School Complies With Order to Readmit Boy, 6 : Education: Parents on both sides of the issue protest. District had removed him, saying he was disruptive.

Six-year-old Jimmy Peters returned to Circle View Elementary School on Thursday as the campus erupted in protest over whether the special education student, whom school officials have called violent and disruptive, should be allowed to share a kindergarten classroom with other students.

The day after a federal judge ordered the school to readmit Jimmy, the boy and his father were greeted by three-dozen sign-waving parents on both sides of the issue who had camped out for three hours to protest or support the child’s arrival.

At least six adults entered the classroom and removed their children when Jimmy and his father, Jim Peters, arrived on campus at 10:45 a.m. Other parents kept their children home, according to organizers of Thursday’s protest.

Circle View Principal Dan Moss said 14 of the 31 children enrolled in the class did not attend school Thursday--12 because of Jimmy’s presence. Twenty-one students in other grades were kept home in protest as well, he said. Most were siblings of Jimmy’s classmates.

Three police officers were stationed on school grounds to keep order as reporters hovered just beyond a fence near the child, who turned his back and ate a bag of potato chips in the midst of the commotion just beyond the fence around the playground.

“They’ve made him out to be a monster,” said Debbie Hoops, a parent of a special education student in another school district who was on hand to support Jimmy. “This is hysteria. Mass hysteria.”

But Jimmy’s detractors were equally adamant. “If we didn’t think our children were in danger, we wouldn’t be doing this,” said Pam Walker, who withdrew her child from Jimmy’s class Thursday.

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the Ocean View School District’s request that Jimmy be indefinitely barred from the classroom, ruling that injuries he had allegedly caused to other children and staff members were not serious enough to warrant his exclusion.

After filing the first lawsuit of its kind in Orange County on May 25, the Ocean View School District in Huntington Beach ordered Jimmy temporarily removed from class, alleging that he had kicked and bitten other students and his teacher, and that he disrupted the learning environment.

His teacher and an instructional aide have both taken medical leave as a result of the stress of trying to teach Jimmy, the lawsuit alleges.

School officials have said they resorted to the lawsuit only after Peters refused to voluntarily transfer his son to a special education class. They have declined to reveal Jimmy’s disability but said he has some characteristics of autism.

Peters, who acknowledges that his son has a communicative disability, disputes the allegations of violence and says his child is not autistic. He said the school district has been magnifying his son’s behavior problems and that he has hired an attorney to fight the school district’s efforts.

The child’s case has attracted widespread attention in Orange County, especially among parents and advocates for special education students, who increasingly are demanding that their children be allowed to remain in mainstream classrooms, a movement known as “full inclusion.”

A 1975 federal law mandates that disabled children be educated in the “least restrictive environment,” and has increasingly led to mainstreaming in regular classrooms.

School board President Tracy Pellman said trustees have never discussed Jimmy’s situation in detail, but she expressed sympathy for parents of his classmates.

“I feel that not all students were considered in (federal Judge Matthew Byrne’s) decision,” she said. “It’s not fair.”

During his first day back, Jimmy spent 40 minutes in the classroom and went for 20 minutes of speech therapy. Moss said he did not know how Jimmy spent the rest of the day or how he adjusted to his classmates.

An aide hired by the district to help Jimmy throughout the morning was on duty Thursday. Jim Peters spent the entire session with his son and plans to attend school with Jimmy every day until the school year ends Thursday.