District to Hire Aides for Special Education : Schools: Simi Valley officials approve part-time positions to increase low student-teacher ratios and control disruptive pupils.

Simi Valley school officials plan to hire seven part-time aides for special education classes to boost low student-teacher ratios and control a handful of pupils with disruptive and violent behavior.

The school board approved hiring part-time instructional aides at four school sites last week after officials presented half a dozen requests for increased staffing.

At some elementary and junior high schools, aides are needed to assist teachers with an unexpected boom in special education enrollment.

At other sites, additional supervision was requested for youngsters who have displayed violent behavior, such as assaulting instructors, running away or threatening classmates, according to district reports.

“For their own protection, we have to have more adult supervision,” said Robert Chall, principal at Sycamore Elementary School, which will get two part-time aides: one for a learning-disabled student who has been placed in a mainstream class and another to help in a preschool class.

Sycamore’s preschool program for severely handicapped students grew from eight pupils to about 13 last fall, an increase that has pushed the program over its legal student-teacher ratio, Chall said. The education code requires a ratio of 1 adult to 5 students for severely handicapped preschool classes, and the ratio in the Sycamore class was 1 to 6.

Mountain View Elementary School will receive two aides to help supervise emotionally disturbed children who have wandered off campus in the past or endangered others through aggressive behavior, district reports said.

Mountain View has also witnessed an enrollment increase this school year. The special education program has peaked at 26 students, who are divided between two classes, Principal Karyn Cryster said.

“We have more students than we have ever had before,” she said.

Simi Valley Unified School District officials said they do not know why enrollment increased, but said the number of special education students and their level of need fluctuates from year to year, making staffing difficult to project.

“There is such an ebb and flow with these programs,” said Assistant Supt. Susan C. Parks. This school year’s increase in special education enrollment “just seemed to come all at once,” she said.

The largest school district in Ventura County, Simi Valley Unified has the largest number of students enrolled in special education programs--about 1,200, ranging from learning-disabled to severely physically handicapped students.

Hiring the part-time instructional aides will cost the district about $28,000 a year--an unexpected expenditure for a district that is struggling financially. Once hired, the aides will work up to four hours a day for the remainder of the school year.

“What you hope is that by the end of the year you make enough reductions (in other areas) to balance it out,” Parks said. “For the moment, it has to come out of the general fund.”

“It’s an expense,” board President Diane Collins said, “but it is a lot less than if we had to send them to private school.”

Public schools must provide education for all children, even if that means paying for severely disabled students to attend private schools, officials said.

More students with severe handicaps are served through the public school system than ever before, Parks said.

“Many students who would have been hospitalized or institutionalized are now in public schools,” Parks said. “You have to serve all kids. It’s a federal civil rights issue.”

The needs of those students can be demanding. At one junior high school, two of the newly hired aides will help manage an extremely assaultive student in a special education class who has “bruised, bitten and scratched two staff members to the point of drawing blood,” a district report said.

The extra classroom help usually makes a big difference to teachers--and students, officials said.

“Some of these kids make remarkable turnarounds,” Parks said.

The expense of individual instruction has been compounded in recent years as principals and parents push for “full inclusion” of special education students into mainstream classes--a sometimes rocky transition that has warranted additional assistance, officials said.

“It seems to me to be the nature of full inclusion,” Chall said. “A lot of people feel there is a need to have an (additional) person there.”

One of the special education students at Sycamore has engaged in disruptive behavior such as “abusive language, . . . hair-pulling and undressing,” the district report said. One of the aides will be assigned to work with that student four hours a day.

Chall said the money for that instructor will be well spent.

“Putting special education students with so-called regular students works both ways,” Chall said. “(Students) get a better understanding of what it is to be different. . . . If we have to go through some hard times and spend a little extra money, I think it is (worth it).”