Los Angeles parent Clenisha Cargin calls LAUSD school officials for help with her young son.
Cargin, the mother of a first grader on the autism spectrum at Westmont’s district school, calls the principal. Next, she moved on to be the school’s special education coordinator and then the district superintendent.
Curgin also said he “legally (talks) to his teacher every day.”
A juvenile’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP) – a legal document that is binding under the state and federal disability laws – entitles him to certain services from LAUSD. (To protect his privacy, Cargin requested that his son’s name not be used.) He needs speech therapy. He also needs a dedicated classroom aide, as he is prone to explosions and away from his desk.
However, halfway through the 2022-23 school year, your child has not received any of these services. Neither did he get them during his LAUSD distance learning in 2020 and his 2021.
“We’re seeing regressions,” says Cargin, both behaviorally and academically. “I don’t think he’s where he should be.”
Under an April 2022 agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, LAUSD will help Kagin’s son and each of the approximately 66,000 district students with disabilities compensate for services illegally denied in remote areas. eligibility for “compensatory education” for school education.
Related: ‘You can’t make that time back’: Parents seek special education services lost to COVID
After eight months, parents and advocates say the plan’s unfolding is uneven at best and often confusing due to minimal support for parents. The process is so opaque, they say, that lawyers may be needed to secure even the most basic services.
“Parents don’t know what their rights are, so they can’t hold school districts accountable,” said Lisa Mosco Barros, district parent and founder of advocacy group SpEducational. said.
“What we have in this school district is a crisis of awareness and information available to parents,” she said. “There should also be an awareness campaign on the part of LAUSD to explain to families what compensatory education is and why their children are eligible for compensation.”
Advocates across the country welcomed the deal with LAUSD, the country’s second-largest school district, as it could be a pivotal moment in the recovery of public schools from the pandemic. His November resolution in Fairfax County, Virginia, was the result of a similar investigation, drawing renewed attention to the problem of setbacks, especially students with disabilities, suffered during the pandemic.
But LA parents with children with special needs say the deal only highlights issues long before March 2020.
In a statement, an LAUSD spokesperson said more than 38,000 IEP meetings “with individual compensatory education decisions” had been completed as of December 1. Outreach He conducted meetings and trained thousands of staff on implementing the plan. ”
However, it is unclear what “decision” was made—how many of the 38,000 students whose IEP was reviewed actually qualified for makeup services.
Determining who qualifies comes down to analysis. In addition to parents, the IEP team includes the student’s teacher, special education coordinator, and assistant principal, but records have been reviewed to ensure that during the months disrupted by COVID, she will not be attending the services listed on the IEP. must be determined whether the student has received If not, districts must provide them.
Under federal agreement, IEP teams are required to thoroughly discuss this analysis with parents at their annual meeting, but advocates say they skip it entirely.
“As a general theme, school districts do not provide compensatory services,” said Jill Rowland, education program director for the Children’s Rights Alliance, which advocates for foster youth.
Rowland and other attorneys on her team representing low-income families in LA have kept quiet about compensatory education at nearly 30 IEP conferences this year. It’s getting dark. Parents should therefore enter into informal dispute resolution, a process that takes up to 20 business days to secure the additional services their child needs.
“Well, if you have a lawyer, it’s all good,” Rowland said. “That’s not going to help the majority of children.”
Kagin also received the silence treatment. At his son’s IEP meeting in August, no one at his school mentioned compensatory education, Cargin said. Four months later, despite Cargin’s constant pressure, her son still had no speech therapy or classroom support.
“School districts are really bad at notifying parents about anything,” she said.
Related: Virtual Nightmare: One Student’s Journey Through the Pandemic
Ariel Herman Holmes, parent, attorney, and vice chair of the District Special Education Regional Advisory Committee, said she doubted the parent’s experience varied “massively” from school to school.
She considers herself one of the lucky ones.
My son Elijah, a fourth grader at LAUSD School in Sherman Oaks, has an IEP for autism. Handwriting is a hassle for him, so he avoids it. Although he’s on the trail of a gifted learner, his ability to create letters on the page is kindergarten level.
Harman-Holmes said the leadership of the school’s assistant principal in charge of special education was “excellent.”
She and Elijah’s IEP team met many times this fall. They reviewed what support he received during his remote schooling and discussed whether his problems were behavioral, academic, or physical.
They eventually agreed that Elijah needed compensatory occupational therapy.
However, the process was not trouble-free. Harman-Holmes had to enter informal dispute resolution because the IEP team members were unable to independently authorize the service.
‘They were like, ‘You gotta go’ [informal dispute resolution],”’ she said.
During a presentation to the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education (one of five groups the school district has for parent groups) this fall, member Kelly Coleman said that other parents were thinking about the plans. I was afraid I didn’t know that existed.
“If I wasn’t there [committee], I don’t have this information. How does the Department of Special Education ensure that all families are aware and understand all of this?”
Other proponents say outreach sessions are far from reducing it, given the district’s size and demographics. According to U.S. Census Bureau data compiled by the Department of Education, nearly 22% of her families in the district are below the poverty level, and nearly 12% of families don’t speak English “very well.”
“Case managers for all children with IEP should contact families by phone, email, and backpack notice to let them know that the child may be eligible for compensatory education,” Mosko said. says Barros. “As far as I know, it hasn’t happened.”
Westmont’s mother, Cargin, said she had been trying to get the district to pay for private services long before the resolution was announced last April. But she doesn’t blame her son’s teachers or school administrators. “I think they’re getting the same answers and the same detours as me,” she said.
And then there’s the case of Isaiah Gardner.
Medically frail at the age of 14, Isaiah needs constant attention at school. He needs nursing support, speech therapy, and adaptive physical education. He speaks using a communication device. He lost all of these services when the pandemic started.
Through a series of administrative procedures, Isaiah’s mother, Tiffany Gardner, secured the promise of hundreds of hours of service and rewards worth thousands of dollars from the district. But by the time the final settlement agreement was reached in December 2021, she was fed up. The district’s denial of service, including banning Isaiah from classrooms after in-person schooling resumed in April 2021, has humiliated her son.
“I felt like you guys didn’t want him here. You don’t value him as a student, you don’t value him as a member of the community,” Gardner said.
LAUSD will not discuss the Gardner case or any other case with The 74.
On April 15th, the single mother flew her three sons to Dallas so they could attend a public school outside of Mansfield known for its Disability Services. Her transition has been hard for Isaiah, she said. He still speaks regularly on the phone with LA Unified nurses and teachers.
But Gardner feels she made the right decision. And she wants to remind her parents during her IEP meetings that they have a choice.
“Often, people don’t realize that their voice is as important as anyone else in the room. ‘What you do about your child is your call.'”
For more information on LAUSD’s comped education plan, please visit https://achieve.lausd.net/compedplan.
Parents can also email Covid-Comp-Ed-Plan@lausd.net or call (213) 241-7696.
