2 on L.A. School Board Assail Fees for Special Education Suit

As bills for settling a landmark lawsuit revamping special education programs pile up, two Los Angeles Unified School District board members reacted angrily Tuesday to the latest expense: more than $1 million to be paid to the attorneys who filed the suit.

Charges of $247 for an attorney to travel downtown for a meeting and $27 for a lawyer’s secretary to talk on the telephone to another secretary were among the bills singled out for criticism by member Julie Korenstein.

“It’s totally wrong,” Korenstein said. “If we’re going to fix the problems in special ed, that money needs to be directed to the classroom.”

Tuesday’s allocation, approved by a 5-2 board vote, brings legal and administrative fees to more than $4.5 million since the lawsuit was settled in December. The class-action suit, filed in 1993 by a Sherman Oaks attorney and the American Civil Liberties Union, claimed that the district’s 65,000 disabled students were receiving a grossly inadequate education.

To settle the suit, the district agreed to move more handicapped children into regular classes and expand educational offerings for all the district’s special education students. The cost of those changes will not be known until specific recommendations are developed by panels of community members and experts now considering the district’s options.

Past legal rulings have established the district’s liability for plaintiffs’ legal fees in such settlements. But board members Korenstein and David Tokofsky objected Tuesday to the size of those fees.

For instance, a partial itemization indicated it cost the district $2,100 for one attorney to attend a public hearing on the settlement at Birmingham High School and another $1,400 when an attorney met with a group of parents for four hours.

The private attorneys working for the district and the plaintiffs make up to $350 an hour.

Some board members who agreed to pay the bill said they too were disturbed by the high charges, but were persuaded by reports from an outside auditor that the fees were not unreasonable.

“I remember when I first learned what attorneys make,” said board President Jeff Horton. “It’s a little shocking.”

The bills reflect work performed by the ACLU’s Mark Rosenbaum, Sherman Oaks attorney Robert M. Myers and a legal firm that joined the case after the settlement was reached, Protection and Advocacy, which specializes in handling the problems of individual disabled students.

Earlier this year, the school district hired attorney and auditor Kenneth Moscaret to review the fees charged by attorneys. He persuaded the plaintiffs to retract $63,000 in what he considered questionable charges, but said the rest was likely to be upheld by a federal court judge.

“We’d be throwing good money after bad to fight this,” school district lawyer Rich Mason told the board Tuesday.

The district decided to settle the lawsuit, named for a learning-disabled student named Chanda Smith, after reviewing the cost of fighting it in court.