SOMETHING SPECIAL? NOT ALL AGREE MAINSTREAMING ORDER DOOMS SCHOOLS LIKE MILLER HIGH.

Byline: Sonia Giordani Staff Writer

RESEDA - When the first-period bell rings at Joaquin Miller High School, the cheerleading team lines up for laps around the basketball court before the girls - some of them in wheelchairs - practice their dance routines.

The baseball team warms up on the field. Coach Phillip Dahdouh leads them in running drills to prepare for their next game against teams from other special education centers in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Inside Miller, severely disabled and visually impaired students work on their reading with Braille teacher Helen Josen, while down the hall 18-year-old Gabriel Escudero works on his math and science so he can earn his high school diploma and pursue a career in computer animation.

``Some of the kids here can't speak. Some of them can't see or walk,'' said Escudero, the student body president. ``I've been on regular campuses and those kids can be cruel. Here you meet students and staff who have a genuine respect for you, no matter what.''

For decades, special education centers have been an option for parents of children with moderate to severe disabilities such as autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, retardation and behavioral problems.

Campuses like Miller in Reseda offer athletics, hold student body elections, stage drama productions, and host dances and a senior prom.

But by a recent federal court order, the LAUSD will be phasing out these schools by 2006. The goal is for special education students to make up 7.4 percent to 15.4 percent of the student body at each school. More than 10 percent of the LAUSD's 700,000 pupils have disabilities.

LAUSD officials opposed the order but said they will work to implement it despite problems, especially the desire of many parents to keep centers like Miller open.

``Schools can be more integrated than they are now,'' said LAUSD special education chief Donnalyn Jaque-Anton. ```But are there some kids who have flourished on these campuses? Yes.''

At Miller, dozens of parents met this month to talk about their concerns that there won't be enough nurses and resource aids, that overcrowded campuses will be hard for their children and that regular teachers are already overwhelmed.

Many said they tried mainstreaming but prefer special schools.

``The kids who are disabled but function on a high enough level to be in a mainstream classroom are already in a mainstream classroom,'' said Pamela Clemens, whose teen-age son, Tyler, attends Miller.

He was born with Down syndrome and has brain damage after suffering heart failure twice as an infant. At 14, he is 44 inches tall and weighs 40 pounds.

Clemens said she had Tyler in a number of programs before finally enrolling him at Miller. In one regular school, an inexperienced teacher put him in a corner because she didn't know what to do with him.

``He ended up coming apart. He's so sensitive,'' Clemens said.

``The people who are at Miller are there because they tried it the other way and their kids were so battered and tormented that they see Miller as a refuge. And there is no pain greater than watching your child suffer. I would walk on coals to prevent that from happening again.''

But other parents and special education experts said the LAUSD's halaked attempts at mainstreaming in the past were the problem. Campuses like Miller isolate students and create false realities.

The new plan requires proper resources - from teacher training to adapted curriculum to physical accommodations of all campuses - for special education students and will ultimately raise the bar for all kids.

``People who are not provided with the right support are going to fail,'' said June Dowing, education professor and special education expert at California State University, Northridge.

``So dumping special education students into a general education class without the right support or without adapting the course material is not inclusion. It's dumping. And that's what's happened.''

CHIME Charter Elementary School, run in cooperation with CSUN, has become a model for inclusion, she said.

Ben Adams, a parent who fought for years for integration, called the court order a civil rights victory for disabled children.

``The federal law says that you have to give kids with disabilities the opportunity to interact with kids without disabilities,'' says Adams, whose teen-age son attends University High School in Los Angeles. ``And you just can't do that when kids without disabilities are not on the site.''

The plan is one of the latest under the Chanda Smith consent decree, a 1996 settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed by Smith's parents. Committees comprised of parents and district officials have worked to improve programs and services since then.

LAUSD attorneys in August went to court to try to modify the order, opposing quotas and the phasing-out of special centers.

But U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Lew ruled that school officials are bound by the legal promise they made.

Adams, who helped draft the new plan, said greater diversity will help all children. His son, who has cognitive and learning disabilities as well as orthopedic handicaps, has been in mainstream classes since second grade.

``It hasn't been easy. It's been challenging. Sometimes it's been wonderful,'' Adams says. ``I like the idea of classes being mixed up. The more kids my son goes to school with, the better I feel his chances are for not having to live a totally segregated life.''

Under a 1997 federal law, schools must ensure children with disabilities are educated in the least restrictive environment and with children who are not disabled.

More than 83,000 special education students in Los Angeles Unified have disabilities and the school district spends about $1 billion annually on special education alone.

About 48,000 are already fully integrated in classes. About 30,000 attend special classes on general education campuses. The remaining 4,600 students, or about 5 percent of the special education population, attend special centers like Miller because their parents have chosen to send them there.

Miller High Principal Wayne Foglesong said the school has remained an option for parents with moderately to severely disabled children.

``Here they become the center of attention. Everything is designed specifically for them. We aim to teach them functional academics and life skills and our expectations for them are high.''

One class teaches students to bake cookies, which are sold to general education campuses and private businesses. Students learn to interact and work as teams, to measure ingredients and count money - and to make cookies. The money from sales go to sustain the program.

Other classes teach students to work on computers, to write checks, to get around town.

Jaque-Anton, LAUSD assistant superintendent heading up the Division of Special Education, said special education schools are working on draft plans due by the end of this year.

``There are many ways to do this that are very exciting. It's a way of saying we embrace all children. We can educate all children. And to the greatest degree possible, we educate them together.''

She said the district's goal is to get 85 percent of students with disabilities integrated for at least 80 percent of the day over the next five years. The remaining 20 percent of the day would be spent in special classes.

For some students, she said, the least restrictive environment would be at a special center.

Some students wear diapers, and require special education assistants who change them and rooms in which they can be changed.

Other students with severe brain damage must wear helmets and need constant supervision. Some can't chew. Others have severe behavioral problems.

Miller High parent Donna Bryan's daughter has a rare disability called Smith-Magenis syndrome characterized by retardation, tantrums, aggressive behavior and hyperactivity. Her daughter, Andie, has been known to overturn desks and throw chairs across the room.

Bryan tried a mainstream middle school when she first moved to the San Fernando Valley.

``I got a call a few hours later. They had her by a tree. It took three security guards to hold her down. They told me they didn't think it would work out and that I needed to look for another school,'' said Bryan, Miller's PTA president.

``While she's been here, she's been a cheerleader. She's been in school plays. She's gone off-campus to cheer at games. She's been on the yearbook staff. She's had a better range of social activities than I had when I was in high school, and I'm glad.''

Others worry their children will wind up segregated in special classes anyway.

``The people who developed this plan want our children to be accepted. So this whole push comes from a good place,'' Clemens said.

``They want our children to feel like they're members of society and they want normal children to get used to seeing them. But they have to be prepared for that, and I think there aren't enough resources to do that. The kids who already can go there are already there.''

Parent Darlene Blake originally enrolled her son Shane in a mainstream program to facilitate his socialization.

``But by the eighth grade it was painfully clear that he had no peers at the school, except in the special day class, and the regular education environment was stressful for him,'' said Blake, whose son now attends Leichman High in Reseda.

``He is more relaxed (now), more independent, and requires far less seizure medication. I cannot prove that going to Leichman reduced Shane's needs for medication,'' she said, ``but it is one of many positive changes that have occurred since he transferred.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) The Joaquin Miller High School cheerleading squad practices during first period at the Reseda campus for students with severe to moderate physical and mental disabilities.

(2 -- color) Teacher Sherri Maranto, center, explains how to measure ingredients for making cookie dough to Miller High special education students Tara Sharif, left, and Johanna Guzman.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer