Opportunity Growing for Disabled Students

The number of California schoolchildren with physical, emotional and learning disabilities has increased 35% in the last decade, saddling local school districts with a heavy financial burden but leading to unprecedented opportunity for thousands of students.

As the bill for special education services soars, educators struggle to balance the needs of the disabled with those of the general student population.

School districts pay $1 billion of the nearly $3.7 billion spent on special education annually in California, causing local educators in particular to worry that they are shortchanging other students.

Last week the Supreme Court came down on the side of opportunity, ruling that schools must pay for full-time nurses if that’s what a severely disabled student needs to attend school.

For disabled students and their families, the expansion of special education services has been a blessing. “This program has given us this chance. . . . It’s almost like a gift from God,” said Sara Hayes, a 16-year-old quadriplegic who attends James Monroe High School in North Hills.

But in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, many educators worry that the financial burden they bear could grow, perhaps exponentially. They fear that parents will ask for more services, and that the process for deciding how to meet the needs of children will grow more contentious.

“The Supreme Court ruling will be the straw that will break the proverbial back of public education,” said James A. Fleming, superintendent of the Capistrano Unified School District in Orange County.

About 640,000 California students are in special education. Slightly more than half have learning disabilities. Far fewer have severe emotional and physical handicaps, which are the most costly. Overall, it is estimated that special education services cost $5,500 extra per student annually.

Such costs already have been rising at a rate far faster than inflation, about 7% annually according to the most recent data in California. The number of such students grew nearly 25% nationally and 34% in the state between 1987 and 1996, the most recent comparative data available.

But parents and disability-rights activists applauded the court decision, calling it a reaffirmation of the federal commitment to providing students with a safe and educationally advantageous learning environment.

“The district makes you feel bad for asking for something your child desperately needs,” said Laguna Niguel resident Marta McCormack, whose 7-year-old son, James, is autistic. “It’s like you have a child with cancer who needs chemotherapy, and they say, ‘Oh no, it’s too expensive.’ ”

Educators Face Complex Issues

Many schools already are providing a wide range of services to students who fall under the special education law. Monroe High, a 4,200-student school with one of the largest and most-comprehensive such programs in the Los Angeles Unified School District, provides a microcosm of the complex issues educators face.

About one in 10 of the school’s students receive some type of special education services. District-wide, more than half of those students have difficulty learning math and reading, and the same is true here at Monroe.

Thirty of the students, however, must use wheelchairs and arrive at the campus each morning on one of seven specially equipped buses.

Five of those students also rely on mechanical ventilators to breathe. Under school district policy, those students are assigned licensed vocational nurses who meet them each morning at their homes and stay by their side all day.

Sara rolled off the bus Friday, the first day of the semester. A quadriplegic since infancy because of polio, she gets around in a wheelchair she controls with her chin and mouth.

After checking her schedule in the tiny health office, Sara rolled into her first class, mathematics. With her nurse, Margarita Martin, at her side to write down her whispered answers, Sara handled a placement test without trouble.

In addition to helping Sara with her lessons, Martin monitors the gauges on her ventilator and listens to her breathing. When necessary, she suctions the teenager’s tracheostomy tube and administers medicine.

Sara is pretty and outgoing, with mischievous green eyes and thick, chestnut blond hair. As she moves across campus, she’s not shy about cutting through a crowd, calling out: “Excuse me! Excuse moi! Be a gentleman and open the door, please.”

Sara is more than a year behind in her classes because of health problems, but is working hard to catch up because she wants to become a clothes designer or a psychologist.

Just as Sara is fully integrated into the social and academic life of the school, other students in wheelchairs are fully part of the school’s sports teams. One such student competes on the tennis team and another, Brandy King, a senior, is the only prep fencer in the nation who competes in a wheelchair.

“I was a loner and the coach saw me and invited me to be on the team,” said Brandy, a senior. “Now I’m just a typical person. Everyone knows me.”

That was the purpose of the federal special education law enacted in 1975 that said all children with disabilities must be included in regular public school classrooms to the greatest extent possible. But translating that philosophy into action on a large, comprehensive high school campus is no easy feat.

Federal Promise Remains Unfulfilled

When it enacted the law, Congress agreed to pay 40% of the costs of those services. But historically the federal government has actually funded only about 8% of the costs. That figure began to rise a few years ago, when Republicans gained control of Congress. Just two weeks ago, Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) introduced a resolution calling on Congress to make up the difference.

“We made a promise to the schools in 1975 and we haven’t made good on it so far,” said David Foy, McKeon’s spokesman.

So, schools have to try to balance competing needs.

Greg Messigian, a longtime special education teacher at Monroe, recently became a coordinator of services at the school. He said he schedules more than 500 meetings a year--bringing together each special education student and their parents or guardians, teachers, administrators and specialists--to discuss the needs of individual students.

Each student needs a unique mix of services--from specially adapted computers to one-on-one help from one of 33 assistants--such as note-taking or guiding a student who is easily disoriented.

The school also has 17 special education teachers. But, reflecting a nationwide shortage, only five of them have completed the training needed for a special education credential.

“It’s not something new; it has blossomed to the point where it’s just overwhelming,” Messigian said.

The district this year will use $290 million from its general fund budget to pay for services for special education students. Part of that money, about $7 million a year, is being spent as a result of a 1996 U.S. District Court consent decree that settled one of the most far-reaching special education lawsuits in the country.

District officials said that settlement is forcing them to improve their tracking of students and causing them to assess students’ needs in a more timely fashion.

School districts in New York, Chicago, Boston and elsewhere also are operating under such decrees. The fact that courts often end up deciding such matters reflects the difficulty educators have in balancing fiscal considerations against the needs and demands of students and their parents.

Driving up the cost of special education services are dramatic medical advances that have kept alive children who in the past would not have survived, an increase in poverty, new technology that enables disabled students to perform academically and the proliferation of high-cost residential treatments for emotional and other problems.

The Los Angeles district, for example, pays for about 3,300 students who are served by residential programs. Each costs an average of $20,000 annually. Some cases can cost far more.

The Capistrano district spends $215,000 annually for the treatment of a boy who suffered a brain trauma.

“Because of heroic lifesaving measures, we have a lot more . . . children in public schools that require intensive services,” said Carol Arnesen of the Orange County office of education.

Schools Seek Cost Sharing

Educators agree that such services are needed. But they argue that other agencies, whose primary responsibility is health or mental illness, should pay at least a portion of those costs.

“I don’t mind kids getting services but why should education be the deep pockets and not some other state agency?” asked Paul Goldfinger, a financial consultant with School Services of California.

Some districts have found a way to bill the federal Medicare program for such costs. Others have suggested that the state create a fund to pay for catastrophic cases.

But as long as the system remains as it is, it’s going to cause tension between parents and schools. And a burgeoning network of disability-rights activists stands ready to make sure that schools fulfill their obligations. When there are disagreements, a state-appointed mediator steps in. Over the past decade, the number of special education mediations has jumped 210% to 1,700 last year, according to state data.

Mediations can wind up in court. If the district loses, it covers costs of the special services and legal fees. Such battles can be long and bitter.

In one such case, McCormack, the Laguna Niguel mother, and her husband, Jim, forced Capistrano Unified to provide one-on-one behavioral therapy for their son.

Before that, the district had been sending James to a county-run program where he was taught about such things as the planets and solar system. James, who had trouble comprehending the meaning of “dog” and “house,” was lost.

The boy now attends Crown Valley Elementary School and the district sends a therapist to his house for two hours personal tutoring and therapy daily. Although his motor skills remain poor, today James is doing well in school and has no trouble expressing himself, his mother said.

The McCormacks are grateful. The therapy alone runs more than $4,000 a month. Before the school district stepped in, the couple struggled to cover costs.

“There was no way we could have kept that up. Then what would we have done?” Marta McCormack said.

Staff writer Phil Willon contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Growing Numbers of Disabled Students

The number of California children in special education has increased 35% in the last 10 years. The chart below shows some of the fastest growing categories of disabilities.

*--*

Students Students in 1987-88 in 1995-96 % Change All disabilities 380,796 510,875 34% Serious emotional disturbances 10,891 18,020 65% Physical impairments 6,273 10,253 63% Learning disabilities 225,883 310,638 38%

*--*

****

Statewide total expenditures of special education, excluding transportation: $3.666 billion

Who Pays the Bill

State government: $2.209 billion

Local school districts: $1.017 billion

Federal government: $182 million

Local property taxes: $217 million

Miscellaneous sources: $41 million

Sources: U.S. Department of Education, School Services of California