District Wins Bid Not to Pay for Deaf Boy’s Private School

Steven and Janice Walker feel they are facing one of the most important decisions of their lives.

For nearly two years, their children, Joshua, 3, and Jessica, 5, have attended a private school where they learned sign language together. Joshua, who is deaf, is able to communicate with his sister, who has normal hearing.

But last week, an administrative hearing officer appointed by the California Department of Education ruled that Joshua must enroll in a public preschool program without his sister unless his parents choose to pay for his education and special language services at the private school in Rancho Santa Margarita.

The ruling takes effect March 25.

Keltie Jones, a hearing officer with the special education office at the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento, decided that state funds shouldn’t pay for Joshua to be educated in a private school when the local public school district has a program for hearing-impaired kids.

“The law says if the school district offers an appropriate program then parents don’t have a right to an alternative program,” said Doreen Lohnes, executive director of special education for the Capistrano Unified School District.

The decision leaves the Walkers wondering how to provide for their children’s education.

“I don’t know where we are going to end up,” said Janice Walker, whose husband, Steven, used his vacation time to attend the daylong hearings during three weeks in December. “We’ve just got to do what is best for the kids.”

A ruling in a similar case filed on behalf of two other children, Maria Christina and Taylor Fisher, is pending.

This dispute over how to provide for deaf children has been building for years.

Initially, Capistrano Unified didn’t have a preschool program for deaf children, and parents did not want their children sent to a special program in Santa Ana or placed at Richard Henry Dana Elementary School with developmentally disabled students.

At first, the district was working on a public-private approach with parents to create a local program.

In May 1996, a makeshift preschool was set up in the living room of a home in Rancho Santa Margarita. The school district supplied the preschool with a deaf education teacher, speech therapists and audiologists, and transportation.

That effort failed, district officials say, when parents wanted to expand the school to the third grade. Parents asked the district to pay full tuition for hearing-impaired students.

The parents raised money and built their own school while the district set up a program for deaf preschoolers at Crown Valley Elementary School in Laguna Niguel. The district ended up paying to educate deaf children at both Crown Valley and the private school.

The private facility, Rancho Viejo School, is designed to teach deaf and hearing children together. Siblings in kindergarten through third-grade are able to attend a school where all teachers sign when they speak.

Now the school has moved to a brand-new, 7,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility with new furniture, vaulted ceilings and a built-in sound room. It dwarfs the austere 960-square-foot public school portable classroom.

But Capistrano Unified officials insisted they should take the lead in providing for deaf children.

“We are very proud of our program for hearing-impaired students,” Supt. James A. Fleming said. “We have well-qualified, dedicated teachers in that program.”

The Walkers asked for a hearing on behalf of Joshua to require the school district to maintain funding for his education. The state Department of Education administrative officer held closed-door hearings sporadically from September through December.

Under the ruling, to receive free special education services Joshua’s parents must enroll him at Crown Valley Elementary. Jessica, who is in kindergarten, would not be taught sign language in her brother’s class. Instead she would have to take after-school sessions once a week.

“The Walkers could decide to pay the tuition, but those extra language services [are costly],” said Debbie Evans-Warkentien, who founded the private school in her living room. “That’s the noose the district put around their neck. . . . The district will no longer pay for those expensive services.”

Parent Carlos Olamendi, whose daughter, Maria Christina, 3, is deaf, is waiting for the hearing officer to decide his case, which is identical to the Walkers’. He said whatever the decision, he will not put his daughter in the public school.

Capistrano Unified officials believe the Walker decision set a precedent.

“We feel validated by this,” Lohnes said. “The issue to us was [that] a school district should be able to offer an appropriate program for all children within its own public school. The district should not have to pay tuition for a private, for-profit school with taxpayers’ money.”