By Kathleen Acuff
The autistic third-grader removed from school by her parents will not return to Springer Elementary School before the January placement decision by the state Special Education Hearing Office (SEHO) or some other agreement between the parents and the Los Altos Elementary School District.
Judge Gregory Ward of the Santa Clara County Superior Court also ruled that the child need not be taught privately at Springer, although her parents, Sam and Shifteh Samari, must “take all reasonable steps” to comply with the state law on compulsory education.
In her Dec. 15 brief for the school district, attorney Eliza J. McArthur wrote: “(D)efendants now concede an issue that LAESD sought from defendants informally all along - after substantial expense to the district, both in … funds (and in) the interruption of the educational mission of teachers/staff for evidentiary purposes.”
The district’s brief concluded with a request that the temporary restraining order issued in November be continued. Judge Ward, however, dissolved that order and instructed the district to take no further action against the student.
The Samaris have declined further discussion with reporters. “We intend to pursue legal means against the district until the matter is settled,” Mr. Samari told the Town Crier by e-mail last week.
Second round
of SEHO hearings
Although the first civil court hearing was Dec. 15, due process hearings scheduled for early January will mark the second round with the SEHO.
Before her parents transferred her to Springer this year, the Samaris’ younger daughter attended kindergarten through second grade at Loyola Elementary School. She was mainstreamed in accordance with her Individual Education Plan in the first and second grade.
When the educators and aides on her IEP team recommended scaling back her discrete trial therapy (DTT) program after her triennial assessment in March 2002, her parents objected.
The district filed a due process case Aug. 23, 2002, and testimony was heard in late September and early October 2002. The question at issue was whether the district was offering the child, in the parlance of education law, “a free and appropriate education.”
The Samaris requested that the district not reduce the number of hours of the home program of DTT it was providing their child. They insisted that aides assigned to her receive training in the DTT method developed by the Lovaas Institute of Early Intervention (LIFE) in addition to the training they already had. The institute uses the model of applied behavior analysis developed by Dr. O. Ivar Lovaas, LIFE’s director. The parents further asked for veto authority over hiring decisions for district personnel who would work with their daughter.
The district prevailed in that due process hearing. The SEHO found that the recommended revision of the Samari child’s IEP met all requirements of law, provided a reasonable education for the girl and was well supervised. The office also found no reason that the parents should have veto power over the district’s hiring decisions.
The revised IEP remained in place when the student entered third grade at Springer. Toward the end of October, according to court documents filed in the request for the temporary restraining order, the Samaris again demanded that a representative of LIFE supervise the DTT and that only an aide trained in the Lovaas method of DTT work with their child. They withdrew the third-grader from school, alleging “barbaric treatment.”
“The present situation facing our child is the result of negligence on the part of the district in providing the services that they were ordered to provide during the first hearing …,” Mr. Samari wrote to the Town Crier Dec. 2.
November civil court testimony
In a civil hearing last month, Charlene Luks, the district’s director of pupil services, testified that she heard the LIFE consultant’s report at the Nov. 4 IEP team meeting, which included Mr. and Mrs. Samari.
“One of the recommendations in that report was that (the child) may need a period of weeks in a more restrictive environment in order to bring her behaviors under control,” Luks said.
At the IEP meeting, Luks presented a written proposal that recommended that the student be taught in a tutorial room at her school while her recent behavior was evaluated. She also presented an assessment plan for “further evaluation at district expense of (the child’s) social, adaptive and emotional functioning, her communication skills in the area of problem solving, as well as for further functional analysis and reporting of existing behavioral data and data to be collected during the interim placement.”
The Samaris denied consent to both the interim placement and the district’s assessment plan, according to Luks’ court statement.
The Nov. 4 meeting was audiotaped, and Luks’ testimony includes the following remark, made by Mr. Samari during a discussion of his daughter’s behavior: “Kicking and biting is not unsafe. You can label it unsafe. … Don’t children kick and bite?”
However, in his Dec. 2 e-mail to the Town Crier, Mr. Samari said: “There has been no report about biting made to the school or us. … We were never aware of our child’s so-called dangerous behavior. The reports … from the school and the district-provided service provider did indicate that things were not moving as smoothly as they should. We became aware of complaints … when we met the district officials during our annual meeting to determine the level of services required for the new school year.”
Asked about Mr. Samari’s claim, Luks replied, “The district did not withhold any necessary information from the parents or the IEP team.”
Mrs. Samari has shown the child the news articles about her situation. “(My daughter) read the whole news. I felt it better for her to know,” she said.
Mrs. Samari said that her younger daughter feels sick and reluctant to leave the house. “But she’s working, doing her homework,” she added.
