Protest over special education draws parents from other schools

Organizers of a grassroots revolt against educational conditions for special education students at Lake Havasu High School said Tuesday that their efforts are bringing in parents from other schools with similar concerns.

The group gathered on South Palo Verde Boulevard outside the high school with handmade signs that expressed their concerns, including the lack of properly certified teachers, not enough teachers’ aides and students spending the day coloring rather than learning.

“We hear things from other schools now that they’re having the same problems,” said Toni Salatti, whose daughter, Jori, attends the Student Development Center at LHHS.

The organizers’ concerns center on the Student Development Center, the classroom for the high school’s most severely disabled students.

The class, with one teacher and one teacher’s aide, serves between 12 and 24 kids during the day, Salatti said. She and fellow parent Robin Flores, whose daughter, Mercedes, is in the class, don’t think that’s enough staff to meet the needs of students who require constant attention and suffer from a range of medical conditions.

“If something happens and the aide has to leave the room, that leaves the teacher alone with all those kids,” Salatti said.

Because of the shortage of experienced teachers and teachers’ aides, the students aren’t receiving proper instruction but are merely being kept busy until the day is over, Salatti said.

“They present us with a beautiful IEP (individualized education program) �” your child is going to get this and this and this �” and nothing happens all year,” Salatti said. “It’ s more like baby-sitting. It’s glorified baby-sitting. They color, they watch movies. I could do that at home for Jori.”

Smoketree Elementary School parent Deanna Schweizer joined the protest because she has similar concerns for her daughter, a 4-year-old in developmental preschool.

“I’ve come in and seen my daughter off to the side while the other kids are playing ring-around-the-rosy. My daughter can play ring-around-the-rosy. Why’s she back there (by herself)?” Schweizer said.

She’s so concerned about the instruction her daughter is receiving �” or not receiving �” Schweizer’s started paying for a one-on-one aide out of her own pocket, she said.

Charles Sica, who stopped by the protest to offer moral support, could relate to the parents’ frustrations. He’s the father of a developmentally disabled daughter, now 33, who went through the city’s schools in the 1990s.

“We had no services. We had to fight for everything,” Sica said. “It’s no fun dealing with what we have to deal with and having to fight for what their kids need, for what their kids deserve.”

Aggie Wolter, Lake Havasu Unified director of special services, said she couldn’t comment about the parents’ grievances until she meets with them today.

While all the district’s teachers are state certified, Wolter said the nationwide teacher shortage has made it difficult for the district to hire teachers with the additional certification of “highly qualified,” which the district normally requires.

“We have an extreme shortage of teachers and special education, science and math are hit the hardest,” Wolter said.

She said the district hired a “highly qualified” teacher for the high school’s Student Development Center this past summer, only to have that teacher back out of the agreement.

The district was forced to take the alternate route of hiring a teacher who had been “emergency certified” in special education. An emergency certification is issued by the state Department of Education for a one-year period on the condition that the teacher makes adequate progress toward becoming “highly qualified.”

Wolter said the district has 800 students in special education, 200 of whom are at the high school. Most of them have specific learning disabilities, but others suffer from an array of mental and physical conditions that can make the task of educating them “daunting,” she said.

“Most of our parents are very supportive of what we’re doing,” she said.

You may contact the reporter at dparker@havasunews.com.

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