School, Father Still Haggling Over O.C. Boy

Just days before school is scheduled to begin, Jim Peters spent Friday haggling with school officials over special accommodations for his 6-year-old son Jimmy, a learning disabled youngster who last spring was thrust into the center of an unprecedented legal battle over mainstreaming special education students.

Ocean View School District administrators have spent weeks--and $5,000--training Jimmy’s teacher and preparing his classroom at Circle View Elementary, but Peters said he now may try to enroll the child at Golden View Elementary, where he believes the principal is more amenable to his educational philosophy.

“I just want to make sure we can make a fresh start with Jimmy,” said Peters, a longtime special education activist and current candidate for the Ocean View school board. “I’m out to make this work, but the district doesn’t want to make it work.”

Friday, Peters asked administrators to move Jimmy’s planned class at Circle View to a different room, replace some of the students in the class with children more sympathetic to his son, and hire Jimmy’s baby-sitter as an instructional aide. At Golden View, he asked the principal to convert a kindergarten room into a combination K-1 class.

District officials said Friday they would not make last-minute changes to accommodate one student, noting that they had sent the Circle View teacher, who has a special education background, to numerous workshops this summer on student behavior problems and how to teach disabled and mainstream children simultaneously.

The training for Jimmy’s teacher and other staff who will work with him, along with a contract with a separate specialist, cost the district about $5,000, Ocean View Supt. James R. Tarwater said.

“In 28 years, I’ve never had so much regression in decision-making. Every time you go in one direction, it gets switched,” said a frustrated Tarwater. “We’re trying to make it work, but (Peters) has to work with us. Pulling out to another school two days before is proof . . . that he doesn’t wish to cooperate.”

Jimmy, who suffers from a communications disorder of disputed severity, attended a special education class at Circle View for preschool, then, last year, joined a regular kindergarten class as part of the growing movement toward “full inclusion” of children with special needs.

Administrators tried to remove Jimmy from the class last spring, claiming he was constantly disruptive and had several violent outbursts, but Peters refused to put him in a special class.

After Jimmy bit his teacher in May, sending her home on stress leave, the district took the locally unprecedented step of filing a lawsuit against Jimmy in a last-ditch effort to oust him from the class. But a judge sent him back for the final days of school amid protests from parents of his classmates, some of whom pulled their children out of school when Jimmy returned.

Peters said he made his requests weeks ago, but they were ignored. He accused administrators of setting his son up to fail.

Ocean View is scheduled to start school Wednesday.

This summer, Jimmy has had one-on-one lessons with Sallie Dashiell, a speech pathologist hired by the district. After 29 two-hour sessions--some at home, others at the park--and some extra-curricular trips to the beach and the Orange County Fair, Dashiell said she has seen slow but steady progress in the child.

“When we started, he wasn’t looking at me, he wasn’t getting close to me. Now when he sees me he hugs me, he smiles at me,” Dashiell said Friday. “Getting to know Jimmy this summer and how he moves through the world, I think we’ll be able to put together an (inclusion) program.”

Dashiell, who plans to work with Jimmy regularly during the school year, said she would prefer if he attended Circle View. But she said she would help design a program for him at either school.

Among Peters’ special requests for Jimmy’s classroom are: an electronic learning device that matches sounds with pictures, an aquarium, guinea pigs and/or Jimmy’s pet rabbit, extra colorful educational toys and an eating station.

“If it works right, it’s going to be the greatest classroom in the world,” Peters said. “It’ll have all the gidgets and gadgets--and all the students will benefit.”

District officials have approved these items, though none are yet in place in the Circle View classroom. But they balked Friday when Peters asked to move the class from a room where Jimmy has bad memories, and to switch the enrollment plan to an “all-volunteer” group of children and parents who support full inclusion.

“Does any other parent have the right to say, ‘I want this class to move to the sunny side or the shady side?’ No,” Tarwater said. “If he has anxieties about the room, the specialists will work with him to get over those anxieties. We have children being dropped off who have school-phobia. We’re not going to move the school.”

Tarwater said Friday that if Peters chooses to enroll Jimmy at Golden View, the child might be bused to another school district campus because Golden View’s first-grade classrooms are currently oversubscribed. He added that he cannot hire Jimmy’s baby-sitter because there are about 40 applications ahead of hers.

Further frustrating cooperation between Peters and the district was a botched effort this week to bring a private, out-of-town behavior specialist here to design an assessment plan for Jimmy.

The district spent $1,200 to bring Dr. Ted Schoenberger to Huntington Beach from Northern California Thursday, but Schoenberger quit before even meeting Jimmy after speaking with Peters’ attorney, Tarwater said.

District officials said Peters failed to arrange a meeting with Schoenberger, and Peters accused district staff of meeting with the specialist behind his back.

Although he is confident that Jimmy can succeed in the K-1 class planned for him at Circle View, Tarwater said Friday that he will not hesitate to suspend Jimmy if he acts out, and that returning to court this fall is “a strong possibility.”

Meanwhile, Circle View Principal Dan Moss, and Jimmy’s proposed teacher, Donna Shockley, both promised Peters Friday they would try to accommodate his needs.

“I’ll do anything you want,” Shockley told Peters. “If you want me to have guinea pigs in here, I’ll have guinea pigs.”

Moss later told Peters: “Jim, I will do anything to help your son.”