Groups File Suit to Compel LAUSD to Open Doors to Students With Disabilities

Speak UP’s Lisa Mosko runs a task force with Speak UP parents whose kids have disabilities. Parents have been calling on LAUSD to provide the services guaranteed in student IEPs.

One day after LAUSD shut down its campuses to the small number of high-needs students who were receiving in-person special education services, the Alliance for Children’s Rights and the Learning Rights Law Center filed a lawsuit against LAUSD and Superintendent Austin Beutner asking the court to compel the district to reopen and start serving the 25% of high-needs kids that the Los Angeles County Health Department has allowed on campuses in small cohorts since mid-September.

“In Los Angeles County today, shopping malls and retail stores are open, at up to 20% of their capacities,” attorneys Alex Romain of Milbank LLP, Valerie Vanaman and Alexis Casillas wrote in the lawsuit. “But for students in the Los Angeles Unified School District, their schools – all of them – are closed.”

The lawsuit filed in the California Supreme Court claims that LAUSD’s blanket policy to shut down campuses this week violates the SB98 law, which requires schools to offer in-person instruction whenever possible. The failure to offer in-person instruction, special education assessments and services “will irreparably harm thousands of LAUSD students who simply cannot access the educational curriculum through distance learning,” the suit said.

In a recent Speak UP survey, 76% parents of kids with disabilities reported that their kids could not learn effectively via distance learning, and 74% reported that their kids were regressing. 

“There is no question that severe learning loss has already occurred, is ongoing, and will lead to irreparable harm for these students,” the suit added. “This slow-motion catastrophe—with potentially irreversible and life-long negative consequences for students—can and should be immediately addressed, consistent with state and local public health guidelines.”

LAUSD’s decision this week, as well as its failure before this week to offer any in-person instruction on campus and only special education assessments and services for a few thousand of the 80,000 students with disabilities, violates the legal rights of these children, whose Individualized Education Programs are guaranteed by state and federal law, the suit alleges.

“It also ignores the relevant public health guidance,” the suit said. “Since September 2, 2020, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has consistently maintained that for those who need it, in-person instruction and services can be provided safely, in small cohorts, following the Department’s safety protocols.”

Alex Romain is the lead attorney from Milbank on the lawsuit.

Even the latest Safer at Home order exempted schools. In fact, the El Segundo School Unified School District, right across the LAUSD border in Westchester, reopened its doors this week to young students under a TK-2 waiver.

The biggest obstacle to serving kids in person was LAUSD’s decision to agree to a side letter with United Teachers Los Angeles in August, stating that no UTLA member can be required to return to campus until schools reopen for all students. 

UTLA has consistently opposed allowing its members to offer in-person instruction to high-needs students on campus and only recently allowed its teachers to volunteer after school to offer special education services, assessments and 1:1 tutoring. Because only a small number of teachers volunteered, fewer than 4,000 of LAUSD’s 650,000 students were receiving any services on campus until this week’s shutdown.

“To be clear, this petition does not seek to compel any student, teacher, or staff with high-risk factors—or who lives with someone with high-risk factors—to participate in or provide in-person instruction or services,” the lawsuit said. “Instead, the Petitioners seek to enjoin the District from denying these services to those who want it and for whom it is an essential service.”

Carla Suárez-Capdet’s child was one of the few thousand receiving special education services on campus. Her kindergartener has autism, and after weeks of advocating, she finally got her son’s special education teacher and occupational therapist to help him on their LAUSD campus in the San Fernando Valley after school starting last week. “It was amazing,” she said. “He was so excited.” 

Suárez-Capdet questioned why private schools and wealthier districts with TK-2 waivers still have campuses open, while LAUSD schools all shut down. “If it’s truly a public health issue, everyone should be sent home. If it’s not that bad, let my son continue to get what he needs,” she said. “I’m encouraged by the lawsuit because at this point, it’s the only way LAUSD is going to listen. Enough is enough. We need to come through for these kids.”

The lawsuit, while narrowly tailored to address the needs of students with disabilities, comes amid a national conversation about the need to safely reopen schools as soon as possible. President-elect Joe Biden this week named safely reopening schools as one of his top three priorities for his first 100 days in office.  

San Francisco Democratic Assemblyman Phil Ting also introduced a bill this week that would require schools to resume in-person learning within two weeks of their county falling out of the most restrictive purple tier. It would go into effect March 1. 

Local leaders have also begun emphasizing the need for schools to reopen safely. Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin and Council President Nury Martinez sponsored a resolution this week urging Governor Gavin Newsom and public health officials to prioritize providing teachers and school support staff with COVID-19 vaccines “so that we can safely reopen schools and get students back into the classroom quickly,” Bonin said.

“Getting our kids back in school, for in-person learning, is an urgent imperative,” Bonin wrote in a Facebook post Thursday. “Even the best remote learning programs lack the academic, social and psychological benefits of being in a classroom, with fellow students and a teacher. During this pandemic, the needs of our children have too often been pushed aside. It has been a huge moral failing and a betrayal of low-income children, particularly kids of color.”