(Photo: Getty Images)

A united Supreme Court Wednesday set a new, more rigorous standard for special education services in the United States.

The unanimous decision in Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District will require school districts to offer individualized education programs “reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of the child’s circumstances.”

An attorney for the Colorado family who sued on behalf of their autistic son, called it “a game-changer.” The ruling has the potential to alter educational services provided to millions of children around the country, and the costs of those services to the many more millions of taxpayers who fund them.

Great ruling by a unanimous Supreme Court on the right to all children–including those with a disability–to a proper education! #Endrew pic.twitter.com/eb8toVu7wi

— Tom Jawetz (@TomJawetz) March 22, 2017

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires school districts to provide a free, appropriate public education to students with disabilities, laid out in individualized education programs written by the students’ parents and school district officials.

The standards for that education though were different depending on where a student lived. Some federal courts required a more meaningful education, but the majority said the acceptable measure of educational benefit was “merely more than de minimis” — in other words, just a little bit.

(The 74: Why Advocates Hope the Supreme Court Will Save Special Education)

Together, the eight justices who have made up the court since Justice Antonin Scalia’s death last year resoundingly rejected that lower standard.

“When all is said and done, a student offered an educational program providing ‘merely more than de minimis’ progress from year to year can hardly be said to have been offered an education at all,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

Jack Robinson, the attorney representing the Endrew family, said he was shocked the court reached a decision so quickly and without dissent. Although the court did not go so far as to adopt a “substantial equal opportunity” standard that the Endrew family had sought — one that would match that provided to students without disabilities — their main goal was to have the court “thoroughly denounce this lowest of the low.”

“By a Supreme Court rejecting that merely more than de minimis standard is sort of a game-changer,” Robinson said. “It’s going to shift a fair amount of leverage to parents, that they now have some sort of substantive rights under the IDEA, which in most of the circuits they really didn’t have before.”

An attorney representing the Douglas County school district could not be immediately reached for comment. During oral arguments in January, the school district’s lawyer, Neal Katyal, maintained that a new standard wasn’t needed, primarily because the current one, derived from a 1982 Supreme Court case, had “some bite.” He said procedural processes and reviews laid out in IDEA were sufficient to further guarantee an appropriate education for students.

(The 74: Raw Supreme Court Transcript: The Justices Debate Special Education During the Endrew F. Case)

Setting a new standard would lead to a “huge morass” of lawsuits filled with controversial educational issues that generalist federal justices aren’t equipped to handle, he said. If the standard should be changed, Congress should do so, not the courts, he added.

Justices at oral arguments had seemed open to setting a new, higher standard, but were puzzled over what it should be. Several also expressed concern about increased litigation and mounting costs to school districts, making the unanimous ruling somewhat surprising.

(The 74: Supreme Court Justices Eye Possible Higher Special Ed Standard, but What it Should Be Eludes Them)

While not setting a specific higher standard, justices emphasized that what “appropriate” progress means will look different from case to case, and lower court judges shouldn’t take that lack of a “bright-line rule” as an invitation to substitute their ideas on educational policy for school authorities’.

For students fully integrated into mainstream classrooms, the standard means the IEP should be set to make sure the student passes classes and advances from grade to grade. For students like Endrew, who couldn’t be integrated into a regular classroom because his autism is severe, the IEP doesn’t have to show grade-level progress.

“But that child’s educational program must be appropriately ambitious in light of his circumstances, just as advancement from grade to grade is appropriately ambitious for most children in the regular classroom,” Roberts wrote.

Francisco M. Negrón Jr., the general counsel at the National School Boards Association, said he was happy to see the court reached a “measured decision” in the case. Negrón said he was comfortable with the court’s rejection of the lower de minimis standard since schools aren’t in the business of providing de minimis education to children, and that while schools will have to reevaluate the services they provide, the court’s decision “should be within the operational sphere for schools to meet.”

Endrew had been enrolled in Colorado public schools for several years when his parents, feeling that he wasn’t making adequate progress, moved him to a private school and sued the Douglas County Schools for the tuition cost.

(The 74: Special Education at the Supreme Court: 7 Things to Know About Wednesday’s Endrew F. Case)

The 10th Circuit Court, like many others around the country facing similar challenges, ruled for the school district, arguing that the little bit of progress Endrew made at the public school was enough to meet the burdens set out by IDEA.

(The 74: An Autistic Girl in the Cumberland Mountains: One Family’s Brutal Fight for Meaningful Special Ed)

The Supreme Court’s ruling dropped simultaneous to Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch’s second day testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. As a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the same 10th Circuit in Denver, Gorsuch has ruled on several special education cases — some of which made disability rights advocates uneasy.

In 2008, for example, Gorsuch found a school district provided a free and appropriate education to a student with autism who had made little educational progress. IDEA, he wrote, only requires districts to provide educational benefits that “must merely be ‘more than de minimis” — a contradiction to Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling.

Scott Schmerelson is chair of the Special Ed Ad Hoc Committee.

As LA Unified struggles to right its financial ship, the high costs of educating children with special needs have come under a microscope.

One strategy being used is identifying children in the infant and preschool years to help integrate them sooner into the general education population, which then cuts back on referrals to expensive special education centers. But that may lead to another problem: Parents may be left with fewer options for their children with more severe special needs.

LA Unified’s use of special education funds has been the target of both a lawsuit and a state ruling, and a tightening state budget may also put pressure on the district.

Administrators from the Early Childhood Special Education Division have come up with a plan, presented in late November at a Special Education committee meeting, to increase early referrals and therefore early inclusion of these young special education students with the general education population. The goal is to reduce the need for long-term special education services among the more than 7,000 students that the district is currently serving under the early childhood special education programs.

“We get kids in early ed to analyze them, treat them and help them so they don’t have to enter as special ed students when they come into first grade. We will try to do everything we can to help them get into general ed classes,” Scott Schmerelson, the committee’s chairman, said during that last meeting. On Tuesday, the committee will resume their work holding their first meeting of 2017. Schmerelson made clear to LA School Report why he supports inclusion, but also that keeping the special education centers is his top priority for this year.

“Saving the special education centers is my main goal. I have a problem with the closure of the special ed centers and then the parents not having the ability to choose the best for their kids. That’s my main concern,” he said Friday. “Inclusion is great, I encourage it, but it shouldn’t be the only option to parents.”

LA Unified special education administrators highlighted early identification and intervention before the child’s third birthday as crucial to preventing the need for long-term special education when they reach school age. The students in the infant and preschool programs represent 8.4 percent of the total 84,000 special education students in LA Unified.

“I absolutely believe in schools having inclusion. If a parent says to me, ‘I think that my child will be better educated at a general education public school,’ I’d said I support that parent a hundred percent. But if that doesn’t work out and the parent finds the services at a general ed public school are not sufficient, we can always fall back on our special educations centers,” he said, adding he was concerned about the closure of some of those centers in the last few years.

“This is why I got involved with the special ed issue, because that was the road that we were heading down, and that’s a very bad road to go down.”

During the 2011-12 school year, the district operated 17 special education centers. As of last school year, only 12 remained open. The cost to operate these centers in the 2014-15 school year was just over $96 million per year with an average cost per student of $46,649.

Schmerelson is not the only one worried about more closings. Darrell Jones, a special education representative for UTLA, expressed his concern also about those centers “shrinking.” According to Jones, Sophia T. Salvin Special Education Center, for example, used to serve more than 300 students a couple of years ago and now has fewer than 100. However, he said the center will be receiving more students in the next school year and the following year, because students will be transferring from Lanterman Special Education Center when it closes.

On the other hand, Theresa Martin, Early Childhood Special Education director, said that reaching their goal of inclusion has nothing to do with reducing or even closing any of the special education centers, since the children served by that division are not yet attending any of those centers. But reducing costs could be one of the reasons why the district is trying to provide intervention as early as possible.

“At this time we don’t have any children enrolled in special education centers. Our children are enrolled at our local elementary schools or enrolled in the community schools as much as possible,” Martin said. “We want more opportunities for our children to be fully included. Last year we started collaborating with the general education population so that we could open extended transitional kindergarten collaborative classrooms so our 4-years-olds have a greater opportunity to be enrolled with typical peers while sharing with typical peers.”

However, Jones believes that the different levels of needs these children have must be taken into consideration when they are assigned services.

“I get a lot of calls from kinder teachers, and even general ed teachers with those students in the class, that they don’t know what to do because there’s no support for them. It seems like all of the sudden they’re healed. Yes, they’ve been re-designated but that doesn’t mean that their problems are gone at all,” he said.

“I would like the district not to look at the monetary factor. If they’re not offering Salvin or the other 11 centers as a choice to parents, whose students may benefit from that, then nothing is going to change,” Jones said. “You’re just going to enforce them into a general education setting and calling it special ed setting segregated, but you have to continue to have that option available.”

During 2015-16, 3,107 children were referred for early education special ed services. Of those, 44 percent were referred by the regional centers, 27 percent by parents, followed by Head Start programs, physicians and others. The central Early Childhood Special Education contact number receives more than 500 inquiries a month from parents and community partners.

Children who are presenting mild to moderate risk levels are often seen at the prevention and intervention clinics hosted at some district schools. On average, 150 assessments total are done weekly at Mark Twain Middle School in West Los Angeles and nine other locations. Once children have been assessed, they are placed in the Preschool Comprehensive (PSC) for children with severe levels of need or Preschool for All Learners (PAL) programs for those within a range of both moderate and severe levels of need.

Administrators explained that the state requires them to monitor and report the percentage of kids with individualized education programs, or IEP’s, and to demonstrate improvement. Special ed teachers have to provide the state with results from the Desired Results Developmental Profile, an assessment tool used with preschool students.

“We need to make sure they’re meeting those goals, so we report to the state twice a year. We are responsible for two important transitions, we need to be sure that 2- and 3-year-olds are eligible to enter school when they enter the district, before turning 3, and then when they leave the program to get into kindergarten,” Martin said.

Carl Petersen, who has two autistic children in the district and is running for the District 2 board seat, said at the November meeting that he feels that “if administrators are given greater latitude in crafting the IEP, then they need to be held accountable when students do not make progress toward their established goals. They need to check on the student between IEP’s and make sure that the teacher’s evaluations of the student are correct,” said Petersen in a statement related to his own experience as a parent. “The administrator should have the power to make the appropriate changes if they find that a teacher is not meeting the needs of the child.”

On Monday, he referred to issue again. “Any time a kid can be mainstreamed, they should, but it’s just not feasible for all kids,” said Petersen, who pointed out that he is running for school board in part to bring special ed issues to the forefront.

Petersen is a supporter of the special education centers and would like to see general education students brought into the special education centers, to integrate the students, rather than forcing some of the students with more severe cases into general education classrooms that weren’t designed for those students’ needs.

Petersen also supports establishing magnet schools on the campuses of special education centers for students who are interested in careers in special ed.

Special ed teacher Valonda Theus commented at the November meeting that as much as she likes the curriculum used under these programs, teachers are in need of more support. “It’s a wonderful curriculum, but sometimes I don’t get an assistant. If I don’t get it, it totally messes up with the program, it makes it very difficult to run the program, sometimes we need to change almost everything.”

Despite the teacher shortage persisting in California, in which more than 80 percent of school districts reported shortages and that they’ve gotten worse compared with three years ago, according to a new statewide survey by the Learning Policy Institute and the California School Boards Association, Martin affirmed that LA Unified has enough credentialed special ed teachers to run their programs.

“In early childhood ed, we’re not having a problem finding teachers,” said Karen Krische, a district Early Ed Specialist. “This is our third year in which we hired approximately 85 new teachers. Teachers are coming to us in a variety of ways. I think teachers are really excited about early intervention, really being there when you make the most difference in a child’s life.”

Another special ed parent who attended the committee meeting, Ivey Steinberg, applauded the intention of the district to move toward creating a more inclusive environment for special ed kids. She said she is pleased that the district is “replicating” a model used by WISH Charter, where her 8th-grade son found a full inclusion experience in which he not only learned but thrived, reaching a 4.0 grade-point average.

“That’s the whole purpose of charters, to provide innovative models to share with traditional schools. In my opinion, reopening the segregated special ed centers is not the answer and can rob special ed students from becoming everything they can be,” said Steinberg, whose son attended preschool at James J. McBride Special Education Center.

“Since the second week there, one of the teachers saw the potential in my son and suggested we look for a full inclusion kindergarten,” she said. “I had no idea of this program and I wish this model can be replicated in all LAUSD.”

While LA Unified is not replicating a specific model, Krische said the district has been using its inclusive program at preschools for many years, and it’s not modeled after charter schools’ programs.

“Our prevention clinics respond to family concerns without labeling children. All early child special education classrooms have credentialed teachers, 47 percent of children served are fully included in our Head Start and district programs,” she stated at the meeting.

In an effort to counter the misconception that charter schools don’t accept special needs students, the California Charter Schools Association released a report Thursday highlighting how 10 charter schools in the state serve students with disabilities.

The qualitative study included best practices based on interviews with charter school leaders and staff and focused on how the independent public schools include special needs students in general education classes.

“We wanted to make sure the public understands, that families understand that charters are welcoming to all students. The approaches might look different and that’s OK,” said Kate Dove, a special education advisor at CCSA and one of the study’s authors.

The Los Angeles-area schools included in the study were CHIME Institute’s Schwarzenegger Community School in Woodland Hills, Gabriella Charter School, Magnolia Science Academy 7 in Northridge, Multicultural Learning Center in Canoga Park and KIPP Raíces Academy in East LA. The schools were chosen based on their academic performance and reputation. There were 1,228 charter schools in California in the 2015-16 school year and 228 in LA, the highest number of any district in the nation. The study examined less than 1 percent of charter schools statewide.

Charter schools are publicly funded but have autonomy in the way they are operated. Under state and federal law, charters are required to accept all students no matter their disability.

A criticism often levied against charters is that they have exclusionary admission practices in order to maintain high test scores. This summer ACLU of Southern California and Public Advocates released a report that flagged 253 schools for discriminatory admissions practices. (Since the report was released, a number of schools have updated or clarified their policies and have been taken off the list.)

In the past, charter schools in Los Angeles have lagged behind the district when it comes to the proportion of students with disabilities they serve.

However, a report released in July from LA Unified’s independent monitor of special education programs found that after five years of gains, the district’s independent charter schools enrolled nearly the same proportion of special needs students as the district (11.04 percent to 11.96 percent, respectively), but the district tends to have more students with moderate to severe disabilities (2.1 percent to 4.72 percent, respectively).

One reason why the district has more students with moderate to severe disabilities could be because children are often identified at a young age and can get services from LA Unified starting in preschool or even earlier in some specialized programs, according to Robert Perry, administrative coordinator of the district’s Charter Schools Division. The vast majority of charter schools do not offer preschool.

“Why would you take them out of a system that has met their needs for many years and risk being the only student with that disability?” Perry said. 

“It’s not about choice or pushing out or training,” Dove said. “It’s just these historical circumstances.”

Some charter schools pay local school districts for special education services. In recent years, the number of charters that have independent special education programs has grown, according to the CCSA study.

The study cited a recent analysis by the California Department of Education that found charters that operate independent special education programs educate nearly 90 percent of students with disabilities in general education classrooms for 80 percent or more of their school day, compared to 53 percent statewide.

Academic research has repeatedly shown the benefits of including students who have disabilities with their peers in general education classrooms, called “inclusion,” and the district and charters strive to incorporate this model.

Perry said many charters are successful at using data to identify students who may have special needs early on and intervening because data are charters’ “bread and butter.” Student data are a main component of how charters are evaluated by the district, he said. Because of the use of data, many charters do not misidentify or over-identify special needs students, he said.

Because charter schools are smaller, some consisting of only one school, and have autonomy, the study’s authors argue that charters can be more flexible in serving the individual needs of a student.

For example, Multicultural Learning Center was able to provide a student who has cerebral palsy a tricycle to more easily get across the campus.

The Canoga Park school also has a culture of celebrating differences among students and conducts “community circles” to hold discussions among students and a teacher, or a teacher and students facilitated by an administrator, or students, parents and administrators.

When the student received the tricycle the school conducted a community circle for her classmates in which the girl’s doctor came in to talk about cerebral palsy and explained why the tricycle was needed and why the students couldn’t ride the girl’s tricycle, Dove and her co-author Bridgette Dutra said.

One challenge charter schools face in implementing some programs is a lack of facilities, especially for charters that are co-located, Dove said.

While charter schools do have autonomy, the district’s Charter Schools Division ensures students’ Individualized Education Plans are being enforced in a timely fashion, Perry said.

Perry said the district has not received any complaints recently that students with special needs are screened out of charter schools or are discouraged from enrolling.

The independent monitor for special education at LA Unified found violations at all 13 Preschool for All Learners (PALs) programs visited, according to a new report.

LA Unified has been under federal oversight since 1996 as a result of a class-action lawsuit that accused it of non-compliance with special education laws. As part of the settlement, an independent monitor was appointed in 2003 to oversee the district’s compliance with what is known as the Modified Consent Decree.

In Part 2 of an annual report that was first issued in November, Independent Monitor David Rostetter noted that at all 13 PALs preschools he visited, violations were found that included a lack of changing tables, privacy screens, ventilation and running water, as well as “shared common problems indicative of systemic failures to ensure program accessibility and the health and safety of SWDs (students with disabilities).” PALs is the district’s preschool program that serves students with moderate to severe disabilities.

The district would not provide anyone to respond to the report and issued a general statement that did not directly address any of the problems with PALs noted in the report. Rostetter did not respond to a request for comment.

LA Unified has been under federal oversight since 1996 as a result of a class-action lawsuit that accused it of non-compliance with special education laws. As part of the settlement, an independent monitor was appointed in 2003 to oversee the district’s compliance with what is known as the Modified Consent Decree (MCD).

In Part 2 of an annual report that was first issued in November, Independent Monitor (IM) David Rostetter outlined a number of problems he found with the district’s progress in upgrading its facilities and complying with federal law. Part 2 to the report was made public on July 11.

Rostetter wrote that LA Unified “shows a lack of urgency in making services, programs, and activities, programs accessible at schools. It shows little interest in disengagement from the MCD and seems to be driven by other priorities and agendas.”

The LA Unified school board approved $600 million in bond money last fall to be used to upgrade the district’s facilities and make them all ADA compliant within 10 years. LA Unified Chief Facilities Executive Mark Hovatter estimated at the time that roughly 600 LA Unified buildings will need renovations at a cost of around $1 million each, and that upon completion the district would be fully ADA compliant.

But the IM’s report in November and the new report estimate that it will take $1.29 billion to do so. At the time that Rostetter authored the November report the board had not yet passed the resolution clearing the $600 million, so the estimate of $1.29 billion only received a passing reference. Rostetter disagreed with the district’s method of reaching the figure, writing that “the estimate was based on surveys from 10 elementary schools and should not be considered representative.”

Rostetter took over as IM a little over two years ago after the death of Frederick Weintraub, who had been serving as IM since 2005. The November report was the first that was fully authored by Rostetter, and he brought an increased dose of criticism and harsh language compared to Weintraub’s reports. Rostetter’s November report assailed the district for still being out of compliance with the ADA, which was passed in 1990, and for still not having formulated a transition plan to remove itself from under the MCD, which has been in effect for 12 years. The original deadline set for the district to be removed from the MCD was 2006.

Under the ADA, when any significant renovations are made to a building, the entire building must be upgraded to grant full access for the disabled, and new buildings must grant full access. The district must also grant immediate access to all educational programs for disabled students, even if the school has not yet been upgraded since 1990. If a school has four restrooms, at least one must be handicap accessible. But the district has failed to meet these requirements  and Rostetter’s reports have been unflinching in pointing this out.

The November report was scathing in its description of the districts’ Facilities Services Division, which is headed up by Hovatter, saying officials in the department were engaging in mismanagement, a lack of clear direction, inaction, failing to act in good faith, withholding information and expending energy on circumventing its legal obligations.

This month’s Part 2 update uses less accusatory language, but still outlined flaws in the Facilities Services Division and LA Unified’s efforts overall. While Hovatter and Sharyn Howell, the former associate superintendent of the Division of Special Education, were available to comment on the November report, this time the district said no one would be commenting on Part 2. Howell retired in June and has been replaced on an interim basis by Beth Kauffman.

Rostetter did not respond to a request to comment on Part 2 of the report.

Another issue was that at a meeting with parents held Jan. 11, 2016, the district said it had made ADA improvements totaling $678 million since 2000. Rostetter wrote that he “questioned the validity of this new claim” and was told by the district that 70.5 percent of the figure was attributed to new construction.

In response, Rostetter wrote: “The IM determined that the district cannot claim new construction as ADA betterments because new construction is expected to comply with ADA and (California Building Code) standards. This would be analogous to asking for more money for seat belts in a new car when they are mandated by law.”

Also highlighted in the report was the Rapid Access Program, which was established by the MCD. The program sets aside money “to provide flexibility to direct minor renovations in an expedited manner” if a school has an immediate problem with disabled students having program access, such as the need for a ramp to be installed. The program calls on principals to be the first responders in making the improvement requests, but during 20 site visits, Rostetter wrote that the majority of administrators had no knowledge of the program.

The district does not just need to make its facilities compliant with the ADA in order to be removed from federal oversight. It must also meet 18 program outcomes, of which it has met 17, and it also had to create a fully integrated student data computer system, MiSiS, which was launched in 2014.

MiSiS turned out to be a very troubled system and has experienced significant flaws, although it was much improved during the 2015-16 school year. The system had an original estimated cost of $29.7 million but has ballooned to $173.9 million. Rostetter praised the improvements that have been made to MiSiS but said it is “still incomplete.” Rostetter also found significant problems with the district’s preschool program for disabled students (come back for more on that topic).

One reason the district has struggled to comply with the ADA and the MCD is a lack of money for facilities. The district is in need of roughly $40 billion in bond money to modernize its campuses, and it has also struggled to properly construct new buildings. More than 80 new buildings it has constructed in recent years were discovered by the IM to be non-ADA compliant, and the district had to spend millions to fix them. Rostetter told LA School Report in November that the botched construction was “essentially ridiculous.”

The district issued the following statement in response to Part 2 of the IM’s report:

“Since 1996, L.A. Unified has been under a federal consent decree for special education which monitors the services we provide to our special-education students. We remain committed to building on the progress we have made in implementing the Modified Consent Decree (MCD). Thanks to the hard work of our Division of Special Education, the District has met 17 of the 18 programmatic MCD Outcomes. Over the last year, the MiSiS team has made significant strides in designing the complex monitoring systems needed to support our special-education programs. In addition, the Facilities Services Division is working to meet program accessibility requirements.

“At the same time, we recognize that we still face challenges in meeting the single remaining Outcome and will be taking the appropriate steps to address this Outcome, as well as the other unmet MCD requirements. We will also be working in collaboration with the OIM to ensure that we provide students with disabilities with a free, appropriate public education.”

Estimated cost per special education student, from LAUSD.

Special education students present one of the biggest costs for LA Unified, but administrators are considering ways to capitalize on the district’s successes with that population.

Half of the school board’s all-day special budget session at USC on Tuesday was spent discussing the costs of dealing with students with mild and severe disabilities.

Special ed is identified as one of the three major deficit drivers on the school budget, along with pension costs and retiree benefit costs. The discussions included better methods of labeling students with disabilities, how to lower costs working with those students and possibly suing the state and federal governments to help pay for them.

The estimated annual cost to educate a student with disabilities is $8,275 more than a general education student. A general education student costs $11,798 per year, so a student with disabilities costs a total of $20,073.

Michelle King with special education students.

The second-largest school district in the nation also has the largest population of special education students in the country, at 72,973 students, excluding those in independent charters.

“We face issues and challenges for this population with inadequate funding from the federal piece and the state piece,” said Superintendent Michelle King.

Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly said that only 60 percent of the $1.5 billion in costs is covered by the federal and state money. She said, “There is a perception we have the money to cover all our special education students, but we don’t.”

School board President Steve Zimmer, who has personally lobbied both Washington, D.C., and Sacramento politicians for a more fair share of the special ed money, said the district is at the forefront of trying to get the necessary money to cover the costs.

Board member Monica Ratliff suggested, “Why don’t we sue?”

LA Unified chief attorney David Holmquist said he would take another look at the possibility of doing that but said, “I don’t think a lawsuit will solve this problem.”

This is the second of five meetings King is holding to report to the school board members on the budget situation, and to ask for guidance in shaping next year’s budget that must be voted on in June.

All of this falls on the backdrop of an Independent Financial Review Panel that issued a report last November spelling out harsh financial realities coming up in the next few years and offering suggestions to stop looming deficits. Some of the school board members expressed a need to react to the specifics in the report more directly.

“I would like to know what the numbers are if we don’t do something recommended in that report, and so we can say we can’t do this for this reason, and, in order to achieve that it would take A, B and C,” said Ratliff. Board members Monica Garcia and Richard Vladovic agreed.

“When we do really a great job we don’t have to market it, people want to come,” Garcia said. “And even though we do have inadequate support from the government and despite really hard circumstances this organization has remained committed and never abandoned these kids in the most need. We should feel some level of pride that we survived the great recession and did not back down to our commitment toward this population.”

Even with the numbers of students enrolled in the district decreasing, the percentages of students with disabilities have increased. In 2002-2003 when there were 737,739 students in the district, 11.5 percent or 84,819 students were labeled with disabilities. Today, in the 2015-2016 school year, 72,973 students, or 13.8 percent of the 528,056-student population, have disabilities.

In the last complete school year, 2014-2015, one out of every 38 general education students were referred for an initial assessment for special education. A total of 86 percent of those were found eligible for special education services.

There are some students with disabilities who are under-served in the district and some that may be over-referred and should be back in the general population, said Sharyn Howell, the executive director of the Division of Special Education for the district. Charter and private schools, and even children from other states, have come to LA Unified for their special needs children.

About 48 percent of the English learner students are also special ed students partially because the testing involves reading comprehension. Howell said, “Many of the strategies that work with English learners also work with students with disabilities and vice versa.”

The district is working to integrate students into the general population as much as possible. “Some of the underserved and some of the over-served are in the same neighborhood,” Howell said. “If somebody at the school wants to identify one way, they will find a way.”

Nationally renowned educator Pedro Noguera, who was hired by the district to help facilitate the meeting, suggested that the district look at how to build on the public goodwill it has with handling special needs children. “I know families that have taken their kids out of private schools and put them in LAUSD because of the special education programs,” he said, suggesting that the board look at the high special ed numbers as a positive.

Students with severe disabilities in red, with the overall special ed population in blue.

Meanwhile, special ed contributes to the drain on the school’s general fund. Reilly said special ed takes up 16 percent of the general fund, but by 2020 it will be 20 percent.

King said the district already began intervention and prevention work with a Student Support and Progress Team (SSPT) and with Accelerated Learning Academies (ALA) for select K-3 programs to identify at-risk students who might be non-readers. The district is creating a system of regular reporting to identify referrals and assessments and finding ways to reintegrate special needs students into the general population as much as possible.

Parent trainings were done in 208 schools this year to focus on referral, assessment and training procedures, according to King. Also, they want to make sure that students are not being assessed or put into restrictive settings due to factors such as ethnicity, so reports will be done by grade, gender and ethnicity.

“I get the feeling that there may be different levels of services based on socio-economic issues, so that parents who can afford to get attorneys will get more services than those who can’t afford attorneys and that’s not fair,” said Ratliff. “I worry that groups get less service.”

From LAUSD

King said the district has taken steps to solve those concerns and deal with disproportionate identification.

“We are training parents to help them know when their child is ready to reintegrate into the general education, and make sure those kids are not left without anything and still have supports to be successful,” King said.

Zimmer said that costs could come down if the services that are contracted out are done within the district. “I want to look at ways to bring some of these services in house since we do some of the best work and a lot is outsourced,” Zimmer said. “I know from my own experiences and working with families there is a wide range of effectiveness and customer satisfaction. If you bring costs down and bring it in-house and provide a career path for some of our folks in this work you will get better outcomes. I think there are other areas where we can have internal initiatives to lead to their outcomes and save some money in the process.”

Zimmer mentioned, for example, that a student with autism may have a one-on-one aide that is hired from an agency outside the district.

Ratliff pointed out successful programs like the Lowman Special Education Center in her district in North Hollywood. “If it could exist for every school, people would be thrilled,” Ratliff said. “Charter schools can’t afford to do this, and it’s highly successful. We have to learn how to do those kind of programs with less revenue.”

Components of the LA Unified MiSiS computer system.

LA Unified and its 221 independent charter schools have reached an agreement on the court-ordered requirement that charters sync their student data information systems with the district’s massive MiSiS system.

The agreement calls on the district to develop an interface solution that will allow data systems at charter schools to communicate with MiSiS but allow the schools to keep their own systems in place. The agreement also allows charters to adopt MiSiS if they wish to do so.

The agreement was reached on March 10 between LA Unified, its independent charters, the plaintiffs of a special education consent decree and the court-ordered independent monitor of the decree.

The agreement was characterized as “a huge win” for all parties by Gina Plate of the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA), which negotiated on behalf of LA Unified’s charters.

“It could have gotten very hostile and ugly, like some of the other areas we have with charters and the district, but we were able to resolve this one in a way that makes everyone happy,” said Plate, who is a senior special education advisor for CCSA.

Plate said the district, the independent monitor and the plaintiffs reached an internal agreement in December to agree to the interface but did not share that with charter leaders until this month because they needed time to draft the letter and get all of the details organized.

LA Unified has been under federal court oversight since 1996 as a result of a class-action lawsuit that accused it of non-compliance with special education laws. As part of the settlement, an independent monitor was appointed in 2003 to oversee the district’s compliance with what is known as the Chanda Smith Modified Consent Decree.

MiSiS, the district’s student data system, was created to fulfill part of the decree which called for better tracking of special education student records. And because special education students at LA Unified’s independent charter schools are part of the same special education district, the decree required charters to also take on MiSiS.

But when MiSiS was launched in the fall of 2014 it immediately began to cause substantial problems at schools due to system failures and glitches. Charter schools were hesitant to adopt the system themselves due to the problems, Plate said, and also because many of the older charters already have their own systems that they have dedicated time and money to developing.

“Because there was no system available for the last 20 years, charters have purchased their own systems. And not only have they purchased their own systems, they have customized those systems to reflect the needs of their student population,” Plate said.

MiSiS has been largely stabilized and is operating without any major problems being reported this school year. CCSA officials have had weekly meetings for the last year and a half to try and resolve the issue of how to get charters in line with the court requirements, Plate said.

The agreement was announced to LA Unified school board members and Superintendent Michelle King in a March 10 letter from LA Unified’s Charter Schools Division Director Jose Cole-Gutierrez and CEO of Strategic Planning and Digital Innovation Diane Pappas.

“This approach will allow charter schools to retain their current student information systems, provided that they transmit certain key student data to the district in a technically compatible manner,” the letter said.

Plate said the interface will be developed by LA Unified along with experts from Microsoft, and the district will pay the bill. No timeframe has yet been set on when the interface will be ready.

The agreement between charters and the district on MiSiS does not complete the consent decree process for LA Unified. It still has to spend over $600 million to make all of its schools compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act, and it has one more of 18 performance-based outcomes that it needs to meet. The outcome requires disabled students to receive services as specified in their Individual Education Plans. In November, district officials and the independent monitor told LA School Report the district likely would be under the watch of the monitor for several more years.

In the latest annual report, Independent Monitor David Rostetter accused LA Unified and its Facilities Services Division of mismanagement, a lack of clear direction, inaction, failing to act in good faith, withholding information and expending energy on circumventing its legal obligations.

“This behavior is unconscionable,” Rostetter wrote. “The lack of accountability for this performance and complete disregard for providing accessibility at its schools, programs, and services can no longer be overlooked.”

He added, “The approach senior leadership have taken to comply with (the ADA) lacks consideration and regard for the civil rights of individuals with disabilities.”

While Rostetter praised the district for progress in other areas, his blistering critique suggested that the district has a long way to go toward meeting the requirements of the ADA.

The district’s Chief Facilities Executive, Mark Hovatter, did not respond directly to the report’s criticisms.

“I can’t really speak to that,” he told LA School Report. “What I can say is the laws of compliance are very complex and specialized and some people misinterpret them or just don’t understand them. We’re all getting much smarter to comply with it.”

LA Unified has been under federal court oversight since 1996 as a result of a class action lawsuit that accused it of non-compliance with special education laws. As part of the settlement, an independent monitor was appointed in 2003 to oversee the district’s compliance with what is known as the Modified Consent Decree (MCD).

The original deadline set for the district to meet its obligations and be disengaged from court oversight was 2006.

Rostetter took over as independent monitor 18 months ago after the death of a predecessor, Frederick Weintraub, who had been serving in the role since 2005. Rostetter authored last year’s report but much of its was based on Weintraub’s work. The most recent reports, for 2013 and 2014, lacked the severe criticisms of this year’s.

“It’s just been in this last annual report that most significantly had the harsh language,” said Sharyn Howell, the district’s associate superintendent of the Division of Special Education.

Under the ADA, public buildings are not immediately required to be updated, but when any significant renovations are made, the entire building must be upgraded to grant full access for disabled individuals. Any new buildings must also be constructed to be ADA compliant.

The district is also required by law to grant immediate and full access to all educational programs for disabled students. For example, if a school has three computer labs, at least one must be handicap accessible. But the district has failed to meet these requirements.

“The MCD is in its 12th year, and the District still does not have a transition plan that meets the intent or letter of the law,” the report states.

One of the reasons the district has trouble with the ADA is a lack of money. LA Unified is in need of $40 billion to modernize its campuses and has struggled to make ADA requirements a priority. Hundreds of buildings were constructed long before the ADA regulations became law. However, in October the school board approved the reallocation of $600 million dollars for ADA compliance within 10 years. Hovatter said that roughly 600 buildings will need renovations at a cost of around $1 million each.

Rostetter said the 10-year plan was acceptable and that “we are extremely pleased (Superintendent Ramon Cortines) aggressively went after that money.”

Despite high praise for Cortines and Howell, Rostetter said the district’s overall senior leadership has lacked a long-term commitment to the MCD.

“Since the MCD’s inception, the (facilities division) has engaged in behaviors that undermine its credibility. Misrepresentations, withholding of information and documents, and expending of energy on circumventing its obligations are not new. The (Office of the General Council) and District’s posture and defense of officials who engage in these behaviors is disappointing,” the report states.

Hovatter, who has been in his role for three years, said now that the $600 million has been allocated, he expects to have a full transition plan approved by the board soon and, as a result, a more positive independent monitor report next year.

“We had been working with (the previous independent monitor) for several years, and we were marching in a certain direction, and we thought everyone was happy,” Hovatter said. “I told my boss that the independent monitor used to call us the model for other districts to follow. The current independent monitor is not happy, but I’m sure in due time he will also be calling us the model that other districts would follow.”

Rostetter said there was simply no excuse for a lack of ADA compliance.

“The ADA was passed in 1990. New York City had its transition plan in effect by 1998,” he said.

He pointed out that his office discovered several years ago that LA Unified constructed more than 80 buildings that were not ADA compliant. The district then had to spend millions bringing them up to code.

“This district has built many new buildings over the last 20 years that have been non-compliant. And it has done virtually nothing in its existing buildings to develop surveys and transition plans complying with ADA that would lead to program access,” he said. “No matter how difficult the task is, doing absolutely nothing and building buildings that are non-compliant, is essentially ridiculous. And that is why the report is the way it is.”

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However, the report was far from universally positive, as it found severe problems with the district’s failure to update it facilities in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act (See accompanying story) and in other areas in need of improvement.

LA Unified has been under federal court oversight since 1996 as a result of a class action lawsuit that accused it of non-compliance with special education laws. As part of the settlement, an independent monitor was appointed in 2003 to oversee the district’s compliance with what is known as the Modified Consent Decree.

MiSiS, the district’s student data system, was created to fulfill part of the decree, which called for better tracking of special education student records. With an original estimated cost of $25 million, it was launched at the beginning of last year with disastrous results. The glitchy system caused problems with student schedules and transcripts and an array of other headaches. The cost ballooned to $133 million, with funding secured through June.

Former Superintendent John Deasy resigned under pressure in October of 2014, in part due to criticism for giving the green light to MiSiS. As his replacement, Cortines brought in a new team to oversee MiSiS and was able to get the system functioning over the course of last school year.

This school year began with MiSiS working much better and no major problems have been reported. As a result, Cortines has issued a number of memos and statements applauding the work of MiSiS team.

The independent monitor report, while praising the stabilization effort, points out that much still needs to be done to make MiSiS function as was intended.

“Although the MiSiS system is stabilized, it is incomplete. Minimal progress has been made on the remaining (consent decree) requirements, with some previously developed functions requiring rework this year,” wrote the the Independent Monitor, David Rostetter.

Rostetter also said that with Cortines stepping down by the end of the year and no MiSiS funds approved beyond June, the future of MiSiS is still in question. There is also the looming problem of having to get MiSiS operational in hundreds of the district’s charter schools, the report notes.

“The district under Mr. Cortines’ leadership has been really, really diligent on (MiSiS). They have turned that system around. It is functional in buildings,” Rostetter told LA School Report. “It is not functioning on all cylinders, but the major failures of two years ago have been overcome. It is fulfilling its basic purpose.”

Rostetter also had high marks for Sharyn Howell, the district’s associate superintendent of the Division of Special Education, with the district now meeting 17 out of 18 performance-based outcomes required in the consent decree.

One of those outcomes calls on the district to increase the time disabled students spend in a general education setting and decrease the number of students attending classes at isolated special education centers. The district far exceed the goal set for the 2014-15 school year.

“Probably the most significant accomplishment the district has achieved in the last 10 years is the realization of the importance of children with disabilities being educated with their non-disabled peers. The district has taken this on,” Rostetter said. “This is a remarkable achievement in any district, and particularly the leadership under Ms. Howell cannot be commended enough. This is a great thing.”

Howell said she believes progress on integration will continue.

“A lot of work has been done, not only in the last year, but in the last three years, as far as making it possible for any student with a disability to attend a general education site and to participate with non-disabled peers. So the work has really been going on for three years and it will continue,” she said.

One area where more work is required is the one performance-based outcome short of compliance — it requires disabled students to receive services as specified in their Individual Education Plan. It has “a long history of problems that range in severity,” Rostetter wrote. “Some of these issues are low hanging and should have been resolved by now.”

Howell said, “I agree with him that we have struggled with this outcome for a while.”

The report also found significant deficiencies in a hotline phone system set up two years ago for parents of special education students to make inquiries, log complaints or seek guidance. Among the many problems noted was a pre-recorded message about parent training sessions that included events from the 2012 school year. That message is still on the recorded line.

When asked about the hotline issues, Howell noted the report only covered the 2014-15 school year, and said, “We’ve got other things in place that are not reflected, like some improvements to the call center and so forth and some improvements in some other things that I assume will be reflected in this next report.”

Due to issues outside the purview of her department, like the lack of ADA facility compliance, Howell predicted the district still has several more years under the watch of the independent monitor. But with all but one of the performance-based outcomes met, she said the next year should see a lot more improvement.

“We have one outcome left,” she said. “We are gong to try as hard as we can to meet that this year and show that we can be compliant.”

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“We are out and relentless as far as it goes for teachers, because university enrollment is down for special education teachers,” said Debi Ignagni, LAUSD’s deputy chief human resources officer. “And we have a fully accredited district intern program where after two years you can get a special ed teaching credential.”

Since 1983, the district has trained more than 10,000 special education teachers, and they all stated to work at LAUSD. The retention rate is higher than the average teacher, too, Ignagni said.

As part of a relatively new trend, teachers with existing teaching credential are being retrained to become the more-needed special ed teachers. This year, 125 teachers at LAUSD are getting their extra credentials while 73 are first-time teachers who are training specifically for special education.

The number of LAUSD students with disabilities is about 82,600, and statewide the enrollment in special education teaching programs has dropped 27 percent over the past few years, according to the California Commission on Teaching Credentials. Nationally, 49 states report a shortage of special ed teachers and 90 percent of high poverty districts report a difficulty in attracting highly qualified special ed teachers.

Every district in California is facing a shortage of those teachers, so LAUSD works closely with local universities that offer teaching credentials, such as Cal State Northridge, Cal State Dominguez Hills, UCLA, Cal State LA and private institutions, Ignagni said. Some of the schools have LAUSD staffers at the university sites to recruit candidates.

When LAUSD had to layoff teachers in 2009, the special education training was a way to help retain some of them. “Many of the layoffs were for elementary school or English teachers, and we offered a tuition-free opportunity to get special education credentials and we were able to bring them back,” Ignagni said.

Special education teachers make the same salary as general education teachers at LAUSD, and it doesn’t require a master’s degree. So far, the situation isn’t critical at LAUSD, but it is getting close.

“We have been able to staff all of our classrooms,” Ignagni said. “But I think it’s always critical when talking about students. Our first priority would be to have fully-prepared teachers in those classrooms. In that sense, yes, there is a shortage because we don’t have fully-prepared teachers in every classroom.”

She added, “Are we doing the best we can? Yes. And we are doing everything we can with coaching and support in the classroom as well.”

As one of three states in 2014 that received a “needs intervention” ranking in special education from the U.S. Department of Education, California this year jumped one level, to “needs assistance.”

The report, which has been issued every year since 2004, ranks states on how well they meet certain criteria of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This year’s rankings are based on 2013-14 data. Last year was also the first that used more stringent requirements, including performance on standardized tests.

Nineteen states this year earned the highest ranking, “meets requirements.” California and 29 other states received the “needs assistance” ranking, down from 32 last year. Texas and the District of Columbia remain in the “needs intervention” category. No state has ever receiving the lowest “needs special intervention” category, according to Ed Week.

The rankings come with potential consequences. For example, if a state “needs intervention” for three consecutive years, the Department of Education must take one or more enforcement actions, which could include requiring a corrective action plan or compliance agreement, or withholding further federal payments to the state.

The feds have so far only released this years rankings, and not individual reports on where states are achieving or failing, but they are expected later this month. The report comes in the form of a letter to each state’s superintendent of education.

Last year, California was dinged for a proficiency gap between children with disabilities and all children in the state, as well the poor performance of children with disabilities on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test.

LAUSD special ed students (Credit: Galatzan Gazette)

With more than two months remain before the end school year, LA Unified officials are making summer school plans for special education students and students who have failed at least one mandatory class for graduation.

It is the second straight year the district is offering struggling students the opportunity to catch-up on subjects after years of budgetary cuts that practically obliterated summer school.

The credit recovery program is open to all 9 through 12th grade students who have received a D or F grade in an A through G course. From June 15 through July 17 students can attend up to two 2 1/2-hour block classes to learn in five weeks what they should have grasped over a semester.

Special education students will have access to the Extended School Year courses from June 22 to July 17, five days fewer than the credit recovery program.

Teachers were required to submit the names of eligible summer school students through MISIS by March 27, and they’re supposed use the system to determine the courses students need based on the Ds and Fs. It is unclear if the deadline was met by all schools.

MISIS was first piloted by the district during last year’s summer school enrollment. It was then that the systems myriad database problems first came to light.

Unlike classes that are available throughout the regular school calendar, credit recovery courses have much stricter class size limitations: an academic class is capped at 25, and physical education is limited to 45.

Seventy-nine campuses will offer classes ranging in subjects from freshman English composition to world history to algebra.

The program is funded by a combination of Title I and Beyond the Bell Credit Recovery funds. Enrichment summer school courses will be added at a later date, paid for with Local Control Funding Formula dollars.

Although the budget for the program is unknown, last year the district spent $21.5 million to support 37,000 high school students who needed to recover credits to fulfill graduation requirements.

LAUSD special ed teacher Gloria Osorio and a Lowman Special Ed Center student in 2011. (Credit: Craig Clough)

New recommendations from a statewide task force would have huge ramifications for LA Unified and its roughly 82,000 special education students.

The Statewide Task Force on Special Education’s report, “One System: Reforming Education to Serve all Students,” calls for a number of blockbuster moves, including a much greater integration of special education students into general education settings, major changes to teacher training and other overhauls.

While quite a few things would still need to occur before the report’s recommendations could be implemented, the changes would represent a seismic shift for LA Unified. In particular, it calls for the closing of most schools and sites dedicated to special education, and LA Unified has 15 of them.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson has already thrown his support behind the report.

“Effectively educating students with disabilities is our collective responsibility, ” Torlakson said in a statement. “The bold ideas and recommendations in this report contribute to California’s expanded educational mission for high-quality teaching and learning in every classroom,”

Sharyn Howell, head of LA Unified’s special education department, did not respond to a request for comment.

To fully implement the task force’s report would require movement on multiple levels of state government on different areas of the recommendations, Barber explained, including approval by the State Board of Education, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the state Legislature and Governor Jerry Brown.

“We’ve talked with legislative contacts and the legislative analysts office. We are hoping that the governor will embrace some of the recommendations and that we would see some movement coming forward on the financial issues,” Barber said.

The new MiSiS — My Integrated Student Information System — is designed to track every aspect of a student’s academic career by integrating a variety of existing computer programs.

Special education teacher Kelly Flores, who teaches at Maya Angelou Community High School, said the problems she has encountered with MiSiS are preventing her from doing her job, costing students valuable instruction time.

“I can’t really use MiSiS. The only thing I can do is take attendance of the kids that I have enrolled in a couple of classes,” she told LA School Report. “I personally have no access in finding my students, so I’m going on the second week, and I can’t service my students. The only thing I can do is know who the students I had last year were and go look for them class to class.”

Overall, thousands of students in the district are affected. As a special education teacher, Flores must be working with her students either in a classroom or learning center, making sure they’re programmed correctly into the classes they need.

“I’m unable to do this because of the new system,” she said.

Flores says there’s a way teachers can access their case load, but it has to go through an administrator, and at this point, she said, no administrator knows how to do it or has the time to do it.

“To me it’s complete chaos,” she said.

She insisted that the only way she knows her students are at school is if she sees them in the halls. She said many of them were programmed in, but some don’t have the correct classes.

“I write down their schedules, but their schedules are being changed,” she said.

Flores said she believes the district made a mistake by shutting down the older, but reliable computer system, without making sure the new system worked properly, leaving teachers without information they need.

“I don’t know how to access my students, and even if I could, I don’t know how because I haven’t been trained,” she said. “It is something that is good in theory, but it wasn’t tested,  and it wasn’t perfected before they rolled it out.”

Making matters worse, she said, teachers can’t identify any new special education students coming in from middle school.

By this time in previous years, Flores said, the special education student case load would already have been distributed, and teachers would find their students by using the former computer system. Now, she said, they haven’t been able to do any of it.

Flores would normally have between 28 and 30 special education students, but currently she only has 10 who have been programmed into her classes.

“I should be in the classroom with all of those 28,” she said. “They should know who I am, and I should have their schedules and be providing services. The system is not working and it’s not allowing special education students to have their needs met.”

MiSiS has been plagued with problems ever since its debut earlier this month. Counselors in charge of enrolling students have complained that the new comprehensive program is not as user friendly as the older system. MiSiS, they say, also adds to their workloads because it has lost a substantial amount of student data that had been entered.

District officials have conceded they are working on the problems and have told teachers they “will not have access to the system while the issues are being resolved.”

Previous Posts: Teachers union blasts Deasy again for new computer system; Teachers union says computer glitch cost students first day; Teachers in panic over LAUSD’s new computer tracking system

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See also: LA Times

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See also LA Daily News and Ama Nyamekye’s editorial in the Huffington Post

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TV ads for Prop. 38 start airing SF Chronicle: The 30-second spot hits on the themes that proponents have pushed so far and includes a barely subtle jab at Brown’s measure.

Seeking Allies, Teachers’ Unions Court G.O.P., Too NYT: While donations to Democrats still far outweigh contributions to Republicans, the proportion of union money going to Republican candidates this year, just over 8 percent, has doubled since the last election cycle, according to the National Institute on Money In State Politics.

Finding Classroom Success In Bilingual Mix Of Spanish, English Hechinger Report: In 2011, while 56 percent of elementary-age students in California were proficient or above on state tests for English language arts, two thirds of Ernest R. Geddes Elementary School in Baldwin Park, Calif students were [proficient].

Reform by the ounce, unfunded pension debt by the pound Ed Source: The pension reforms passed in June, paring back the benefits for new teachers and administrators, will knock off $189 million per year from the additional payments taxpayers must make to keep the California State Teachers’ Retirement System solvent over the next 30 years. That’s the good news.

Millikan students volunteer, raise money for cancer care Daily News: Students hope to raise $2,000 over the next month to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

La Puente High Horrors: Soccer Players Claim to Have Been Hazed, Sodomized With Poles LA Weekly: Superintendent Barbara Nakaoka announced this morning that four students, one 18 and the rest minors, have been arrested in connection to the case. In addition, one male teacher/coach has reportedly been placed on administrative leave.

LAUSD Special Education Failings Still Flying Under The Radar Neon Tommy (blog): The district recently failed for an eighth straight year to meet special education delivery targets for disabled students.