Access Denied : Ramps for Disabled Student Cost Too Much, School Says

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.

District officials say they do not have the funds--estimated at 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 is not 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.

Forty-seven 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 schools are not adapted to 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 believe that 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 inspired.

Afflicted at 3 weeks, when he suffered a brain hemorrhage, Jim has never known life outside of a wheelchair. He and his twin brother, Doug, were born three weeks prematurely, but Doug 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 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 school, Harbor City, has been adapted for handicapped students; the other, Taper Avenue, has not been adapted but is accessible for 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 could not 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 that the Los Angeles district would need some time to make the necessary changes, they never expected Jim to be barred from the school. 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.”

Although school officials contend that the decision to keep Jim out of White Point is 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 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, a few blocks from her home. That suit 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, officials said, is that the school lacks a suitable ramp. And in view of budget problems, the district cannot afford to build one, they said.

White Point is a 1950s-era collection of 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 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 that 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 installation of ramps in front of several classrooms, and 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 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.