By Tali Woodward

KATHERINE ISHEIM WAS once the special education monitor for the entire San Francisco Unified School District, meaning she was the person who checked to see that the district was meeting its legal obligations to students with disabilities.

A couple years ago she became the chair of special ed at the city's County Community Schools – a distinct system of schools that serves kids who have been pushed out of ordinary public schools because of academic or behavioral problems and are probably the most at-risk students in the city.

Isheim told the Bay Guardian she found "a blatant disregard for students and their educational rights." Though state law limits the caseload of a special ed teacher like Isheim to 28 students, she said she was responsible for serving 70 to 100 special ed students at any given point during the 2002-2003 school year.

It was impossible for her to reach all her students, Isheim said, in part because they were scattered over multiple sites. And despite pleas to administrators, things seemed to be getting worse. So in fall 2003, Isheim filed a formal complaint with the California Department of Education (CDE).

When state investigators arrived in February to conduct interviews with County Community Schools staff, Isheim was revealed as the instigator of the complaint. Less than a week later, the school district placed her on administrative leave. The stated reason? She had failed to serve all of the students assigned to her.

Meanwhile, the CDE investigation she had encouraged found the district "out of compliance." According to the department's May 12 report, a dozen County Community sites had gone without adequate staffing. The district acknowledged that there were 18 students in the County Community Schools who hadn't received the special ed help they were owed in the 2002-2003 school year, and 22 who lacked services for at least part of the following school year.

The CDE gave the district until the end of spring 2005 to clean things up – and provide compensatory services to the kids who had lost valuable assistance. By many accounts, the SFUSD is now paying more attention to the County Community system, which has suffered decades of neglect.

But Isheim said that she has been ostracized for being a whistle-blower and that many SFUSD administrators won't even speak to her. And now her former coworker Linda Barnett is also appealing to higher levels of government for help. In an Oct. 1 letter to the CDE she wrote, "The District continues to deny these children even after your directives."

Legal protections

Lawsuits brought by the families of special ed students suck a lot of money out of urban districts, and the laws that lay out what kinds of services disabled students are supposed to get are notoriously specific. California law, for instance, dictates that specific information on students must be kept in a precise order in folders that are then stored in locked cabinets.

But the backbone of the federal special ed system, the Individual Education Plan program, is simpler. Every school district is to draw up an annual IEP for every special ed kid it serves. The document is meant to identify the student's disabilities and outline what services that student is entitled to, free of charge, from his or her home district. One student may need eight hours of tutoring with a resource specialist (RSP) a week, while another may require books on tape and monthly RSP check-ins. The most severely challenged students are eligible for a full-time special ed class, known as Special Day Class, or even for enrollment in a non-public school, with the district picking up the tab.

Both Barnett and Isheim maintained that County Community administrators told them to rewrite IEPs so students would be eligible for fewer services. When they balked, supervisors pointed out there was no way the County schools' special ed staff could provide all the services the kids needed. Indeed, that's the teachers' primary complaint: there was simply a lack of staff, ensuring students were going to get short shrift.

Isheim said she made repeated pleas to her supervisors for help, and she showed us numerous letters in which she asked them to hire more staff. Once Barnett was hired in January, she encountered similar problems. She worked with 41 kids at eight sites over the course of the semester and said there was no way she could meet all their needs. Both teachers told us they had to push hard to get administrators to hire the teaching assistants (known as paraprofessionals) their union contract requires. Isheim even filed a grievance through the union before anything was done.

Both stressed that while too much was expected of them as teachers, they're concerned primarily about the kids getting what they need. Frequently during interviews with us, they would lapse into a specific story of a child they were unable to help. "When I think about some of the kids I had last year ..." Barnett said at one point. "It's haunting me."

Few other people who worked in the County Community Schools last year seem willing to talk on the record, but three confirmed that special ed students have rarely gotten the help they required. One teacher who didn't want her name used said that at the beginning of last year, staff at her school didn't even know which of their students were designated special ed, and that it took until the end of the year to get a Special Day Class teacher assigned to the school.

Despite these accounts, the CDE report, which relies heavily on information from SFUSD administrators, states that by the time representatives arrived in San Francisco last spring, "all the special education teachers had a caseload under the 28-student limit established by the Education Code." Investigators found no proof that IEPs were tinkered with but noted that progress reports required by the law were incomplete or nonexistent.

SFUSD administration requested written inquiries for this story. Deborah McKnight, the executive director of special education services for the SFUSD, told us by e-mail that she learned of these gaps in special ed in September 2003. "Upon review," she wrote, "it was determined that the number of RSP students had increased at county/community and subsequently the RSP allocation was increased to reflect this need" in November 2003. "The increase in allocation was adequate to provide all of the students with the RSP services."

"Ensuring that our students in county/community programs receive ALL of the services that they require is a priority of my department," she added.

Even Barnett agreed there have been recent improvements in the special ed system. But she said students are still being neglected. For instance, she said kids often come to Bay Principals Center, where she now teaches, without adequate records, and those who should be assigned to Special Day Class continue to be placed in regular classes.

"Not only have these students been denied their State-ordered compensatory education, they still do not have the basic IEP services as outlined in their original IEPs," she wrote in her Oct. 1 letter to the CDE. "I request that the District be placed under State monitoring as it is obvious the District has no intention of providing services to the students."

McKnight said the district is meeting its obligations.

History of disregard

More than a dozen sites make up the County Community system, including three larger campuses, a handful of one-classroom programs, and several schools run in concert with the Juvenile Probation Department. Until very recently there was no mention of County Community Schools on the SFUSD Web site. The system got a brief spat of attention in 2002, when students at Phoenix High School – which is housed in trailers just off the crime-plagued intersection of Mission and 16th Streets and nicknamed Heroin High by the San Francisco Police Department – demanded a better facility.

Last year's San Francisco Civil Grand Jury decided to take a closer look at the system. In a scathing report issued this June, the panel concluded that the County system "appears to be the poorest-funded educational program for the poorest students – fiscally poor and educationally poor."

In the school district's response to the Civil Grand Jury report, Superintendent Arlene Ackerman wrote that a nurse, social worker, and parent liaison have recently been hired for the County Community Schools. "In the coming year, the district will continue its work to improve County Community Schools," she added.

In July the SFUSD hired Mickey Dantine, who has decades of special ed experience, as director of County Community Schools. Testifying before a Board of Supervisors committee Oct. 21, Dantine energetically outlined her plan to condense the County sites into five main campuses so that students have better access to resources like libraries. She's already developed an intake center where kids new to the system can be counseled about what's required to either transfer back to a comprehensive high school or to graduate from County.

Administrators also picked a well-respected principal to take over at the troubled Phoenix site, and people say he's already transforming the culture of the school.

The Civil Grand Jury suggested one way San Francisco might further improve these schools – an option noted by the Bay Guardian in a 2002 story about Phoenix. A 1995 California law provides extra funding – at least $2,500 a student each year – for more comprehensive "Community Day Schools." But to qualify for that funding, schools must provide six hours of class, "individualized" instruction, and low student-teacher ratios. Today Fresno County has 13 such schools, Mendocino has 11, and Los Angeles has more than 30. San Francisco has none.

Dan Sackheim, who has been the state consultant on Community Day Schools for more than six years, helping various California counties set up these schools, told us he doesn't remember ever getting so much as a call from the SFUSD. "I certainly haven't had any detailed conversation about planning one," he said, "but I'd welcome the opportunity – I think it's a great program."

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