Special ed students deserve a fair break from LVUSD

In this age of political correctness, it astonishes me that articles such as "Special education a major drain on public schools" (The Acorn, July 1) continue to appear in print under the guise of news. The Acorn has published virtually the same article several times in the last few years. It is basically the school district’s company line describing how those bothersome special ed kids are ruining the school district, squeezing the life out of the budget and taking away programs from the normal, more deserving kids.

This kind of article serves one purpose and one purpose only: to encourage the prejudice that feeds resentment against a part of our population that is most unable to defend itself.

Yes, special ed is expensive. So are many things.

If Mr. Donald Zimring of Las Virgenes Unified School District wants to spark a true debate on the value of things vs. the benefits, let’s have a real discussion that doesn’t shy away from the actual concept behind his words, i.e., who is worth it in our society and who isn’t?

Let’s debate the thousands upon thousands of dollars the district pays lawyers to keep special ed kids from claiming the education that has been promised to them by the federal government. Or the salaries of those fat cat bureaucrats whose jobs depend on fighting the special ed kids? (I’ll never forget the district psychologist who told my husband, "You don’t understand––these kids are our livelihood," when trying to explain why she wouldn’t give him copies of our child’s school file.)

How about new construction in the district? I remember noting how the district administrators were sitting in a lovely new building when my then-preschoolers were shoved into hot bungalows on the middle school campus with a tiny unshaded playground stuck on the edge of a parking lot.

Yes, I’m a parent of a special needs child. And I have sat on the other side of the table from district bureaucrats who have looked me straight in the eye and lied to me about what my child needs to learn or about the qualifications of district employees who have been "trained" (one-half day in a workshop) to educate my kid and about why the district was flagrantly ignoring the legal agreement they had signed with my family in a strong-arm attempt to crush our family under financial burden.

We aren’t fighting the district anymore. And we have met wonderful district employees who work directly with our child in the classroom. But let’s not rub salt in the old wounds and say that the special ed kids are the main problem—the only problem—with the school’s budget. The economic problems of the district are much more complicated. But it’s so much easier to blame kids who literally can’t defend themselves than to tackle the deeper issues.

Sounds something like earlier, less enlightened days in history when them blacks were blamed for the ills of the South or those Jews were blamed for the economy of Europe or so many other times when the non-ruling demographic became the scapegoat for ills that were much bigger and more complicated.

Let’s not feed the monster. Let’s not point fingers at the defenseless handicapped kids. And let’s not, for God’s sake, print Donald Zimring’s personal prejudice and pretend that it’s news.

Leslie Haukoos

Agoura