LBUSD urged to audit accessibility practices

The Special Education Advisory Committee (CAC) presented a list of recommendations to the Long Beach Unified School District at the Oct. 16 board meeting to address recurrent accessibility issues across the district. 

The CAC works with the district to support students with disabilities by sharing their concerns, experiences and needs and recommending specific program improvements as well as educating parents on student’s rights.

CAC Secretary Jackie Chavez said that to come up with this year’s recommendations, they looked back to past board recommendations as well as listened to parent feedback and comments from their CAC meetings. 

Chavez said the CAC team looked back as early as 2017 for an overview of successful recommendations and areas for improvements. 

What’s working

According to the progress report based on this data, the CAC board believes “there is a genuine effort by many at the district to see all students succeed.” 

One of the greatest wins according to Chavez is the implementation of collaborative co-teaching, one of last year’s recommendations that involves a general education and special education teacher working together to lead a class.

Robin Chen, an LBUSD parent, said co-teaching has allowed more students to be educated together instead of alienating students with disabilities; this practice makes them feel like they belong.

“I don’t know where folks think that students with disabilities go after school,” Chen said. “They think they drive on special ed roads and live in special ed homes and shop at the special ed Target, but there’s only one world, and co-teaching is righting a wrong that we have been committing against our students for decades.”

Advocating for a systemwide audit

The CAC also looked at less successful recommendations, the two most prominent and recurring being requests to improve Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meetings and professional development.

“When you have the same complaints and you have the same areas of need being highlighted year after year, I’m telling you, there’s something broken, and we got to fix it,” Chavez said. 

Based on these problem areas, the CAC’s first recommendation was for the district to perform an IEP system audit of LBUSD-specific practices, procedures, implementation, accountability and success rates. This audit would identify logistical issues such as scheduling and interpretation in order to know what needs to be addressed.

Chavez said scheduling issues have consistently been brought up by parents at CAC meetings as one of the main challenges when it comes to the IEP process as well as a lack of implementation of these practices. Another barrier that is repeatedly brought up is the lack of or greatly delayed interpretation and translation services. 

“If you don’t understand what’s going on, if you can’t read the documents [then] you can’t actively participate, and being able to actively participate in an IEP is fundamental,” Chavez said.

Board member Juan Benitez said that while he recognizes the purpose of the audit, his concern is about the effectiveness of spending resources on a report that will simply further confirm these already-identified problem areas. 

Chavez said that the goal of the audit is to bring these issues to the attention of the board. 

Addressing campus culture and facilities

The CAC’s second recommendation is for the district to further coach and train staff on the following topics: :

• Purpose and implementation of special education learning plans
• Setting high-achieving measurable goals and outcomes
• Evidence-based best practices of instruction for diverse learners
• Anti-ableism culture and sensitivity training 

The third recommendation is for the district to perform an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance audit and create an accessibility optimization plan. The ADA compliance audit would look at every LBUSD facility and grounds  — including playgrounds — to report their accessibility for students with disabilities. CAC also recommended the district immediately address and change unsafe, inaccessible or segregated classrooms or meeting spaces for students.                                                   

“If you can’t enter the facility, or there are a great deal of barriers to get into the facility, you can’t learn [and] you’re just adding that many more layers for a family, for a student, to get to where they have to be,” Chavez said.

Beyond the IEP process 

The CAC’s fourth and final recommendation is for the district to perform an Alternate Dispute Resolutions (ADR) audit. ADR is an informal method of settling disagreements outside of a student’s IEP team. 

Parents of students with disabilities can resort to ADR to address any issues with their child’s IEP plan. The CAC is advocating for an audit to gather data on the effectiveness of ADR in the district as well as to identify what individualized strategies can be applied systemwide. 

“If you can really crunch down on those breakdowns, it gives you this unique window to make better-informed choices and adjustments to the curriculum, to any policies, any programs, any sites, any development,” Chavez said, adding that they would also like to see these findings reported at a future board meeting. 

The next steps include potentially creating an action plan to implement these recommendations. 

“This is an opportunity to center the voice of those who are feeling marginalized and having to come forward and make a set of recommendations in the courageous way that they have tonight, and I want us to thoughtfully proceed in the way that we, with the community, create an action plan,” Superintendent Jill Baker said.