As L.A. County Opens the Doors for Kids with Disabilities and English Learners to Return to Campus, Many Kindergarten Families Struggle, Opt Out of Distance Learning

Juan Capdet, Carla Suárez-Capdet and their son, who has autism and is struggling with online learning in kindergarten.

Distance learning has not been working at all for Carla Suárez-Capdet’s child who is enrolled in a special day kindergarten class at an LAUSD school in the San Fernando Valley. As soon as the new school year began, her typically mild-mannered son, who is on the autism spectrum, started regressing and injuring himself in ways she had not seen in three years.

“I don’t even recognize him,” said Suárez-Capdet, who serves on Speak UP’s Special Education Task Force. “He started slapping his forehead, pulling his hair out, and he kicked me with all his strength. It takes three adults to keep him on those Zooms. We’re like a pit crew.”

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health opened the door Wednesday to some relief for students like Suárez-Capdet’s son. Los Angeles County will allow schools to start offering on-campus instruction Sept. 14 to “small, stable, cohorts of K-12 students who need learning support,” including kids with disabilities who have Individualized Education Plans and English Learners. Schools are not required to file waivers to serve these kids.

"It's a positive step that the County is opening the door for students with high needs for whom distance learning isn't working to safely receive instruction and services in person on campus,” said Lisa Mosko, Speak UP's Director of Advocacy for Special Education and Educational Rights. “We encourage the district to explore all avenues to safely meet the needs of students with disabilities and English Learners. These vulnerable kids cannot be left behind." 

Debra Duardo, Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools, called the decision by the Public Health Department “very encouraging.”

It remains to be seen, however, whether LAUSD will pursue this opportunity and whether employee labor unions will agree. “Los Angeles Unified is evaluating the most recent guidance,” a district spokesperson said.

The president of United Teachers Los Angeles on Friday threw cold water on the notion that teachers will return to campus soon to serve the needs of these kids. "We know our students learn best in physical schools,” said UTLA President Cecily Myart-Cruz in a Facebook live broadcast. “But UTLA stands strongly against any physical return to schools unless it is safe to do so. That is not the case at this point. No UTLA members can be physically required to return to work until schools are physically reopened for all students. The new county guidelines do not allow the district to require a physical return to work for our members.”

Speak UP parent surveys on distance learning found that kids with special needs and English Learners received less live online instruction after campuses closed in March than neurotypical kids and native English speakers. A separate Speak UP survey found that more than 50% of parents said their kids with disabilities did not receive the services required in their IEPs after campuses closed. This threatens to exacerbate existing achievement gaps and opens up LAUSD to lawsuits for its failure to comply with federal disability law.

Even if an agreement is reached with UTLA allowing members to return, parents will still have the option to keep their high-needs students at home, which is precisely what Magda Vargas, a Speak UP parent leader and mom of an English Learner at Elizabeth Learning Center in Cudahy intends to do, even if LAUSD allows her daughter to return this month. "I would not send my daughter to school,” she said.

Many parents of young elementary students for whom distance learning is not working, however, are clamoring for another option. Los Angeles County is not yet accepting waivers from schools wanting to serve all elementary school students on campus, despite data suggesting that many parents do not think distance learning is viable for the youngest learners without a parent at home able to offer full-time help during the school day.

Kindergarten enrollment has plunged across Los Angeles Unified. According to figures LAUSD released this week, 6,000 fewer kindergarten students enrolled in LAUSD schools this year than last, which was three times the size of the typical kindergarten enrollment decline seen in recent years.

While enrollment declines were found at every income level, families with the lowest household incomes had the biggest declines, according to LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner, perhaps because parents who work outside the home are not available to provide the full-time help needed for young kids to succeed at distance learning, and childcare help is often not affordable.

Without kindergarten, vulnerable low-income kids such as English Learners are missing out on a critical early education window for language development and foundational reading skills, which threatens to create early achievement gaps that may be hard to overcome.

"This is yet another reminder that this crisis is having a disproportionate impact on low-income families," Beutner said. 

Because kindergarten is not mandatory, many families are deciding to delay starting school until next year, when their kids can learn in person on campus. Others will move their kids straight to first grade next year. While some low-income kids may be getting no education at all this fall, wealthier parents are keeping their kids in preschool an extra year or finding in-person private kindergarten options. And some stay-at-home parents also have the flexibility to homeschool.

Julie Picot, a mom of two kids, ages 2 and 5, in Sherman Oaks, toured and heard great things about her local LAUSD elementary school, Dixie Canyon. But when the pandemic hit, she decided to homeschool her oldest instead of doing distance learning. “Kids need to be able to play,” she said. “Having a kid sitting in front of a screen for more than a half hour, you’re going to lose them. Forcing them to sit still is not healthy.”

Dr. Tunette Powell, a mom of three kids in South Los Angeles and a leader of Speak UP’s African American Parent Advocacy Team, enrolled her youngest son in kindergarten online at Baldwin Hills Elementary because he needs contact (even on a screen) with kids his age, something he has not had at all since March. Nevertheless, it’s been hard for her as a working parent.

“Kindergarten is designed for a parent and child this school year,” Powell said. “That’s difficult. You’re expected to be there, but parents are still working, and if you’re not working, you’re definitely looking for work. I can’t sit there with my son. I hear instructions from teachers saying, ‘Go get your parents.’ I didn’t sign up for kindergarten. I’m in a meeting. You feel guilty about that. It’s hard.”

Distance learning is working fairly well for Jennifer Bauer’s youngest son, who just started kindergarten at LAUSD’s Coeur d’Alene Avenue elementary in Venice. Because she and her husband have an older son, they know their youngest is missing out on the social-emotional component of kindergarten, but the school, she said, has done a wonderful job with distance learning this fall, and her kindergartener is “fine with it. He’s a pretty easygoing kid.”

If the Zooms ever become too much for him, Bauer has no problem turning the device off and playing cards with her son instead. But she recognizes that her situation is not the norm in LAUSD. “I’m a stay-at-home mom, and not a lot of people have that privilege,” she said. “I don’t know how this would work if we were both working. I can’t imagine being a single parent.”

Heidi Moore, who lives in Valley Glen and teaches at a private Lutheran school, says that distance learning is “completely untenable” for a kindergartner without a parent at their side. Moore went back and forth about whether to enroll her son at the school where she teaches but ultimately decided to send him to LAUSD’s Erwin Avenue elementary because she did not want to pay tuition during distance learning.

Dr. Tunette Powell, with her son who just started kindergarten online at Baldwin Hills elementary in South LA., is struggling to balance work and the needs of her youngest son without childcare.

They’re able to manage because her husband works part time from home, and her parents are there to help watch her newborn twins. While distance learning “is not as bad as we thought it was going to be,” Moore doesn’t think it would be effective at all without her husband there to help, and she understands why some young English Learners are also struggling. “There was another student in my son’s class, and this mom kept interrupting the teacher in Spanish. Finally, the teacher paused, and she realized both the mom and daughter spoke not a word of English.”

Many higher-earning families with two working parents are seeking out in-person options for their kindergartners such as private pods and also at private schools with preschool programs that are allowed to serve 5-year-old kids. Some private schools are operating typical kindergarten classes while classifying themselves as camps or childcare centers.

Deborah Sonbalian Shaolin started the school year with three kids in LAUSD schools, a 15-year-old son at LAUSD’s Taft High School, a 12-year-old daughter at Hale Charter Academy in Woodland Hills and her youngest daughter, Hannah, in kindergarten at Wilbur elementary.

Her original plan was for her kindergartner to participate in the Zoom classes, and then she would supplement by hiring a tutor and mother’s helper to come work in person with her child a few hours a week. “I really thought I had it all figured out, but what I failed to really see and understand is that I am running our business that is essential. I can’t have a dog barking in the background or a child who wants her doll.”

Shaolin found she could not just plop a kindergarten child on Zoom and walk away to work. “You need to help them,” she said. When the teacher asked her daughter to write the number two, “she looks at me and said, ‘Mom, help,’ and I had to stop what I was doing and write the number two…I’m not a teacher. I don’t have the patience.”

Her daughter was also clearly unhappy. “Hannah kept going, ‘I’m bored, I don’t want to Zoom. When is the sickness going to go away? I want to go play with my friends,’” she said. “What broke the camel’s back was for her to lie on that couch and cry and scream and say, ‘I want my friends.”

Even though Shaolin loved Wilbur and her daughter’s teacher, she pulled her out of school after the first week and enrolled her in a private school offering an in-person kindergarten 30 minutes away. “Even if it meant for me to spend whatever I had to spend on private school, we had to do it.” 

Her daughter is now happy again, and Shaolin thinks it’s worth the risk. “I don’t feel like I’m putting my child in danger,” she said. “Now that LAUSD is allowing teachers to bring their children on campus, how is that any different than my child going to kindergarten? It’s a very contradictory and unbalanced set of rules they have set.”

Distance learning “didn’t work for us,” she added. “I’m sad that we weren’t able to experience that teacher the way that it was meant to be. Will I pull her out of private school the second LAUSD tells me we are back and running? Absolutely.”

— This story was updated Friday with UTLA’s response to the county decision.