Who Knows Best, Parents or State?

Sydney Taylor, 8 years old, is attending class now with her peers, as her parents have defined them, and as the law has agreed.

The Saddleback Valley Unified School District had defined Sydney’s peers differently.

It argued, informally and later before the California Special Education Hearing Office, that Sydney, who has Down’s syndrome, should remain in special classes for the severely disabled.

The school district said this was in Sydney’s best interest. It said Sydney was incapable of fitting in with normal kids.

But the district, according to the law, had it wrong.

“The evidence strongly indicates that she has the capacity to function with regular-education first-graders in a fully inclusive setting,” the hearing officer recently ruled. “The evidence therefore establishes that regular education for Sydney for the 1991-92 school year is required.”

So Duncan and Joyce Taylor, Sydney’s parents, won their case. The school district, so far, says it does not plan an appeal. The Taylors are elated, and a little nervous too. They say this is the school district’s chance to become a hero, that they want to help it toward that goal.

Sydney, quick with a smile and eager to tell a visitor all about Peter Pan, says the outcome of the case is just fine.

“I like learning,” she says. “I like the new class better than the old one.”

Moreover, the district will pay the Taylors’ legal fees, which according to their attorney, will be in the tens of thousands of dollars. Meetings are being held to refine a program that allows Sydney to learn in a regular class at Santiago Elementary School in El Toro, just like any other first-grader, but with some extra help.

Yet there is more to this story than this.

At the root of the battle for the education of Sydney Taylor, and other children like her, is a clash of philosophies that has exposed uncomfortable questions about society’s acceptance of the handicapped, about competition for increasingly sparse public funds and about who knows what is best for a child.

Is it the parents or the state?

“Parents have dreams for their children,” says Joyce Taylor. “But for some reason, the established system wants to make sure that parents of children with disabilities don’t have these dreams.

“We are accused of being in denial when we have these dreams . . . . Well, why should we limit her? Why should we label her and why should we allow someone else to do that?”

“I know I am doing the best thing for my child,” Duncan Taylor adds. “If our kids are left (in school) only with the severely handicapped children, is it not possible that they will be forced to be severely handicapped?”

But special-education coordinator Rona Martin, the respondent for the district at the hearing, wrote this: “The philosophy of full inclusion adhered to by the parents and their experts provides NO EVIDENCE that severely handicapped children like Sydney derive any benefit from being in a classroom where the activities exceed the child’s developmental level.”

And this: “Sydney Taylor is a severely handicapped pupil who is functioning at a developmental level in the lowest 1% of the population of students in the United States.”

And more. When the Taylors think about that hearing, they become very upset. Because of the animosity that surfaced, they have refused to work further with the district’s special-education staff.

“I admit this is a stretch for us,” says Jim Hamilton, Saddleback’s director of pupil services, who was brought in to head the district’s new full inclusion team.

“We are all walking on eggs, because we want it to work. . . . I have been very much in favor of full inclusion. I am just not sure that Sydney Taylor is going to be the best test case.”

But because few parents have taken their battle this far, the Taylor case, while not legally precedent-setting, is being examined by other school districts throughout the state. And the full inclusion movement--more complete than the move toward “mainstreaming” handicapped children--is slowly gaining ground nationwide.

Research shows that about 250 severely disabled children, most of them on the East Coast, are now being fully included in regular class. The Fullerton Elementary School District voluntarily began its own small pilot program at the beginning of the current school year.

“There were some problems initially,” says Martina Bobbett, whose 13-year-old daughter, Susie, joined a regular fifth-grade class in Fullerton earlier this year. Susie, too, has Down’s.

“But now it’s great--very, very good,” Martina says. “You have no idea how thrilled Susie is. She is coming on in leaps and bounds. She had her birthday party, a slumber party, and everybody invited showed up. There were kids everywhere, total chaos. It was wonderful .”

The Taylors say that they want the same for their child. School had been the only place where she was not treated just like anybody else.

“The hardest thing in Sydney’s life is not being included,” her mother says.

The Taylors believe that had their daughter been bused to a segregated school for handicapped children, as the district had suggested, she would only mimic the inappropriate behavior of children there.

They believe that Sydney, who has seven non-handicapped brothers and sisters, needs to be challenged to do well, not merely accepted for doing anything at all. They say they are thinking about Sydney’s civil rights.

“I believe in all my heart and soul that we still don’t know everything that children with Down’s syndrome are capable of,” Joyce Taylor says.

“This is all a process,” her husband adds. “It was only a few years ago that children like Sydney were not even brought home after they were born. We are not trying to change the diagnosis of Down’s. Next year, we may want to put her back in special-education class. We want to have that right.”