Special Ed Effort Faces Shake-Up

Weylin Etra had spent more than two years at a private school in Santa Monica when his teacher and parents spotted some serious physical and learning problems.

His parents had him assessed at their local Los Angeles Unified School District campus, and within months Weylin began receiving weekly occupational therapy and special education classes--all courtesy of the district and even as he continued happily to attend private school.

But Weylin, now 9, and his family are about to face a tough educational choice. Under a new policy that belatedly brings the district into line with federal law, children whose parents opt to send them to private schools will no longer qualify for such expansive free services--unless they enroll in public school.

L.A. Unified’s shift will affect hundreds of families for whom the district has been using federal funds to pick up the special education tab. Most of them will be eligible to receive only a few hours of consultation during the school year.

The change is intended to even out a financial disparity: Special education students in private schools have been receiving about 10% of the district’s earmarked federal funds, even though they account for fewer than 1% of the special education students the district is required to serve.

In many cases, parents who can afford private school tuition or special classes, but not both, are having to ponder changes fraught with emotional consequences for their learning-disabled youngsters, whose differences are often more accepted at intimate private schools than they would be at public campuses.

“It’s not just,” said Sister Patricia Supple, director of federal and state programs for the schools of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles. “Our parents pay taxes the same way that other children’s parents pay taxes. They are in a sense discriminated against because parents have placed them in a private school.”

Critics realize that they are bucking not just L.A. Unified but also the federal government.

In 1997, during the Clinton administration, Congress amended and reauthorized the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, a quarter-century-old law that drives most special education policy in the United States.

One amendment was designed to clarify what the government has said was its long-standing position on local districts’ responsibilities to provide therapies and special education classes for private school pupils.

The government’s view was that children in private schools by their parents’ choice are entitled to only a very small share of federal funds--in proportion with the number of qualifying students--to cover special education services.

Undergirding that view was the philosophy, still widely embraced by voters, that federal funds should be used primarily in public schools.

Nonetheless, many districts--and courts--had long interpreted the federal law to mean that the districts had to provide a full range of services for qualifying private school children, even if the parents made the decision to put the children into private school.

Still other districts, even though they believed they were not required to provide services, had chosen to collaborate with parents and private schools to make suitable arrangements for pupils in need.

In many of those cases, said Peter W.D. Wright, a Virginia attorney who represents children with disabilities, the districts “went above and beyond” to avoid being sued by parents who could have sought reimbursement for the full cost of private school tuition and special education services.

In March 1999, the government issued regulations outlining local districts’ responsibilities. Since then, districts nationwide have worked to draft policies to comply with the federal law.

“We are perhaps one of the last districts in California to finally implement a private school policy,” said Myra Martin Booker, the district’s coordinator for private school special education services. “We are simply following the federal mandate.”

Education watchers generally agree that IDEA has had positive effects. The law has helped reduce discrimination against disabled youngsters and provided millions of students with a “free, appropriate” public education in the “least restrictive environment,” a guiding goal.

More students with disabilities are graduating from high school and going on to college. Previously, in what now seems like the Dark Ages for education, many students with disabilities were shuffled into special institutions or barred from school.

Yet the program has had a huge cost, only a small portion of which--about 15% in 2000--has been covered by the federal government. Moreover, critics say, the program has become mired in red tape as the number of beneficiaries has ballooned to more than 6 million nationwide. Districts and parents often lock horns in legal battles--as their lawyers’ meters run--over how children can best be served.

The district’s annual survey found that 82,618 children who live within L.A. Unified boundaries were eligible for special education services in 2000. Of those, 879 attended private schools, and 642 actually received services through the district. Of the district’s total federal allocation of $57.5 million for special education, $5.7 million was spent on those 642 students. More than three-quarters of the money--$4.4 million--went to pay for transportation.

Under the district’s new policy requiring proportional funding, only $612,000 would have been spent last year on special education students in private schools. That would have covered at most 10 hours a year of consultation for each child’s parents and private school teacher.

L.A. Unified’s new policy does not affect children in public schools who are receiving special education services. Nor does it affect those who have been placed in state-certified private special education schools at their public district’s recommendation. The district generally pays the tuition in such cases.

The policy also does not alter the right of private school parents to have their child assessed for disabilities at their local public school. The policy would kick in only when the child was deemed to need special services.

Booker said parents of disabled children are being notified of the new policy as their yearly meetings with their child’s special education team come up.

In the case of Weylin Etra, who attends PS No. 1 in Santa Monica, that will be October. Peggy Etra, his mother, said the family is not sure what to do.

“Our assumption at this point is we’ll keep him at PS No. 1,” she said. “We will have to figure out financially what we can do out of pocket for his special needs. We certainly won’t be going out to dinners and movies. We’re starting to see life through a dollar sign.”

Special education services would cost thousands of dollars, on top of tuition for Weylin and his younger sister, who will begin kindergarten at PS No. 1 in the fall.

The important thing, Etra said, is for Weylin, who was diagnosed with “visual motor integration” problems, to be content at school.

“He’s accepted at PS No. 1,” Etra said. “Public school is different. He would be in the ‘slow’ class, and he would be teased.”

Etra said the family might also request a hearing from the district into whether it can offer Weylin a free, appropriate education, given his learning differences.

When a family makes such a request, the district is obligated to leave services in place until the disagreement has been resolved through mediation or a hearing, a process that can take several months. Given the complexity and adversarial nature of special education law, many families find it necessary to hire a lawyer to help navigate this procedure. But Etra said her family is tapped out, given the legal fees they paid when they first sought services for Weylin.

Booker said the district has received about 20 requests for these “due process” hearings since the private school policy took effect in February. Very few families, she said, have chosen to enroll their children in public schools.

The matter almost certainly will end up in court, special education attorney Wright said.