Assembly and was amended Aug. 3 by Democrats on the Senate Education Committee over O’Connell’s objection. The amendment would revive the state’s bilingual education program, which expired June 30.

O’Connell explained Friday that he no longer supported his bill because “I gave my word to Republicans in the Assembly that I would drop (it) . . . if it were amended to include bilingual education.”

Governor’s Veto

“I am keeping my word,” O’Connell said.

The Republican minority in both houses of the Legislature has strongly opposed continuation of the state’s law, which requires teaching in two languages whenever 10 or more students of the same native, non-English language are in the same classroom. Republicans have charged that the bilingual-education law was too inflexible and did not help children learn to speak English.

Democrats, however, have supported bilingual education, contending that the program helps children to learn other subjects in their native language as they become fluent in English.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) sponsored legislation last year to continue bilingual education. His bill narrowly passed the Legislature but was vetoed last September by Republican Gov. George Deukmejian.

Allen said Friday that her own bill--AB 3593--had been languishing in an Assembly subcommittee for about two months in favor of the broader O’Connell measure.

“When O’Connell’s bill was dropped in the Senate, I was able to get my bill out of subcommittee, and now it comes up for a vote in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee on Monday,” she said.

While Allen thinks that her bill will be approved by the committee, she said she is worried that the Democratic majority on the committee may amend her bill to include bilingual education.

“If bilingual (education requirements are) amended to the bill, we’ll just try to take the amendment off when it comes before the full Assembly,” she said.

But O’Connell, in a separate interview, expressed doubt that her bill would pass both houses before the Legislature adjourns Aug. 31, after which her legislation would die.

“The Senate Education Committee is not scheduled to meet again before we adjourn, and her bill would have to go to that committee,” O’Connell said. “ . . . I just don’t think there is time for her bill to get passed.”

O’Connell said he thinks that special education’s best chance for reauthorization is in a third bill (AB 1783), authored by Assemblywoman Teresa Hughes (D-Los Angeles), which also carries the bilingual education amendment.

Passed in Different Forms

Hughes’ legislation already has passed both the Assembly and the Senate, but in different forms. Republicans on the Assembly conference committee have refused to approve the Senate amendment to Hughes’ bill.

O’Connell said he thinks that the Democratic majority may decide to withdraw bilingual education from Hughes’ bill rather than kill all the other education-aid programs, including aid to the handicapped, which the Hughes measure would re-authorize.

State officials say they are uncertain what will happen to special education if no new law is passed by Aug. 31. Some education officials predict that it could continue this fall because the state budget, already signed into law by Deukmejian, contains $1.1 billion to fund handicapped education programs.

But Allen and several others have said they fear that the money and the state programs for the handicapped could be frozen or result in court cases if the law is not reauthorized. “It could be chaos if there is not a new law,” she said.

Rick Simpson, a consultant on the Assembly Education Committee, said Friday that he thinks that the handicapped programs could continue, at least for another year, if the law is not immediately re-authorized.

But he added, “We would be moving into the unknown, and there is the potential for some litigation.”