L.A. Schools’ Director of Special Education Resigns

The director of special education for the Los Angeles Unified School District has resigned effective Feb. 21, complaining that efforts to overhaul services for 69,000 disabled students, prompted by a class-action lawsuit, have been disjointed.

News of Beverly Watkins’ decision to step down leaked out Monday, just as the district aired the first two of its 30 proposals for complying with the Chanda Smith Consent Decree after nearly a year of planning meetings. Although the 1996 decree officially ended the litigation--because the district publicly admitted it was violating various disability laws--the decree provided only an outline for how and when changes would occur.

In a four-page resignation letter to the superintendent of schools dated Friday, Watkins--director of special education for the last four years--suggested that coordinated reform efforts may have been sacrificed in the push to flesh out the legal agreement.

“At present, our field personnel are subject to conflicting and / or incongruent guidance from the various offices which now control different aspects of . . . special education,” Watkins wrote.

Watkins said her own duties have become increasingly unclear as her responsibilities have been shifted to a team of outside consent-decree consultants and district administrators and to the district’s general education administration wing, reflecting the decree’s drive to integrate more disabled students into regular classrooms.

Furthermore, she said, principals and regional cluster administrators have not been adequately trained to take on the job of complying with complex special education laws, even though a tentative restructuring plan would drop that duty in their laps.

Supt. Sid Thompson said he would look into Watkins’ concerns because she knows “the inside workings of that operation better than anyone.” But Thompson said that change in the nation’s second-largest school district occasionally requires a cart-before-the-horse approach.

“Sometimes you have to make the move and and then go about making sure the folks are trained,” he said. “If you wait for readiness, it may never happen.”

Thompson said Watkins had not been forced out and that she had agreed to continue to work with the district as a consultant on improving the transportation options for special education students.

Reviewed at a Monday evening hearing were the first two consent decree proposals, which barely skim the surface of the complex problems identified in the 1993 lawsuit, which was named after a learning-disabled student. The two plans are to be voted on by the school board Feb. 10, although a district administrator said Thompson has lingering concerns about both.

One plan lists ways the district can increase its state and federal reimbursement for the expensive programs. But buried in it is a warning sure to upset some parents of disabled youngsters: The district has far too many students in segregated special education classes.

The district should set up a schedule to reduce the number by perhaps 1,000 students a year over five years, the committee suggested.

The second plan expands the district’s one-sentence mission statement into a full-page document aimed at ending discrimination against disabled students. The new statement is laced with the jargon of public education today--”ensure . . . equitable delivery of educational resources” and “meet the needs of a student population diverse in its special needs and abilities.”

The committee recommendation calls for the new statement to be printed and copied, inserted into paycheck envelopes and included in special training sessions--all at a cost of more than $80,000 this year and similar amounts in future years. Recent district analysis has indicated that the estimate may be low for the scope of work anticipated.

At the hearing, some said the budget is lean, some said it is excessive, but the most consistent complaint was that the proposal lacked adequate punishment for abuses.

Ben Adams, past chairman of the district’s Special Education Commission, pointed out that such discrimination is illegal and must be a firing offense. It is “ludicrous,” Adams added, to assume the district can police itself, placing that responsibility “in the hands of those who have created the hostile environment to begin with.”