Courts Helping Put Special Students in Regular Classes

Thousands of Orange County students with special needs that range from minor learning disabilities to severe emotional disorders now spend most of their school days in mainstream classrooms, but outbreaks of violence and disruptions like those alleged in the Jimmy Peters case are rare, experts say.

Backed by a series of court rulings over the past five years, a coalition of activist parents who make up the “full inclusion” movement have made segregated classrooms for special-education students the exception rather than the rule.

Though inclusion is often more expensive and leads to complaints from teachers and some parents, it has become education policy in many parts of the United States because of the emerging legal view of special education as a civil rights issue. And many educators believe it is far more effective.

“Since there are no special restaurants or special grocery stores or special movie theaters that one goes to as an adult, integrated educational settings better prepare children for the world,” said Edward Lee Vargas, assistant superintendent of the Santa Ana Unified School District, in which more than half of 4,000 special-education students spend more than half of each school day in regular classes.

“We don’t segregate kids for ethnic or racial reasons or gender reasons,” Vargas added. “The question is being asked more and more: Why should we segregate kids who learn differently?”

In a case that is the first of its kind in Orange County, the Ocean View School District in Huntington Beach went to court last month to remove 6-year-old Jimmy Peters from kindergarten at Circle View Elementary School, where officials say he repeatedly bit children, threw chairs and interrupted lessons by running around the room screaming. The boy’s father denies the allegations.

On Wednesday, a federal judge sent Jimmy back to class. His action continues a national trend of courts supporting parents who want their children mainstreamed.

There are 5 million special-education students nationwide, and more than 36,000 in Orange County.

In the county, 26% of the students with special needs spend all their time in regular classrooms, helped by aides, adapted computers and other support services. Another 45% spend at least half their day in regular classes.

Less than 1% are sent to private special-education programs at public expense. The remainder, 28%, are in special classes or centers for most of the day, but many of them also receive some education in traditional settings.

“It’s not one or the other, either you’re isolated or it’s full inclusion,” said Newport-Mesa Unified School District Trustee Sherry Loofbourrow, president of the California School Boards Assn. “Right now there’s a whole range of options for children to have their special needs met and also have interaction with other children.”

Although local and national experts agreed Thursday that Jimmy Peters’ case appears unusually extreme, many pointed to other problems arising from the trend toward inclusion.

In Jimmy’s classroom, parents have raised the common complaint that their children received less teacher attention because of the demanding presence of a disabled student in the room. Teachers themselves protest that they lack the training to handle special needs or collaborate with the host of specialists that may accompany such children.

And inclusion increases the expense of providing special education, which already costs $1,000 to $20,000 extra per child each year.

“It’s a tremendous dilemma,” said Justine Maloney, legislative chairwoman of the 60,000-member Learning Disabilities Assn., which opposes full inclusion. “I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know that teachers are very frightened. They’re frightened of the behavioral aspects of this.”

Carol Arnesen, head of special education for the Orange County Department of Education, said there is no “one size fits all” answer to the inclusion question.

“It’s all individual--what the parents request, what the needs of a child are--it really does have to be considered on an individual basis,” she said.

Special-education students get more attention and protection than anyone in the public schools, with each receiving an individualized education plan annually.

That process began in 1975 with the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, also called IDEA. Still the law of the land, IDEA demands that special-education students receive a “free and appropriate public education” in the “least restrictive environment” possible.

In the 1980s, many school districts began experimenting with mainstreaming, placing students with mild to moderate disabilities in regular classrooms--often without any extra help or special programs.

As the disability-rights movement burgeoned in the late 1980s, the full-inclusion trend emerged, bringing children with severe mental, physical and behavioral problems into regular classes.

“What we want to do is challenge some of those assumptions that have traditionally led to segregation,” said Christopher Button of United Cerebral Palsy, a leader in the push for inclusion. “There are increasing numbers of examples of excellence where (inclusion) is happening well, where kids with disabilities and kids without disabilities are benefiting.”

Since the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990, courts and the U.S. Department of Education have given increasing support to inclusion programs. Among the protections special-education students have is the “stay put” clause, which prevents a school from removing a disabled child from a regular classroom without parental permission.

Discipline is restricted too: Special-education students cannot be expelled from a school if their behavior stems from their disability, even if an action would otherwise be considered an expellable offense.

“The courts are really making school districts bend over backward--and beyond--to accommodate children in (regular) classrooms,” said Melinda Maloney, editorial director for a Pennsylvania company that publishes 25 newsletters on special education. “You have a tremendous political grass-roots movement pushing inclusion, you have Clinton appointees favoring inclusion. . . . For the first time in 20 years all the planets are aligned.”

O.C. Special Education

Since passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, segregated classrooms for special-education students are becoming the exception rather than the rule. Federal law and courts around the country have demanded that students receive public education in “the least restrictive environment” possible. A look at programs serving Orange County’s special-education students:

* Total special-education students: 36,263 (8.94% of Orange County’s total student enrollment)

* Designated Instruction and Service: 9,483 (26% of special-education total); students spend entire day in regular classes, but may have special support services

* Resource specialist: 16,330 (45%); students spend more than half the day in regular classes, but may leave at times to work with specialists)

* Special classes and centers: 10,182 (28%); students spend less than half the day, or no time at all, in regular classes)

* Non-public schools: 268 (1%); students served full-time at special-education facility, paid for by public school districts)

Note: Figures as of Dec. 1, 1993

Source: Orange County Department of Education; Researched by: JODI WILGOREN / Los Angeles Times