Turn up the lights
By Frank Gruber
For years, since this column's earliest days ( "Politics
Without Power," May 11, 2001), I've been writing about
how school boards in California don't have much power because they don't
control their revenues, and that this lack of power has had an impact
on how they conduct themselves.
This "political culture of helplessness," to quote myself,
has been bad news for California schools.
It's always amazed me that in Santa Monica, for example, some of the
most capable, intelligent and articulate people you could ever meet
get elected to the school board, and then when they are on the dais,
they start spouting platitudes and are afraid to venture an opinion
before hearing what the superintendent has to say.
Last Thursday evening, as I sat in the audience watching the school
board discuss the special education audit ("Special
Ed Parents Plead for Change," April 4, 2008), and as I
shook my figurative head about how, when presented with this long-awaited
report, and testimony from parents of special needs children and other
members of the community, only one board member could muster enough
initiative to give direction to District staff about what to do, I came
up with a new theory.
Maybe it wasn't, as I have posited before, the combination of the Serrano
v. Priest equal funding decision and Prop. 13 that had turned the board
into a bowl of jelly, but rather something more specific.
Instead, I'm thinking that it's the lighting.
Anyway that's what occurred to me when I was sitting there listening
to the equivocations. It's dark in the District's meeting room. The
members of the board sit on a dais that's been lit like a cocktail lounge.
Maybe they just sit there and get depressed, and lose their wills,
because of the gloom.
The report by consultants Lou Barber & Associates analyzed the
District's special education program at both the micro and the macro
levels. It's fair to say that Mr. Barber and his team gave the District
good marks on the details, like the quality of its written materials,
but criticized it heavily on the big issues, like how the special ed
administrators treat their staff and the parents of special needs children.
Consultant Barber emphasized -- going beyond his prepared remarks --
that fundamentally, before talking about specific programs, the issue
was one of attitude; the District had attitude problems, and he said
that they were the "paramount piece" to fix. This issue of
attitude, everyone seemed to agree, started at the top, at the board,
and demanded "leadership."
But when presented with this report that showed that this attitude
problem was reflected in, for instance, what turns out to be the District's
highly unusual practice of resorting to private settlement agreements
to determine the educational services afforded to many special needs
students, and which also reported that the delivery of services to these
children was often characterized by fear-inducing abuse, the response
from most board members was to punt to the superintendent.
Board Member Maria Leon-Vasquez: "our superintendent is really
going to look into this."
Board Member Jose Escarce: "the board is looking forward to the
superintendent's response."
Board Member Kelly Pye: she has "full confidence in our superintendent."
Board Member Ralph Mechur: although he agreed with Mr. Barber about
the urgency of addressing the attitude issues, his substantive response
was to commend the staff on its "willingness to respond quickly."
Board Member Kathy Wisnicki commendably said that these issues were
"areas the board needs to take control of," but she didn't
offer any motions that might reflect how the board might do that.
Only Board Member Barry Snell, who at least asked Mr. Barber a series
of relevant questions, and Board President Oscar de la Torre who, as
reported in The Lookout's article, actually took a stand on
what the District's future policies should be, showed that they knew
for what purpose they were sitting on the dais.
Can you imagine how the Santa Monica City Council would have responded
if an outside consultant had delivered such a report to them about the
operations of an important City program? A city manager under the city
manager form of government has a lot of power independent of the city
council, and our council regularly demonstrates its high regard for
City Manager Lamont Ewell, but do you think that they would have waited
for his response before telling him what they believed he should do?
The board members may feel like they are respecting their staff, but
they are in fact doing them a disservice. Instead of advising the staff
of what the board wants in the way of policies, the staff now has to
devise them independently. If the board then wants something different,
they have to confront the staff. It's better to tell the staff what
you want.
The reason I am spending so much time on the board's non-reaction to
the report is that the problems with special education in the District
go way back, long before the controversy with confidentiality clauses
in settlement agreements. As I write this I'm looking at another report,
from 2000, written by another consultant, Frederick Weintraub, whom
the District hired to study problems in the special education program.
In that report, Mr. Weintraub noted that the relationship between the
Board and the District's Special Education District Advisory Committee
(SEDAC) was perceived by the committee as "hostile."
Not much has changed in that regard. In 2004 the District's Director
of Special Education delivered another report to the board; that led
to the board calling for the development of a strategic plan for special
education. Developed with a lot of involvement by parents through the
SEDAC, there is still a lot of resentment among parents that the board
and staff ignored the plan.
When reviewing this history and talking to people about it, two points
jump out: (1) everyone marvels at how dysfunctional the situation has
been here, where the District spends more money on special education
than most other districts and yet our special education parents seem
less happy than others, and (2) nobody can tell me just when things
went bad.
I have written quite a few columns (see links below) about the special
education issue and the politics that affect the relationship between
the City and the District over funding. I don't believe that anyone
has been right all the time (including myself). Many parents are justly
aggrieved and the District appears guilty of both bad attitudes and
bad policies, but there is no denying that special education presents
major funding problems that the District must find a means to control.
Personally, I've at times focused on the idea (and I hope the reality)
that for the majority of special needs children and their parents, the
District does a good job. Mr. Barber, however, has persuaded me that
one can't evaluate the success of a special ed program on the basis
of averaged statistics, but rather that programs (and attitudes) had
to work for everyone.
What is plain from the Barber report is that the District's policy
of using a centralized system of negotiators, who resolve educational
issues by private negotiation separate from the normal "individual
education plan" process, has been a failure. While it may have
resulted in marginal savings in legal fees, it has resulted in an overall
increase in expenditures as the District has had to increase administrative
staffing.
I am no expert on special education policies, but what I keep reading
about and hearing from people in the know is that the only way to control
costs and provide services that both satisfy parents and the law is
to develop programs in-house that reflect considered choices about method.
In an interview after the meeting, consultant Barber told me that one
problem with the private settlement agreements is that they work against
this in-house goal, by empowering nonpublic providers of services rather
than the schools. In his words, "you can't build capacity [in the
District] by separating the nonpublic from the public."
I spoke to the parent of an autistic child and his experience backed
that up. His son attends one of our middle schools, but he spends half
the school day in a private program receiving one-on-one services, at
the District's considerable expense. His son is going to move on to
high school; the parent told me that he would be happy, and his son
would be happy, if the District ran a program at Samohi for the half-day
that his son needs for special services.
This program need not, he said, be one-on-one; it could be one-to-three,
for instance, but even if it were one-on-one, if it were provided in-house,
it would be less expensive for the district. But as it is, because an
outside provider provides the current services, the District gains no
experience from them that would help them establish an in-house program.
It's time for the Board of Education to turn up the lights and examine
-- themselves -- the District's special education program.
Frank Gruber's previous columns on the 2007-08 special education and
school funding controversies:
"People
Who Govern in Glass Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones," May 29, 2007
"The
Council and the District (Part 1)," June 4, 2007
"The
Council and the District (Part 2)," June 5, 2007
"Should
Mum be the Word?" June 11, 2007
"A
Bigger Mess, Part 1," June 18, 2007
"A
Bigger Mess, Part 2," June 19, 2007
"It's
Time to Take the Pledge," Oct. 22, 2007
Meeting notice:
Tomorrow night the City Council takes up an important development issue:
a proposed development agreement for an entertainment production facility
at 2834 Colorado Avenue. For the staff report, see item
8-A on the agenda. |
