Special Education Cause Is Father’s Full-Time Job : Profile: An unparalleled parental activist, Jim Peters fights for other people’s children as well as his own.

Jim Peters has been tangling with local school officials over his son’s educational program for years. But he fights for other children too.

Over the past year, Peters has filed legal complaints on behalf of some two dozen other special-education students, a level of parental activism school officials say is unprecedented in Orange County.

Unemployed since 1989, Peters works virtually full time on special-education issues.

“It’s very difficult to see parents in need,” Peters, 38, said in an interview, “and I (try) to help them get some services.”

Peters’ 6-year-old son, Jimmy, suffers from a communications disorder whose severity is in dispute. After Peters repeatedly refused to remove Jimmy from a mainstream kindergarten class this spring, the Ocean View School District went to court in a last-ditch effort to oust the child. A judge, however, sent Jimmy back to class, prompting parents of some of his classmates to protest.

Peters contends that the school district lawsuit is simply retaliation for his own activism.

“I help a lot of parents, I think that has a lot to do with” the lawsuit, Peters said. “They’re continually harassing Jimmy. There’s just no letup here. The school district has been going after little Jimmy. . . . We’re just about tired of it.”

The lawsuit came after years of squabbles between Peters and local schools.

From his seat on a special education advisory committee to five school districts in the Huntington Beach area over the past several years, Peters has galvanized other parents to fight for their children’s rights. More recently, he founded his own parent support group, wrote a handbook on how to work with the educational system and began publishing a newsletter.

Peters has participated in Ocean View’s task force on “full inclusion,” the growing movement to place disabled youngsters in mainstream classes, and even tried in vain last fall to gain appointment to the district’s school board when there was a vacancy.

Many school officials, parents and others who have worked with Peters describe him as a smooth talker who threatens legal action to achieve his goals. Critics call him “aggressive” and “tough;” some supporters say he single-handedly saved their children’s futures.

“Jim was the fighter when it came to the kids, and it wasn’t just his child. (Jim) wanted to make sure that all kids were served,” said Susan Danner, the mother of a special-education student who recently moved to Arizona. “There are a lot of parents out there who got absolutely frustrated and didn’t know where to turn. Jim would give you the information and you’d be all set.”

Peters often accompanied other parents to meetings with district administrators to provide support and has helped write legal complaints for those unhappy with their children’s educational programs.

Jim Hemsley, who oversees special-education programs for five school districts in the Huntington Beach area, said he has met or spoken with Peters about 100 times this year in regard to two dozen children. On one day alone, Peters filed requests for due process hearings for seven different children.

Hemsley and other school administrators criticized Peters for perpetually arriving late or skipping scheduled meetings and clogging the system with paperwork without following through.

“With Mr. Peters, it’s hard for me to tell what his final line is,” Hemsley said, “ . . but I think it’s certainly to the detriment of the special-education children.”