Handicapped Education

Don Cardinal--former street tough, college dropout, and now academic and advocate--opens a door to show a visitor his world. Inside room H105 of Whittier's California High School sit six fidgeting students, including 15-year-old Dan McMillan. Dan has autism, a brain disorder that's all but closed him off from his surroundings. He sniffs Cardinal's sleeve curiously; he can't speak beyond a moan and squints through thick glasses.

There have been moments of despair during the past five years when Julie Alban didn't think she'd make it. Sitting in a wheelchair with a bullet in her spine, in constant and almost unbearable pain, she sometimes succumbed to a deep depression; her plans to become a lawyer seemed like a faint and impossible dream. "There were many times I felt like giving up," Alban said during a recent interview on the patio of her Dana Point home. "Times when I felt totally overwhelmed by my situation."

Bhula Spencer stood on the platform of the auditorium at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee and addressed the other 117 students who, like her, received their high school diplomas Friday after graduating from the Maxine Waters Employment Education Center. The students and about 250 guests cheered loudly as Spencer announced that she was planning to go to college. They laughed and cheered when she told of the fun she had at the prom. After all, Spencer is 67.

Parental pride is in ready supply at any graduation ceremony. But at Lowman Special Education Center this week, parents are doubly proud--of the students' accomplishments and their own ability to meet the challenge of raising children who are physically or mentally disabled. Earlier this month, about 80 Lowman parents graduated from the Los Angeles Unified School District's Parent Institute, an eight-week program that teaches the basics of putting children through school.

Students from Leichman High School, a special school for the disabled in Reseda, will be honored by the Los Angeles City Council on Friday for work they have completed as part of a vocational education pilot program. Leichman teacher Pat Larson said 39 students between the ages of 16 and 22 will be presented certificates by the council for landscaping and decorating the site of city offices at the corner of Vanowen Street and Vanalden Avenue in Reseda. Afterward, they will tour City Hall.

A month and a half after thieves stole computers customized for use by disabled students at Pierce College, the students can look forward to a brighter fall semester, thanks to donations. "Right now there are still too few [computers]," Pierce President E. Bing Inocencio said Wednesday. But "we are possibly in a recovery." By this week, the donations amounted to a new security system for the computer lab, two computers and $3,345 in cash, Inocencio said.

Juan Haro didn't always consider his blindness an obstacle. As a child, Haro thought he could go into any career he wished, he said. But shortly after starting college at Cal State Northridge last year, Haro, 19, gave up his ambition of becoming a chiropractor, believing that the hands-on experiments and observation required for the field were beyond his abilities, he said.

The Assembly passed and sent to Gov. George Deukmejian on Monday a compromise bill to extend the life of six special education programs for gifted and needy students until the early 1990s. A bipartisan 54-22 vote sent the legislation, sponsored by Assemblywoman Teresa Hughes (D-Los Angeles), to the governor's desk. The Senate previously had approved it by a 26-2 vote margin.

State programs for gifted and talented students and those with disabilities are due to expire at midnight tonight after Assembly Republicans again blocked a compromise special education bill. On a 48 to 26 vote, six short of the necessary 54 or two-thirds majority, the Assembly refused to reconsider its earlier rejection of the bill that would have extended the special education programs for another five years.