Developmentally Disabled Pupil Barred : Courts: School says kindergartner poses danger to others. His father countersues.

A Superior Court judge temporarily ordered a developmentally disabled child out of kindergarten Thursday as parents of special needs students across Orange County reacted with outrage to an Ocean View Elementary School District lawsuit targeting the 6-year-old.

In a closed hearing, Superior Court Judge Thomas Thrasher ruled that the boy could not attend classes at Circle View Elementary School in Huntington Beach for 10 days, the child’s father said.

The district filed its unprecedented lawsuit Wednesday, accusing Jimmy Peters of biting teachers, throwing desks, hitting and spitting at other students--behavior that prompted one teacher to take medical leave.

The boy’s father, Jim Peters, filed a lawsuit against the district in federal court Thursday, alleging that his son has been denied a free and proper education.

“Jimmy can study,” Peters said in an interview. “He can learn. But you just have to make some small adjustments in the class to allow that to happen.

“I’m disappointed because it has turned into a political issue instead of what is supposed to be best for the child,” said Peters, who volunteers and is occasionally paid for work as a legal advocate for parents with disabled children. Peters gave The Times permission to use his son’s name.

The district’s superintendent, Jim Tarwater, did not return telephone calls seeking comment Thursday. Circle View Principal Dan Moss declined to comment, saying that the issue is governed by privacy considerations.

Parents of children with learning disabilities such as attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, dyslexia and Down’s syndrome rallied to support Peters on Thursday, saying they were shocked that the school district would target the child in its landmark lawsuit.

“The vast majority of cases show that students with special needs in regular classrooms are doing just fine,” said Mary Stone, chairwoman of the Inclusion Network of Orange County. State law prohibits the removal of such students from regular classes without a court order or the parent’s consent. Peters, who had refused to withdraw his child, said he would go back to Superior Court on Tuesday in an attempt to reverse the restraining order granted the school district.

The law was established as a result of a landmark 1988 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school administrators may not remove a student with special needs from a regular classroom without permission from a parent or judge.

Peters contends that Jimmy suffers from “developmental delays” and is “communicatively handicapped,” disabilities that result in problems in playing with his peers. But, he asserted, the disabilities are not reason enough to exclude the boy from a mainstream classroom.

District officials say in their suit that they have tried to make adjustments for Jimmy. They have assigned a full-time aide to the boy and hired two experts from the Orange County Department of Education and Cal State Long Beach to act as consultants. Still, they say, problems persist.

But a parent of one of the boy’s classmates said the boy’s disruptions ruined her son’s year in kindergarten. Although accounts differ over the number, parents of several children withdrew them from the class as a result of the disruptions, said the woman, who is also a volunteer teacher’s aide.

The woman, Janet Edwards, described herself as a proponent of the “full inclusion” mandated by law.

“But there are certain students who are being fully included in the classroom, who, to be honest, pose a danger,” Edwards said.

Edwards said the problem with the law is that it is tailored “to protect the children with special needs, but there are no laws written to protect the ‘regular’ students. And my experience in that classroom was, in a word, awful.”

Saying she could not elaborate for fear of endangering the lawsuit, Edwards called the student’s behavior “violent--there’s no other way to put it.” Peters denied that charge.

Such conflict is often the result when the needs of special students are not handled properly, said Dana Powell, 36, who says she has had her own problems with the Ocean View district over the needs of her son, now a 13-year-old seventh-grader.

“Very often, the schools pit parents against parents and don’t take responsibility for doing their job,” Powell said.

Stone said a growing conflict stems from the fact that neither parents nor schools really understand the law, which mandates that school districts design plans to address special needs as soon as students exhibit difficult behavior.

Too often, students, their needs and the best approach are neglected in a swirl of bitterness and, sometimes, litigation. The parents of such children say the schools are often incapable of analyzing a student’s glaring needs or deciding what to do.

“As a result,” said Lorraine Behunin, the mother of 10 children, one of whom has special needs, “a lot of kids in the middle just fall through the cracks.”

The battle is not new. Peters said he has been fighting for educational equality ever since his son enrolled in Circle View.

“It’s going to be messy before it gets better,” he said.