By Doug Miller
The Long Beach School District performed so poorly in a state-mandated audit of its special education programs last summer that about a million dollars in federal aid to the district was withheld.
In a presentation to the Long Beach Board of Education Tuesday night, Dr. Mary Tatem, the district's director of pupil personnel services, said that a routine state audit led to the district's being cited for the percentage of its minority students who are classified as needing special education but who are sent out of the district for schooling, and for the length of time those students are kept out-of-district.
"We seem to have more than the 'allowed' number of minority students pulled out than [the state] would like," Tatem said.
Written reports to the state in response to an auditor's questions were also found to be unsatisfactory, she said, failing to provide specific enough answers or proper budgetary figures.
The district was also cited for not meeting phys. ed. standards for its special ed. students. According to state regulations, special ed. students in elementary school are required to receive up to 120 minutes per week of structured physical activity, whether in gym class, at recess or, if that isn't possible, at their desks, under certified supervision. The sessions must be spread throughout the week, but Long Beach schools were limiting them to three days a week.
The audit was not the result of any specific complaint or incident, Tatem explained, but was something to be expected due to the length of time since the last one, in 1998. "It was sort of our turn," she said.
Tatem said she had been working with each principal to bring the program into compliance, and said she had received assurances from the state that about 80 percent of the withheld aid would be released to the district immediately.
The district has had a troubled history with its special education programs, specifically with the way it treats its minority students. The district was blasted in a state report three years ago for having a disproportionate number of minority students enrolled in special ed., the report suggesting that these students might be less in need of individual education plans than of teachers who could identify with them.
According to the report, state regulators suspected that the reason Long Beach had so many minority students in special ed. was because the teachers, who were and are predominantly white, were ill-equipped to deal with minority students' behavioral problems, the report said, and thus were too hasty to classify them as in need of special education.
"It's actually a national epidemic," Superintendent of Schools Dr. Robert Greenberg said Tuesday night. "Minority kids are called emotionally disturbed, while white kids are said to have learning disabilities."
The report strongly suggested the immediate hiring of more minority teachers, but school officials said privately that that task was more difficult than it sounds. "We want minority teachers, but we also insist they be good teachers," said one Board of Education trustee. "Unfortunately, for whatever reason, when we find them, they don't stay."
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