Berkeley Unified School District Denies Rights of Autistic Boy

Berkeley Unified School District Denies Rights of Autistic Boy - Broken district out of legal compliance with least restrictive education plan

In a surprising example of California's educational crisis, an autistic boy attending fourth-grade in the Berkeley Unified School District has been denied services required by law to ensure he receive an equal education under the Disabilities Act. District officials have refused to address the situation, forcing parents to seek assistance via a California state hearing.

BERKELEY, CA, February 3, 2004 – In spite of legally binding agreements made during repeated meetings of the Individualized Education Program team over the past year, Berkeley Unified School District continues to deny a 10-year old boy his educational rights under California State law.

According to Mrs. Donna Lehman, mother of 4th grader Gabriel Warner-Gonzales, her son is in a highly challenging environment with little support and is not receiving services agreed to by the district. Specifically: speech and language hours are in arrears; there has been no special training for his primary teacher or aide to assist them with understanding autism; his curriculum has not been appropriately modified to offer greatest chances of success; district inclusion resources do not exist; and Gabriel has an excessive commute by bus to an overcrowded school several miles from home.

“That’s just the short list of what’s not working here, “ states Mrs. Lehman, “Berkeley – and Rosa Parks Elementary in particular – has been struggling to ‘fix’ their system for a long time. In a letter sent home to parents at the beginning of the school year, the School District Superintendent asked for everyone’s patience and additional contributions, saying that they were still sorting through internal administration problems. Well I don’t have patience, I have a special needs child who needs help right now, not after they fix their bureaucracy.”

The Lehman family moved to Berkeley in mid-March of 2003 due to a work relocation from Pittsburgh, PA. It was the 2nd move in six months. But whereas the transition from their first move leaving Huntington Beach USD going to Colfax Elementary went smoothly and Gabriel was established in a new room with aide, speech, OT and personal support from the principal in only 4 days, it was an entirely different – and disappointing – experience coming to Berkeley.

Instead, it took 4 weeks for BUSD to place Gabriel and his sister Avalon. Dr. Michael Lehman, Ph.D., the children’s stepfather, was shocked, “I would have expected with the University here and the reputation for education and community activism that Berkeley has to have found a wonderful school district.” The opposite is true. “BUSD is worse than any place we’ve been, including LA Unified, which was a nightmare.” Added Donna Lehman.

Not only did the district take a month to put the children back in school, they said they had to commute five miles, or 25 minutes by car each way, and that Gabriel would be put in a Special Day Class with nine other boys – and one teacher. For anyone unfamiliar with California special education law this might not sound awful, but according to Gabriel’s IEP for the year, which was transferred with him from the other districts, he was supposed to be placed in a general education classroom with inclusion support. Also, the SDC student/teacher ratio was way off. So right from the beginning, Berkeley was out of compliance.

Donna Lehman took this issue up with Ken Jacopetti, the Director of Special Services. “But they asked for my understanding since it was so late in the year, and everything was ‘impacted’, “ remembers Donna, “and I was desperate to get the kids back into a classroom setting. I’m a marketing executive and have my own business to manage. Making multiple trips to the district offices and ferrying the kids back and forth was taking it’s toll, so I agreed – temporarily. At the IEP meeting in June, I was assured that things would be rectified in the coming school year.”

Which didn’t happen. Other severe gaps and general mis-management by the special education department have made Gabriel’s life much harder. Donna is angry with the bait-and switch tactics employed by special education advisor Alan Joy, who promised to place Gabriel and his sister in a school closer to their neighborhood where there was already a full-inclusion teacher in place who had experience with autism. Instead, Alan waited until three days before school started to inform Mrs. Lehman that sadly there was no room at Thousand Oaks elementary – a mere 2 miles away - and the children would again be bussed to Rosa Parks – which takes 45 mins. in the morning and over an hour coming home each day. On the way, they pass another six elementary schools all closer to where they live.

Even under these circumstances, Gabriel has made some progress this year, mostly re-gaining lost ground from last year when he experienced a regression during May and June. The most assistance has come from special day instructor Jessica Schussett, a young, enthusiastic teacher who now functions as pseudo-inclusion assistant and additional support services rolled into one. Jessica has some training in autism and does her best to work with Gabriel, his parents, his teacher and aide.

But Gabriel is in a split 3rd/4th grade class – the same room his sister is in – and was moved twice even on the first day of school. No expectations were set. His schedule was not completed for six weeks. His aide was changed in the first month. The primary instructor stated loudly on the first day, “He can’t be in my class, I already have too many students.” All of this – and dealing with his own disability every day.

Autism is a little understood spectrum disorder affecting the way an individual processes stimuli. There has been an explosion of occurrence and/or diagnosis of this disorder in the last 5-10 years, especially in California. More and more children are entering public schools and needing to be integrated into the regular education classrooms, just like any other child with a disability. Not every district is equipped to deal with this, and Berkeley USD would be one of them.

“Gabriel has now attended school in four different school districts, including the mammoth Los Angeles USD, which is where he started in pre-school through 1st grade.” Donna Lehman relates, “We were lucky we lived so close to so many people who were pioneers in dealing with the disease. Gabriel got immediate and intense early-intervention.”

Experts at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI) diagnosed Gabriel with autism in 1997. After two months in the Early Childhood Partial Hospitalization Program, run by Dr. BJ Freeman, Ph.D. (http://tarjancenter.ucla.edu/whatwedo/services/clinprog.htm), he was placed in what is called a Full Inclusion (FI) pre-school setting with a one-on-one aide to assist with language communication, behavior issues and general prompting for focus.

Donna talks about the reality of working with autism, “The early days were really rough. Gabriel was not very verbal and he tantrumed a lot. He attended half-day pre-school, then went to individual speech therapy three days a week with Dr. Alicia Elliott of the Elliott Insitute; he also went to a social/speech group on Saturdays; received occupational therapy twice a week at another hospital outpatient facility and he had a behavior therapist/tutor work with him in our home another two days each week.”

The integrated program of services paid off. With the exception of the two months when Berkeley mis-placed him, Gabriel has been successfully integrated in a regular school setting. His reliance on special services has decreased every year. For instance, he no longer needs O.T. He also requires less and less support from a one-on-one aide. His response to classmates continues to mature, and he now has a small circle of friends who he joins in playing with during recess.

While this is encouraging and good news, it does not mean that BUSD or any other district has less responsibility to educate children like Gabriel in the most appropriate manner and environment. Berkeley has a long way to go before they can claim to be doing any such thing.

For information about services for special needs in the East Bay Area, contact the Regional Center of the East Bay in Oakland at 510-393-1200 http://www.rceb.org

To reach Berkeley USD: Director of Special Education: Ken Jacopetti – 510-644-8986 Special Education Resource: Alan Joy 510-644-8928

Looks like you beat me to it.

I'll come back an comment more. But suffice it to say that I'm not surprise that this is going on in the center of the supposedly "compasionate left".

Bad parenting can exacerbate the natural inclination of the child to be cruel, that is true. Glad your kids are doing well.

Your daughter is a cute little girl. It really makes a difference when parents hang in there and help with the children.

We pray that she may have as normal a life as possible.

Really, I thought that it was 6-1 or 12-1 with an aide. I worked with medically fragile infants/children for 15 + years and under state licensing regs we were required a 6-1 / 12-2 ratio during all hours of instruction.

With your experience I am sure you are correct when working with the more severely disabled. I was referring to the learning disabled ratios--and in reviewing my post, I see I was very unclear on that.

Hats off to you for working with that so very needy population. You folks are saints on earth.

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