When questioned about the disparities in the enrollment process that parents of children needing special education schooling face, special education administrators say they try to have a transparent process that is the same as the process for general education students.

But the devil is in the details ...



Parents may apply to any school in the district
Like parents seeking general education placements, parents seeking special education placements are asked to list up to seven choices on their applications. Since all schools do not have every special education program, parents have far fewer schools to choose from; only two-fifths of San Francisco Unified School District’s (SFUSD) Elementary Schools have inclusion programs.

Capacity of each school's programs, openings, and program requests in previous year(s) are routinely published
When applying to a school, parents seeking a general education Kindergarten spot for their child have access to information about how many openings each school has, and are given data that shows them their “odds” of getting their child into each school.

Parents of children seeking inclusion programs are not even told which schools will have openings. The Educational Placement Office tells them that they cannot give out that information because it could change at any time. Several schools with inclusion programs are over-enrolled and will have no openings at all. If a school never had any openings, listing it can hardly be considered making a “choice” and it is conceivable that a parent could list 7 schools and none would have openings.

Placements are Subject to Available Bus Routes
Another choice barrier the district raises involves busing issues. Parents are told that if they list schools on their application that are not on existing special education bus routes from their homes that their children will instead be assigned to schools which are on bus routes from their homes. This may seem reasonable, but when you consider that EPC will not tell parents which schools are on existing bus routes from their homes, it makes listing 7 school choices almost meaningless. Parents are forced to “guess” if there are any openings at the schools they list, and then they must “guess” if there is a pre-existing special education bus route from their home to the schools that they list.

The enrollment process is stressful for all parents, but for parents who have children with disabilities the complexity involved in overseeing all aspects of their children’s educational programs is massive. The right programs and services can often make the difference between whether their children will ever be able to communicate or not, read or not, live independently or not, and parents are justified in not trusting others who have never even met their children to make such important decisions about their children’s lives.

Advocates for children with disabilities believe that placement offers should be made during children’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meetings, and that being told to list seven schools and entering a lottery for placement is against the laws that assure children’s special educational programs are “individualized”. They maintain that placement is a place, an actual school site, and not a “program” and that parents must be included as members of any group that makes decisions on the educational placement of their children.

SFUSD special education administrators say that “programs” are decided in IEP meetings, and that the “placements” made by the Educational Placement Office are not “decisions”, they are “assignments”.

On a daily basis, parents trying to navigate the enrollment process are being subjected to this sort of maddening wordplay, which has no other purpose than to subvert the spirit of the laws set forth in the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (I.D.E.A.).

Last month, the Urban Special Education Leadership Collaborative released its report on Seattle’s Special Education system. SFUSD is amazingly similar to Seattle, in its size, its demographics, and its problems. The report repeatedly stressed the disadvantages of placing students with disabilities apart from the schools they would attend if not disabled, such segregation’s negative impact on students and families, and the higher costs of the system currently used due to transportation and duplication of services offered. Also, because the current system is all so specialized and segregated, the majority of teachers in the district are not being trained to accommodate all types of learners. Administrators in SFUSD’s Special Education Department could learn a lot from this report.

SFUSD uses an outdated model in special education and is in dire need of an overhaul and revamping, if for no other reason than to start to be in compliance with Federal law which says that all children with disabilities have the right to be educated in the “Least Restrictive Environment (LRE).” The courts have defined LRE placement to be “the school you would send your child to were they not disabled”. Legislation clearly states that “to the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities are educated with children who are non-disabled; and special classes, separate schooling or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment occurs only when the nature or severity of the disability is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily.”

This week (December 3-7, 2007) is Inclusive Schools Week. Let us move forward to make all schools in San Francisco inclusive schools and let us promote inclusive practices all year long. This is not merely a special education issue; it is a civil rights issue.

Katy Franklin is the mother of a 2nd grade student who attends Creative Arts Charter School and is a member of SFUSD’s Community Advisory Committee for Special Education.