Integration of Disabled Pupils May Expand

Not long ago, the parents of 9-year-old Brian Thomas Foster were told that their son would never learn to read or spell because of his level of impairment from Down’s syndrome.

Last week, he won an award at Park Oaks Elementary School in Thousand Oaks for excellence in spelling.

Barbara Foster said she owes her son’s success to a pilot program she calls “a godsend.” On Thursday, the Conejo Unified School District will decide whether to go districtwide with the program, which integrates students with learning disabilities into neighborhood schools.

Foster’s son was taken out of special day classes and moved to the learning center at Park Oaks, which is near their home.

“I fought for this program,” Foster said. “It gave me back my dreams for Brian. Now he gets A-pluses on tests and I know that’s because his teachers have dreams too.”

Brian is one of 28 students with special needs who attend the Park Oaks Learning Center.

The pilot program was created at Park Oaks and three other neighborhood schools two years ago, eliminating the need to bus the students across town to sites dedicated for special education programs. Now the district is considering initiating similar programs at its 14 other elementary schools.

“This helps eliminate the stigma of being placed in a special day-class program,” said Jack Bannon, director of special education for the Conejo district. “Students can walk to neighborhood schools and ride with siblings and parents. They feel better about themselves and are more likely to feel at home and make friends.”

But some parents have been concerned that their children will not fare well under the new system.

“The problem is they are going to have kids with different disabilities all in one room with one or two teachers,” said Barry Gabrielson, whose autistic son was in special education classes last year. “The teachers don’t have all the different credentials to teach students with different disabilities.”

But parent Hilde Oliver, whose 9-year-old son Jonathan has hearing, vision and emotional impairments, said her original concern that Jonathan could not adjust to having two teachers at the Park Oaks Learning Center was unfounded.

The pair of teachers “has turned out to be one of the best things about the learning center,” she said. “This has been the very best solution for Jonathan that we have ever tried. His behavior has improved incredibly.”

Under the proposal, about 50 students in grades three through six with mild or moderate special education needs would attend classes through learning centers to be created at their neighborhood schools.

The learning centers would maintain the same staff-to-student ratio, ensuring the same level of attention the students with special needs now receive. The staff would simply transfer to the new locations.

Most students would attend classes at the learning centers only part of the day, and then switch to regular education classes in nonacademic subjects such as art and physical education. Students who are able would attend regular academic education courses as well, with the learning center teachers helping to interpret course material.

At present, students who are the most severely disabled attend special day classes for about 80% of the day, on average.

Others with lesser degrees of disabilities are in so-called resource programs. In those programs, students attend regular classes for most subjects but are pulled out by resource teachers for work on special needs, such as speech, language, behavior or other areas.

Combining the children with different levels of ability has not hurt students’ ability to learn, but has helped students learn to help each other, said Park Oaks Learning Center teacher Mary Vehrs.

“The resource students have been quite generous of heart and quite kind, so they now know a lot about different disabilities and they see a much broader range of abilities as well,” Vehrs said.

Angeline Campbell, who co-teaches with Vehrs and who is a former special education day class teacher, said it is better for students to walk to school or arrive with parents than to ride a bus across town to a special site.

“The students would arrive in the morning already having problems because of issues on the bus,” she said. In addition, she said, the parents and students sometimes do not feel as connected to the school if it is a distance from their home.

“This way, the kids can also play with their friends on the weekends,” she said.