Signs of Trouble : Parents Opening School for Deaf Clash With District on Funding

It was hard enough for Carlos Olamendi to learn his daughter is deaf. But when Maria Christina turned 3, Olamendi also discovered he would have to fight for the education he says she needs.

Unsatisfied with the choices offered by public schools, Olamendi and other frustrated South County parents of deaf and hearing-impaired children have taken matters into their own hands.

They raised money and built Rancho Viejo School, scheduled to open here next month and billed as the only private school for the deaf and hard of hearing in Orange County to offer classes with mainstream students from preschool through third grade.

But the launch of the private school has triggered an unusual conflict between its founders and the public school system.

At issue is how much the state should subsidize the education of children like Maria Christina when their parents put them into private school. Public school officials are balking at parent demands for reimbursement of $450-per-student monthly tuition and other expenses. Olamendi takes it personally.

“I don’t think 20 bullets in your body would be equal to the pain you feel when you see your kids suffer problems,” said Olamendi, 42, a restaurant owner who lives in Laguna Niguel. “That’s our battle and we will continue to fight.”

But Capistrano Unified School District officials say they have gone to great lengths to start up their own new program for deaf children, which, like the parents’ school, uses hands-on instruction based on the Montessori teaching method.

“Taxpayers cannot support a private, for-profit school,” said Doreen Lohnes, an assistant superintendent for the 40,000-student district, “especially one that is in direct competition with the district’s own elementary schools, because that would be a gift of public funds.”

Parents acknowledge a portion of their school catering to mainstream students is for profit, but they say programs for the deaf and hearing-impaired are not.

The dispute has landed before an administrative officer appointed by the state Department of Education. Steven and Janice Walker initiated the hearing on behalf of their deaf son, Joshua, 3. Hearings on the issue, which began in September, will continue through December. A decision is expected in late January.

Under state and federal law, school districts must meet the special education needs of all children identified with hearing problems. In South County, Capistrano Unified shares that obligation in a joint arrangement with Laguna Beach Unified and Saddleback Valley Unified school districts.

There is precedent for government subsidies of private schools that offer special education to disabled students. Jim Bellotti, a consultant for the Department of Education, said more than 380 such schools statewide qualify for subsidies. He said it’s common for parents to seek alternative sources of education for students who have highly individual needs.

“The question in my mind isn’t so much about parents starting up” a school, Bellotti said. “The question in my mind is the [student], the need for services and the most appropriate place where those services can be delivered.”

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Schooling for deaf students has taken on new urgency here as the South County population has grown in recent years. Larry Belkin, director of special education services for the Orange County Department of Education, said the region didn’t need a preschool program for deaf children until about two years ago.

Just over 400 schoolchildren in Orange County are deaf, Belkin said, including about 50 in South County. Statewide, according to Bellotti, there are more than 4,500 special education students whose primary disability is deafness. Many thousands of others are hard of hearing.

More than a year ago, when Olamendi and others started inquiring, Capistrano Unified had limited services for deaf preschool-aged children in the area. The district would send tutors and therapists to a child’s home. Or it would send students on buses to magnet programs at Taft Elementary School in Santa Ana or Kaiser Primary Center in Costa Mesa. Or it would bring them to its own Richard Henry Dana Exceptional Needs Facility in Dana Point, a school exclusively for disabled students.

At first, parents and district officials sought to work together on a new public-private approach.

In May 1996, a makeshift preschool was set up in Rancho Santa Margarita in the living room of Debbie Evans-Warkentien, a mother of two children with normal hearing. The district later agreed to supply the preschool with a deaf education teacher, transportation, speech therapists and audiologists.

That was the beginning of what would become the Rancho Viejo School, now housed in a 7,000-square-foot building in an industrial complex.

But the cooperation dissolved, district officials say, when parents sought to expand the school to the third grade. Then parents asked the district to cover full tuition for hearing-impaired children.

A final disagreement arose over the new school’s permanent location. Parents refused the district’s offer of a portable building at Barcelona Hills Elementary in Mission Viejo. They told district officials the building was too small.

So the parents raised money for their own school. Evans-Warkentien, a former private investigator, invested $75,000. She also took out a loan of $750,000, with Olamendi offering his restaurant and home as collateral.

A key point for the Rancho Viejo founders was the ability to put siblings of deaf and hard-of-hearing children together, even if they have no hearing problems.

Olamendi contends Maria Christina is more social and her learning is enhanced because her 7-year-old brother, Benito, who is not deaf, learns sign language with her at the private preschool.

Born deaf, Maria Christina is now speaking to Benito using her chubby fingers to form signs. One night, their father said, the two “had a fight and it was only in sign language.”

Parents at the new school are starting small, with about a dozen students, five of whom are deaf or hard of hearing. They hope, ultimately, to serve 50 from preschool through third grade.

While the parents were planning their private school, the district prepared a new program for deaf preschool children at Crown Valley Elementary School in Laguna Niguel. Now the district found itself funding deaf and hard-of-hearing teachers at both the private and public schools.

The public school opened in June with fewer than a dozen students, including two with hearing problems. Free of charge, the preschool is only open to deaf or hard-of-hearing children, or mainstream children of Crown Valley staff members.

District and county education officials say Crown Valley is more convenient for South County residents and promise a first-class effort. The entire Crown Valley school has now adopted sign language as its second language, and school officials want to expand the program to elementary grades.

“Our approach is to give students any tools they need for communication,” Belkin said. “It’s a total program with spoken language, signing and gesturing to make sure there is understanding and communication.”

Still, parents say they are not convinced the public preschool program is adequate for their children. They have different philosophies. Also, they point to a metal slide on the playground that could scramble programs encoded into expensive hearing devices used by some deaf children.

State officials say it is unusual for conflict between parents and school districts to reach such an impasse. But an advocate for the deaf and hearing-impaired said it is to be expected.

“Parents are taking desperate methods to get appropriate education regardless of the child’s age,” said Sherie Farinha Mutti, chief executive officer of the NorCal Center on Deafness in Sacramento.

Times staff writer Nick Anderson contributed to this report.