L.A. Times Article, June 3, 2010
LRLC Executive Director Janeen Steel responds to LAUSD’s Comments:
The Los Angeles Times article “Disabled students losing 200 classes” by Howard Blume on Thursday, June 3, 2010 was troubling.
As the Executive Director of Learning Rights Law Center, I was shocked at the overt discriminatory statements made by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent Ramone C. Cortines, “You have to look at it in perspective, when you fund some of the special ed things, you’re taking from regular kids.” Over the past 10 years, I have been representing low-income students with disabilities throughout Los Angeles and have seen the disparity in treatment and discrimination first hand.
Cortines makes clear that there are two separate and very different classes of students at LAUSD, “regular kids” and special needs students. Are children with special needs abnormal? It is estimated that 10% of the population has a disability. School funding is not an us versus them scenario – all children must be treated equally regardless of disability, race, or class. Disabilities must be accommodated and that is just a normal part of doing business as a school, not an exceptional burden.
Cortines’ outdated paradigm of disability as “other” harkens back to the troubling racial beliefs of the late 1800s. In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States held in Plessy v. Ferguson that “[i]f one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.” Would Cortines have us return to the politics of 1896? Thankfully, enlightenment came 60 years later in Brown et.al. v. Board of Education which overruled Plessy and held that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place” for it is “inherently unequal.”
Our ideas about differences among people fortunately have changed drastically since then, as has our perception of the place of law in our society. We now expect that our leaders and laws will work to eliminate discrimination and inequality in our society. Our current laws state that “[d]isability is a natural part of the human experience and in no way diminishes the right of individuals to participate in or contribute to society. Improving educational results for children with disabilities is an essential element of our national policy of ensuring equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for individuals with disabilities.”
Funding has always been used as an excuse for discrimination. Segregationists used funding as an excuse to oppose and delay the integration of African American children in public schools and, while this is no longer a politically correct position to take with regard to race, apparently LAUSD believes it remains an acceptable position towards children with disabilities.
In 1972 Mills v Board of Education of the District of Columbia et. al spearheaded the federal protections for children with disabilities. The court stated regarding the funding: “If sufficient funds are not available to finance all of the services and programs that are needed and desirable in the system then the available funds must be expended equitably in such a manner that no child is entirely excluded from a publicly supported education consistent with his needs and ability to benefit therefrom. The inadequacies of the…Public School System whether occasioned by insufficient funding or administrative inefficiency, certainly cannot be permitted to bear more heavily on the “exceptional” or handicapped child.”
We must not tolerate the discriminatory actions of the people charged to educate the students in the public school system. Let’s not erase the good that took over a century to accomplish.
