School Space Crunch Hits Special Ed

When students return to school across the state in the next few weeks, thousands of them will benefit from more attention from their teachers and more space in which to study, thanks to a $1-billion effort to reduce primary grade class size to 20.

But at the same time, the rush to find enough space to accomplish that popular goal may leave the state’s most vulnerable students--those who are coping with learning disabilities or emotional or physical handicaps--holding the short end of the stick.

“They’re pitting the first-graders against the special education students and the parents of special ed students are going to be furious when they find out,” said Janny Latno-Yamate, a special education teacher and official with a statewide group now fielding scores of complaints from teachers.

In Long Beach, administrators at some elementary schools are moving children from special education classes into regular classrooms and combining other small classes of handicapped students.

In the San Juan Unified School District in Sacramento, administrators are considering partitioning a special education classroom, dividing it between children whose speech development is delayed and those with various learning disabilities. Teachers there worry that the chanting that helps the first group of children learn to speak will make it difficult for the second group to concentrate.

Nearby, in two Placer County schools, children having trouble learning to read may be moved out of their classes and taught in hallways to free up classroom space. Other special education classes may be moved to bungalows on remote parts of campus.

And up and down the state, resource specialists--those specially trained teachers who provide extra help to children coping with emotional and mental hurdles--are being told they will no longer be assigned space to meet with their students. Instead, they are being asked to work out of briefcases, hauling their materials into the regular classrooms where their students spend most of the day.

“That’s nowhere near as effective, nor is that what is provided for in their [educational plans], and basically they’re being denied services,” said Latno-Yamate, a resource specialist with the Vallejo City Unified School District.

Latno-Yamate said her group, the California Assn. of Resource Specialists, has received more than 75 calls from members across the state, complaining that their needs are being overlooked in the rush to find space for primary grade classrooms.

Under new state legislation, schools that can reduce their first- and second-grade classes to 20 children each will share in $971 million set aside to improve reading instruction. That requires each school to create about one new class for every two it reduces.

But space is scarce on most elementary campuses, so some administrators are looking at special education classrooms--which generally house only a few children needing intensive teacher attention--as a source of new space. To free those classrooms, they may try to combine classes, move the children into smaller quarters or add them to regular classes for at least part of the day.

“These kids are having enough difficulty with instruction and learning anyway, and putting them in a very cramped environment won’t help,” Latno-Yamate said.

Special education programs are by no means the only ones that may get squeezed, at least temporarily, as school districts rush to find the extra space to satisfy the huge demand from parents and teachers for smaller class sizes.

Computer rooms, libraries, teacher lounges, parent centers and other spaces will, beginning this fall, be converted to regular classrooms.

But education programs for handicapped children are governed by special state and federal laws that guarantee parents the right to help choose their children’s educational program. And advocates worry that those rights may be trampled along the way.

Still, it’s hard to know with certainty what the impact of class size reduction will be until school begins in the next few weeks and parents, and teachers see how special education classes fare.

“It’s a mess right now for a lot of districts,” said Carolyn Blevins, a special education teacher in the San Juan district.

Most special education teachers enthusiastically support the class size reduction effort. They believe that, in the long run, the greater individual attention in smaller regular classes will reduce the demand for the expensive, specialized services that they provide. And many also support the overall goal of “mainstreaming” handicapped children, so that they spend more of their school day in regular classes.

But they worry that decisions about special education placements are being made too rapidly and for the wrong reasons.

“The program is being driven by a need for space and a lack of regard for what is appropriate for the needs of kids,” said Jim Woodhead, a special education teacher in the Newark Unified School District in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Many parents of handicapped students have fought long and hard for specific placements for their children, including the right to attend neighborhood schools. And advocacy groups for those families worry that those gains could unravel if schools feel pressed to put the needs of primary grade children first.

Catherine Blakemore, executive director of Protection and Advocacy Inc., a group that works on behalf of parents and special education students, has expressed those concerns in a letter to state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin.

“Children in special education programs should not lose their right to attend their neighborhood schools or be relegated to inferior facilities because their classrooms have been taken away for a new program,” she wrote.

Some of the complaints being registered may have more to do with unwillingness among special education teachers to give up space than with the possibility of true harm to students, administrators said.

More than 550,000 children in the state qualify for special education programs because of a variety of handicaps, ranging from mild learning disabilities to mental disorders to severe physical limitations. More than $2 billion in state and federal dollars, and several hundred million more in local district funds, was spent providing for their education and care last year.

Because of the laws that govern treatment of handicapped children, any plans by a school to change class assignments probably will be reviewed by district officials--and may be overruled.

“If you’re having only special ed students share classrooms and not having regular students share classrooms, it would create a discrimination issue,” said Eloise Thompson, director of special education for Long Beach schools. “It would be an automatic violation of the law to consider classroom needs of handicapped students after those of non-handicapped.”

As a result of teacher and district concerns, the state Department of Education last week faxed an alert to county offices of education reminding them that school districts should not ignore the laws governing special education in an effort to obtain the funding for reducing class size.

Allan Simmons, a special education program supervisor with the state Education Department, said his biggest concern was that school districts might inconvenience parents by shifting special education classes from a neighborhood school to a distant one.

“That is real upsetting to families,” he said.

But the Education Department will not get involved in what it considers to be local decisions about class composition and placement, he said, except in response to complaints.

“Each of these situations is going to be very special and in some cases they’ll make big errors . . . and some moves that won’t be accepted by everybody,” he said. “But the bottom line is that these are pretty much all local decisions.”

The Irvine Unified School District in Orange County already has first-grade classrooms with only 20 students at three elementary schools. But Dean Waldfogel, the district’s deputy superintendent, expressed a view shared by many of his peers across the state when he said the district was trying to ensure that haste does not lead to harm.

“While we want to be aggressive in our pursuit of this golden opportunity, we don’t want to do anything to sacrifice the quality of other programs, including music, art, computer labs, special ed and so on.”

The giant Los Angeles Unified School District is operating its special education programs under a legal settlement that guarantees parents and students certain rights and services.

Bob Myers, one of the attorneys involved in the lawsuit leading to that settlement, said he approached district officials as soon as the class size reduction legislation was passed to make sure special education would not be harmed.

“We expressed our concern and I believe that their planning has taken this issue into account,” he said.

But most of the planning for the class size cuts is taking place on individual campuses in the 650-school district. And many principals may be unaware of the strict guidelines governing special education programs.

The staff of Capistrano Elementary School in West Hills, for example, was considering two main options for freeing classroom space--merging two classes of physically handicapped children, or putting some of those students in a classroom already being used by a resource specialist who works with learning disabled students.

Principal Frances Zamir, who is a former resource specialist, said she was not happy to be considering such options. “But,” she said, “we just don’t have any other space.”