Special Education

A former teacher who pleaded no contest to sex-related charges involving four special education students was sentenced Wednesday to three years in state prison. Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Henry J. Hall denied probation for Fred David Johnson, 60, a former special education teacher at John Marshall High School in Los Feliz, noting that the crimes were against "particularly vulnerable" victims entrusted to his care.

An incident in which an autistic man was told by a mall security guard that he was barred from sitting on the floor at Montebello Town Center has drawn the ire of a special education instructor who says the disabled man was treated unfairly because he was unable to use a chair in the food court. The instructor and mall officials have offered starkly contrasting versions of Thursday's episode.

After failing to finish a reading assignment, 8-year-old Isabel Loeffler was sent to the school's time-out room -- a converted storage area under a staircase -- where she was left alone for three hours. The autistic Iowa girl wet herself before she was finally allowed to leave. Appalled, her parents removed her from the school district and filed a lawsuit. Some educators say time-out rooms are being used with increased frequency to discipline children with behavioral disorders.

Emotions best described as fatherly push at Alfredo Reyes' face. He is among two dozen or so parents gathered in a hotel conference room for an L.A. Unified School District-sponsored "Training for Parents of Students With Disabilities." Most, including Reyes, have children who have just entered or are about to enter public schools, and these anxious moms and dads have reason to think their child is somehow different from other students. They want to know what's wrong.

Settling a complaint by parents who said they were forced to lavish $100,000 worth of gifts on school personnel to ensure that their severely autistic son received proper care, the Irvine Unified school board voted unanimously Tuesday to spend an unspecified amount of money on the child's educational needs. The Board of Trustees also voted to consider creating a policy restricting gifts to teachers and other employees.

The Irvine Unified School District will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for the education of a severely autistic child whose parents said they were forced to lavish expensive gifts on district staff to ensure he received proper schooling, according to the settlement agreement released Thursday. In addition, the Orange County Grand Jury is looking into the matter and has requested the settlement agreement from the district.

IN a tiny apartment just west of Fairfax Avenue, Shiane Simmons shouted for juice. Just the first sound came out: "Ju. Ju. Ju." Her mother held firm. "No," she said. "Water." Shiane spat at her, then ran into her bedroom. Shiane is 15 and autistic. When she was diagnosed at age 4, she was deemed "highfunctioning," which meant she was not retarded and could be taught to communicate.

The public school enrollment of autistic children, whether born into privileged or impoverished circumstances, has gone from a trickle to a flood. Their legal rights are crashing up against strapped school budgets.

The Supreme Court on Monday strengthened the rights of the millions of parents who have children with disabilities, ruling they may go to court on their own to fight a school district's choice of a special education program. The unanimous decision opens a door that had been closed to these parents in many parts of the nation, where judges had ruled that they could not go to court unless they hired a lawyer to represent them.

The state Department of Education said Thursday it was investigating special-education instruction at a high school in Santa Ana, the latest controversy to dog the city's beleaguered school district. The probe was prompted by complaints from two teachers at Valley High who alleged that special-education students were shifted to regular classes because there was not enough room to offer them separate classes.