Panel on Special Education Holds 1st Hearing

Parents and teachers of disabled students Monday told a committee studying special education in the Los Angeles Unified School District that the district should do more to encourage those children to attend classes at regular schools.

But other parents said the district should not tinker with the district’s special education programs.

The committee, which held its first hearing at a special education school in Encino, has become the sounding board for a growing controversy among parents and teachers over how best to teach children with physical, emotional and mental disabilities.

“Some feel special schools are the best and others feel regular schools are the best,” said committee Chairman Gary Best.

The 20-member committee, formed last year by the school board, is reviewing the district’s treatment of its 55,000 disabled students.

The committee’s study has raised fears among some parents of possible budget cuts at the special schools that enroll about 5,000 of the district’s most severely disabled students. Another 2,000 or so severely disabled children attend classes at regular schools, district officials said.

“Parents are very protective of special education schools,” said Marcee Seegan, principal of the West Valley Special Education Center.

State law requires that parents be given the choice of sending their disabled children to special or regular schools, depending on the severity of the handicap, district officials said.

But parents who support enrolling more disabled children in regular schools say the district has done little to encourage that practice.

“There is no reason in the world why integration won’t work with students who are disabled,” said Harvey Lapin, who has an autistic son. “It is a civil rights issue.”

Lapin and others testified that disabled children can best learn how to overcome their handicaps by learning to socialize with children in regular schools.

Parents and teachers of disabled children are also unhappy over proposed cutbacks in the number of hours classroom aides can work. A group of those aides staged a protest Monday during a budget review by the seven-member school board, which must decide by summer on $200 million in proposed cuts from next year’s $4-billion budget.

A second hearing of the district’s Least Restrictive Environment Study Team is planned for April 17 at the Perez Education Center in Los Angeles. The panel is expected to present a report of its findings to the school board in May.