Special Needs Raise Pressure on Schools

The rapid growth of special education in the Los Angeles Unified School District is aggravating a severe classroom shortage on crowded campuses already pressed to their limits.

Largely because of parental demands for services, the district’s special-education population has increased four times faster than its general education enrollment over the last decade.

The growth is pitting the needs of disabled students against the demands of others at a time when the district lacks enough money and space to accommodate both.

The friction is most intense in middle schools, where 20% of classrooms are taken by students with special needs, more than double the number of a decade ago.

Special-education classes take up a disproportionate amount of space because they usually serve between six and 28 students a day, compared with 150 to 200 in a regular room.

As a result, both special-education and regular students are crammed into every conceivable nook at many stressed campuses, from a dressing room at one school to an auditorium prop room at another.

But the creative housing has failed to solve the problem at many schools, where overflow students wind up on buses and teachers go without classrooms of their own. Most of the bused youngsters are not in special education.

The pressure is expected to grow in coming years because of a bulge in general-education students moving up from the elementary grades.

“When people talk about crowded schools, they don’t mention special education. It impacts every single thing we do,” said Eloisa Vera Marquez, who was the principal of Luther Burbank Middle School for more than a decade until she was promoted recently to another district post.

At the Highland Park campus, one of the district’s most crowded, teachers are housed in a former hospitality lounge and a workroom the size of a few large closets.

The teachers have chosen the smaller spaces in lieu of the alternative: no classrooms at all.

Standing in what was once the hospitality lounge, half the size of a typical classroom, special-education teacher Nancy McNamara gave her situation a positive spin.

“No one will want to take it from me,” she said of her room.

Luther Burbank still buses 275 students to far-flung campuses in Granada Hills, West Los Angeles and elsewhere. In July, the school will switch to a highly unpopular year-round calendar to get the students off the buses. They will attend school during three staggered terms.

Special education takes up 19 of Luther Burbank’s 68 classrooms--more than twice as many as they occupied a decade ago. And its problems are hardly unique.

Such classes have consumed so much space at the district’s middle schools over the last decade that the campuses have 154 fewer classrooms available for general education than in 1990, according to a Times analysis of district records. Teachers, parent advocates and special-education students contend that the smaller classes are crucial for students who require more individual attention and a slower pace of instruction.

“We get more help,” said a Luther Burbank eighth-grader, who goes to a special classroom for English and math each day. Her class, with just six learning disabled students and 22 desks, is held in a former home economics room.

“In other classes, we can’t ask the teachers questions because they’re helping other students,” the student said. “We don’t get as much time and they want us to do everything faster.”

The eighth-grader’s teacher, Julia Costanzo, said her class offers an invaluable service to special-education students.

“In a regular classroom, it’s sink or swim,” she said. “Teachers don’t have time to single them out for help. I really have the luxury to get to know them.”

L.A. Unified has more than 83,000 special-education students, about 12% of the district’s overall enrollment.

These students have an array of disabilities that hamper learning, from mental retardation and emotional disturbances to cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis.

But the bulk of them--61%--are “learning-disabled,” meaning they have auditory and visual problems that make it difficult to read, write, spell and perform math calculations.

Learning-disabled students have accounted for nearly all of the growth in special education in Los Angeles Unified over the last decade.

District officials say the increase is in large part the result of more parents’ demanding services after a 1993 class action lawsuit. That suit--filed on behalf of a student named Chanda Smith--accused the school system of providing disabled students with an inadequate education. In settling it, the district pledged to do a better job of identifying and serving children with special needs.

The district’s new ban on social promotion in the second and eighth grades is prompting more parents to ask that their children be tested for disabilities.

“I get a lot of calls from parents who say their kids are going to be retained,” said Andrea Lorant, the mother of a learning-disabled student who helps other parents get services for their children. “The parents say, ‘How do I convince the district this is a learning disability and not just a child who didn’t get it--that there’s really a problem?’ ”

Less Space for More Students

Schools are required by law to test a child for special education if a parent requests it. But some researchers believe that students often land in special education for the wrong reasons--because they haven’t learned to read properly, don’t understand English or have been tagged as behavior problems.

“You get a whole lot of kids with different problems lumped together and treated as if they have one thing,” said Robert Sternberg, a professor of psychology and education at Yale University and a leading authority on learning disabilities. “It’s not politically correct to complain about it.”

L.A. Unified’s top special-education official acknowledged that helping struggling students in elementary school could reduce the onslaught of special-education students in later grades.

“Are they special-education [students] by our definition in middle school? Yes,” said Donnalyn Anton, the district’s assistant superintendent in charge of special education. “But did they need to end up there is the question.”

More special-education students aren’t the only problem.

Middle school campuses have fewer total classrooms than either elementary schools or high schools, leaving less space for their swelling enrollments.

New policies also are contributing to the space problem. For example, middle schools have reduced the size of eighth-grade English classes to 20 students under a federal program. And extra classrooms have been set aside to house failing eighth-graders under the ban on social promotion.

Those pressures leave many campuses without enough rooms to go around.

At Bancroft Middle School in Hollywood, five of the 65 teachers travel between classrooms because the school doesn’t have enough space to assign each instructor a room. The school includes 15 special-education classrooms and a performing arts magnet.

Because they must travel from room to room, general-education teachers spend less time teaching. They can’t get their assignments written on the chalkboard ahead of class, and have to spend valuable class time doing it.

The traveling can take a toll on even the most dedicated teachers.

“There’s no way I have the strength to decorate four rooms,” said Martin Goldmark, a veteran of 33 years at Bancroft who hauls his books, pens and papers around campus on a two-wheeler. “I’m a visitor in their rooms, anyway.”

Even with the traveling teachers, Bancroft has had to be innovative. Students are taught in an auditorium dressing room, remodeled industrial arts rooms and a wood shop where the lathes and work tables have been pushed to the back of the room.

“Think of all the children waiting in the pipeline to be tested and placed in special education,” said Assistant Principal Jack Dodds. “If there was a procedure to move them through quicker, we’d be in real trouble.”

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Special Classes

The Los Angeles Unified School District has devoted an increasing number of classrooms to special education. The growth has contributed to a severe space shortage, with the deepest impact felt in middle schools.

Data analysis by DUKE HELFAND / Los Angeles Times

Source: L.A. Unified School District