Panel to Address How to Navigate School Systems

Want to know how to get more educational programs for your special-needs daughter? Concerned about gang activity at your son’s middle school? Want an accounting of how school money is being spent?

Education experts will explain how to properly raise those and other issues and how to navigate the complex state and local education systems at a panel discussion on Saturday.

The forum is being hosted by the Assn. for Accountability and Equitable Education, a Pacoima-based nonprofit group that provides education data to the public, news organizations and other interested parties.

“The purpose of the discussion is to instruct parents and other interested people on how school systems work and how citizens can negotiate the system if they have a problem,” Glen Forsch, an association director, said Wednesday.

Forsch said invited panelists include Ahamid Arabzadeh, president of International Environmental Business Management and an expert on toxic school sites; Richard Arthur, an author, school reformer and gang intervention specialist; George Buzzetti, association chairman and school finance and reform expert; Larry Komar, chairman of the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Special Education, and Frank Janowicz, a retired LAPD officer and an advocate for at-risk youth.

Saturday’s session runs from 10 a.m. to noon at the Mid-Valley Regional Library, 16244 Nordhoff St., North Hills.

For information, call (818) 768-8381.