DISTRICT REFINING SPECIAL EDUCATION.Byline: Sharline Chiang Daily News Staff Writer After months of lumbering through public hearings and meetings on how to overhaul its ailing special education system, the Los Angeles Unified School District The Los Angeles Unified School District (the "LAUSD") is the largest (in terms of number of students) public school system in California and the second-largest in the United States. Only the New York City Department of Education has a larger student population. is starting to make some progress. Since settling the historic Chanda Smith civil rights case in April 1996, the district has begun drafting a mission statement on educating its 69,000 students with disabilities and has agreed to ``maximize'' state special education funding. Both are part of the consent decree A settlement of a lawsuit or criminal case in which a person or company agrees to take specific actions without admitting fault or guilt for the situation that led to the lawsuit. A consent decree is a settlement that is contained in a court order. , which includes 30 plans for revamping the system. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Bonifacio Garcia, the lead attorney representing the district on the special education reforms, other improvements the district has made in the last three months include: Distributing $700,000 to local schools for additional special education support staff. Creating a special education parent liaison program, which includes hiring four part-time staff members at a cost of $78,052. Making $50,000 worth of training videos on how to identify special education students. During its Monday meeting, the district's Board of Education will vote on spending an additional $400,000 on new forms to better identify students who need to be in a special education program and for informational brochures for parents. The board also will decide on whether it should spend an additional $58,000 for three issues of a newsletter updating parents and educators on special education changes and meeting dates. All the changes tied to the consent decree are paid for with money from the district's general fund. Within the next nine months, the district will implement about a dozen other plans in the decree decree, in law, decision of a suit in a court of equity. It is the counterpart in equity of the judgment in a court of law, although in those jurisdictions where law and equity have merged, judgment is sometimes used to include both. , Garcia said. ``It's exploding as far as the activity goes,'' he said. ``This has been done fairly well so far and there's been a lot of planning. But the time is now and a lot will be happening in the next six months.'' The consent decree resulted from a 1993 class-action lawsuit lawsuit: see procedure; tort. filed by a team of attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), nonpartisan organization devoted to the preservation and extension of the basic rights set forth in the U.S. Constitution. and private firms, which charged that the district pervasively per·va·sive adj. Having the quality or tendency to pervade or permeate: the pervasive odor of garlic. [From Latin perv and continuously failed to search for, identify, track and educate students with special needs. |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion