The plan hinges on retraining teachers. Funding sources for the overhaul remain a question.
By Susan Reines/Special to The Malibu Times
The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education embraced a plan Monday night that could bring the district’s struggling special education program into compliance with federal and state laws. The plan includes training general education teachers to integrate students with disabilities into their classrooms and commissioning task forces to develop complete special education curricula.
Special Education Director Cindy Atlas revealed in January that SMMUSD currently fails to provide legally required services for students with autism and has no comprehensive curricula for students with special math and reading needs. Consequently, the district spends about $3 million each year to bring in outside specialists for some students and to send others to private schools.
When Atlas outlined the shortcomings six months ago, Board President Jose Escarce called the special education status “depressing and disturbing,” and the board requested that a committee of parents, teachers, and experts devise a plan to bring the district up to speed.
Presenting that plan at Monday’s board meeting, parent Craig Hamilton urged the board to invest in training special and general education teachers to prevent children from falling behind and integrate students with disabilities into general education classrooms. He noted that the cost of training pales in comparison to the $18 million the district pays its staff in salaries each year.
“It costs just as much to teach an ineffective program as it does to teach an effective program,” Hamilton said.
Parents repeated that catchphrase throughout the meeting, but overhauling the special education system would, in actuality, require a great deal of funding. The plan calls for hiring more specialists, purchasing books and software, and paying experts to help devise curriculums, in addition to teacher retraining.
Hamilton acknowledged that such costs are “not insignificant,” but emphasized that they are investments that will eventually relieve the district of the financial burden of hiring outside specialists and sending students to private schools.
The board did not discuss specifics of how the plan would be funded.
Parents offered a few suggestions, including applying for grants and supporting inexpensive programs like Best Buddies, which encourage social interaction between students with disabilities and typical students. Such programs have proven effective at Santa Monica High and Malibu High.
“It really has changed the whole atmosphere on campus,” said Lisa Szilagyi, head of Malibu High’s Best Buddies program, noting that the program allows students with disabilities to practice social skills and typical students to appreciate diversity.
Although programs like Best Buddies help with social skills, the district will need to look deeper to overturn its lackluster track record in the realm of academic special education. The amount of funding and work that will be necessary to revitalize special education varies from school to school.
Some say the current special education situation is better in Malibu than Santa Monica because Malibu’s smaller schools provide a nurturing setting. In fact, Juan Cabrillo Elementary School is reputed to have one of the district’s best special education programs.
Eight special education students from Juan Cabrillo attended Monday’s meeting, and they and their parents spoke highly of Cabrillo’s program. “We are all very smart kids,” second-grader Danny Sills said.
“The teachers [at Juan Cabrillo] are amazing,” Danny’s mother, Laureen, said.
Still, even Juan Cabrillo is plagued by shortages of materials and inadequate staff training.
“We have fantastic teachers at Juan Cabrillo and we need to give them the tools they need to teach these children,” said Linda Konzelman, whose first-grade daughter is in Juan Cabrillo’s special education program. She added, “These children often know the answers. Many times they do not understand the questions that are being asked of them. The teachers do not understand that.”
Without getting into specifics of what actions need to be taken at each school, the board unanimously praised the plan’s general goal of retraining teachers to achieve prevention and integration.
“Of course, prevention is right. How could it not be right?” Escarce asked.
Mike Jordan, the board’s lone Malibu representative, expressed support for integration. “There is no such thing as ‘mainstreaming.’ [Special education students] are just part of what we do.” Jordan said. “So the question becomes: how much ‘special’ do they need?”
Boardmember Emily Bloomfield requested that either the writers of the plan or the district’s staff perform a cost-benefit analysis on each of the plan’s recommendations so that the board can pursue high-impact, low-cost recommendations immediately.
The board passed the task of creating a specific implementation strategy to the district’s staff. At their next meeting, the board will begin discussing staff’s recommendations.