Paralyzed Girl Sues to Attend Local School : Education: District officials say shooting victim, 4, must go to a wheelchair-accessible campus.

Four steps and a Los Angeles Unified School District policy stand in the way of 4-year-old Xochitl Soto and her desire to attend a neighborhood preschool program, advocates for the wheelchair-bound girl said in a class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The victim of a stray bullet, the Highland Park girl cannot navigate the steps at Bushnell Way School three blocks from her home.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of the girl contends that the district must make the school accessible by building a ramp. The suit, filed by Western Law Center for the Handicapped, also seeks to require the district to equip all of its campuses to provide access to the physically disabled.

School district policy, based on an interpretation of federal law, is to outfit only selected schools with access for the physically handicapped, while trying to send as many disabled children as possible to its regular schools, school officials said.

A place has been saved for Xochitl in a pre-kindergarten program at Farmdale, a school about three miles away from the one she wants to attend, school officials said.

“The key for the children’s education is the program, not the location of the classroom,” said Thomas Friedman, a school district attorney.

Xochitl has been paralyzed since she was 10 months old, the victim of a stray bullet from a drive-by gang shooting in May, 1987. She was shot while sitting in her father’s lap in the family living room. The bullet severed her spinal cord. The family said she will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

That has not dampened her disposition. “Cheese!” she said with an impish grin as camera crews and photographers followed her wheelchair Tuesday from the car to the shady lawn of Bushnell School, where a news conference was held.

Xochitl said she wanted to go to Bushnell “because my brother is in first grade and he wants to stay with me and that’s why.” The other school? “I don’t know what to do with those kids,” she said.

According to the girl’s mother, Marcela Soto, Xochitl does not require special care and can navigate in her chair. Because of her condition she wears diapers, but that would not be a problem during the two-hour school sessions.

Claudia Huezo, special education coordinator at a Headstart preschool program, said Xochitl excelled this year. “Her academic skills are very high,” said Huezo, who believes that putting her in Farmdale with other disabled children would not be good for her self-esteem. “She would think it was her fault. . . . Xochitl is a normal child.”

The district special education coordinator in Highland Park, Paul Mueller, said safety concerns figured in the decision. Citing its hilly location and multiple stories, Mueller said, “We do not believe this is a safe place for a child in a wheelchair.”

According to Mueller, financial limitations prevent the district from converting every school to provide handicapped access.

Paul Miller, an attorney for the Sotos, said, “This little girl is being denied from attending her neighborhood school with her brother simply because she’s disabled. Her civil rights are being violated. Sometimes, civil rights do cost money.”

A class-action suit similar to the Soto case was settled with the Berkeley Unified School District last year. That district agreed to a plan that would make all schools and programs accessible to the physically disabled, according to the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, said attorneys filing the lawsuit.

A date for a hearing on the Soto matter has not been set.