Class Struggle : Education: A dispute simmers between the parents of a wheelchair-bound student and district officials over lack of accessibility to a hilltop school in San Pedro.

With his electric wheelchair in high gear, 6-year-old Jim Kurucz slowly climbed a steep driveway at White Point Elementary School in San Pedro before circling toward the cafeteria and into the auditorium.

Jim, who has cerebral palsy, was brought to White Point by his mother to demonstrate a point: that, in her view, the only thing blocking her son’s access to the hilltop ocean-view campus is the stubbornness of Los Angeles Unified School District officials.

But district officials say they don’t have the funds--estimated to be as much as $300,000--to make White Point suitable for a wheelchair-bound student. Only a small fraction of the district’s schools meet state and federal requirements for handicapped students, and White Point isn’t one of them.

The Kuruczes, who want to move into the district from Torrance, have put their plans on hold while the dispute is pending. Although it is possible that Air Force Capt. Peter Kurucz and his family will be reassigned to another city before the issue is resolved, he and his wife, Eileen, say they plan to do everything they can--including a legal challenge--to open White Point’s doors to disabled children.

“My child deserves the same rights as every other child and just because he attends school in a wheelchair, that doesn’t mean he has to go somewhere else,” Eileen Kurucz said. “I thought we had come past this, that these battles had already been fought.”

Some would say the battles are just beginning.

Six months ago, an advocacy group based in Glendale filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights alleging that the district has not moved fast enough to make its schools accessible to disabled students. The investigation, which is also looking into the adequacy of the district’s procedures for determining where disabled students are placed and the kinds of services provided for them, is continuing, school officials said.

Currently, 47 of the district’s 700 schools have been fully adapted to meet the needs of physically handicapped students. The district, which has a policy of sending physically disabled students to neighborhood schools whenever possible, does not keep track of how many non-adapted schools serve disabled students.

District officials say their policies are based on a legally tested interpretation of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits agencies that receive federal funds from discriminating against the disabled.

But some advocates nevertheless believe Los Angeles Unified is far behind other districts in making schools accessible to the physically disabled.

“The law has been in effect since 1973, and to have only 47 sites accessible in almost 20 years is, I think, a travesty,” said Catherine Blakemore, legal director of Protection and Advocacy, the agency that filed the complaint. “They do not have a sufficient number of accessible sites.”

Jim Kurucz, who has spastic quadriplegia, a condition that stiffens the muscles and limits movement, seems unaware of the controversy he inspires.

Afflicted at the age of 3 weeks when the prematurely born infant suffered a brain hemorrhage, Jim has never known life outside of a wheelchair. His twin brother, Doug, also born prematurely, was not affected.

Although Jim can take small steps around the house with the aid of a walker, he needs a wheelchair whenever he ventures outdoors. A serious boy with several imaginary friends, Jim has a passion for Legos and solving word games on the family’s computer.

The dispute between the Kuruczes and the school district began in February when Peter Kurucz, an Air Force aerospace engineer, applied for housing at the Pacific Heights military housing complex in San Pedro.

Wanting to give the school district notice about their impending move, the Kuruczes met with officials at White Point, the neighborhood school, to let them know about Jim’s needs.

After analyzing the campus, school officials told the Kuruczes that White Point was not suitable for Jim. Instead, they offered to bus him to one of two schools within a six-mile radius of Pacific Heights. One of the schools, Harbor City, has been adapted for handicapped students; the other, Taper Avenue, has not been adapted but is accessible to children in wheelchairs.

The Kuruczes, who recently moved to Torrance from Colorado Springs, were shocked by the district’s decision.

In Colorado, it seemed as though school officials couldn’t do enough to welcome Jim onto the neighborhood campus. Officials there installed a curb cut for Jim’s wheelchair, widened doors and made sure he had a classroom aide to help him in the bathroom, they said.

“They were willing to bend over backward to do whatever we thought was necessary to make his school experience as easy for him as possible,” Eileen Kurucz said.

Although they suspected the Los Angeles district would need some time to make the necessary changes, they never expected Jim to be barred from the school altogether. And they were disturbed that district officials appeared willing to separate the twins.

“That’s basically segregating (disabled children),” said Eileen Kurucz, who works part time as an occupational therapist for disabled adults. “It is discrimination.”

While school officials contend the decision to keep Jim out of White Point was in no way discriminatory, it is not the first time the district has been challenged for refusing to make a neighborhood school accessible to a disabled child.

In September, 1990, advocates filed a class-action suit against the district on behalf of 4-year-old Xochitl Soto, a paralyzed child who had been barred from attending Bushnell Way School in Los Angeles, just a few blocks from her home. That suit, however, was settled when the district agreed to install a wheelchair ramp in front of the kindergarten classroom.

School officials say the two cases are not comparable, in part because Bushnell Way required very little work to make it accessible to a child in a wheelchair.

The main problem with White Point, they said, is that the school lacks a suitable ramp. And in view of current budget problems, the district simply can’t afford to build one, school officials said.

White Point is a 1950s-era collection of contemporary, single-story buildings perched seven steps above the sidewalk on a narrow, winding hillside overlooking the ocean.

The campus has a boys’ bathroom that can serve wheelchair-bound students and several bungalows that are already equipped with wheelchair ramps. But getting onto campus is the problem.

There is a ramp that is used for deliveries of food and supplies at the school’s back entrance, but school officials say it is too steep for Jim’s use. Under state architectural codes, ramps for the disabled may have no more than an 8% grade, or an inch of rise for every 12 inches of run. The law also requires rest stops every 30 feet.

School officials said they do not know the exact grade of the White Point’s delivery ramp, only that it is far steeper and longer than allowed under state law. And the driveway Jim rode up last week is not a proper accessway for disabled children, they said.

“(The school) is not safe,” said Phillip Callison, superintendent of special education at the district. “It’s on the side of a hill. It has no ramps that meet standards. We could not be responsible for his safety. . . . If anything happened to him, we would be liable for millions of dollars.”

District experts estimated it would cost about $80,000 to fix the ramp and about $300,000 to fully adapt the campus for disabled students, which would require the installation of ramps in front of several classrooms, and the widening of classroom doors.

“If you look at our financial problems last year and what is going on in the state . . . we are dealing with major problems of dollars everywhere,” said school board President Warren Furutani. “On the one hand, $80,000 in a $4-billion budget does not sound like much, but in terms of getting your hands on that kind of money, it is really hard to do.”

The Kuruczes, however, believe that the district has a moral and legal obligation to make White Point accessible to their son.

“It’s not really asking for much, just accessible classrooms and a part-time person at most to help him with a few basic things, like getting to the bathroom,” Peter Kurucz said. “Jim doesn’t have any severe disability. He just has trouble getting around.”

The Kuruczes, who also have a 2-year-old daughter, Claire, haven’t always felt so strongly about neighborhood schools.

When they moved to Torrance last November, they agreed to allow Jim and Doug to be bused to a school already equipped for physically disabled students.

The Kuruczes now believe they made a mistake.

“I’m regretting that choice because Jim doesn’t interact with the other kids in the neighborhood,” Eileen Kurucz said. “In Colorado, he went to school with all the kids on the block. He had wonderful social ties to other children in the neighborhood. Here, (in Torrance), none of that happens because he doesn’t know any of the children.”

In fact, some recent research suggests that proximity is a key element in the formation of friendships among young children.

“When you take a child out of their neighborhood . . . they don’t get an opportunity to play with their neighbors,” said Mary Falvey, professor of special education at Cal State Los Angeles, who has served as an expert witness in other disputes between the school district and families with disabled children. “It is particularly problematic for children with disabilities because they oftentimes come to an interactive situation with difficulties in communication.”

Forcing a child to attend school outside his neighborhood “adds another obstacle to the development of his relationships,” she said. And the disabled child isn’t the only who loses out.

“Every time we exclude a child from his neighborhood school, we give children in that community permission to exclude people with disabilities for the rest of their lives,” she said.

The Kuruczes, who know their son will very likely spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair, say they are determined to prevent Los Angeles school officials from sending out that kind of message.

“Even if it doesn’t happen during our assignment here, somebody’s got to get them to change their policy,” Eileen Kurucz said. “I’m willing to be the one, even if my children don’t get to benefit from it.”