COMMENTARY
Hawai'i's public schools failing special education students

By Concetta DiLeo

Concetta DiLeo is a retired educator and business person.

About two years ago, as a guardian ad litem, I was assigned to a 16-year-old "emotionally involved" student, whom I will call Sue, in a special class for "emotionally involved" students at a local public high school.

Having been a teacher and supervisor of special education in Connecticut for 15 years, this assignment was a perfect match.

One of my assignments was to oversee Sue's academic program at school. This meant attending individual education meetings, observing her in her different classrooms, and working with other assigned professionals to make sure she was getting an appropriate education.

When I went to the first IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting, I was introduced to at least eight other professionals involved in her education. Her teacher was a physical education teacher with little or no course work in special education. He had no written information about her academic levels in reading, math, etc.

The reason he gave was he had no testing materials.

We spent three hours at that meeting, and learned very little about her academic performance and coursework. There were at least four similar meetings where very little was learned, and very little done. I felt rather frustrated after each meeting.

Here we were paying all this taxpayer money and accomplishing very little to benefit the child.

I spent two hours observing Sue in her classroom. The physical education teacher was ill, but his assistant, who had a master's degree in education, plus a "one on one tutor," were in charge of the class.

What I saw was no physical structure to the class. Not one child had a book opened or looked like he/she was doing any kind of schoolwork. Children were walking in and out of the classroom at will. One child had put four chairs together to sleep. Sue sat with her feet on the desk, listening with earphones to the Backstreet Boys on her CD player.

At one point, the teacher asked for volunteers to take pictures off a bulletin board. Then she asked students to volunteer to cut pictures of food out of magazines, which were then stapled on the bulletin board.

There were no directions like, "Cut pictures out of breakfast foods," or, "Cut pictures out of protein or carbohydrate foods" or "Cut pictures out that show a healthy well balanced meal."

Just cutting food pictures out of a magazine and stapling them to a bulletin board is usually something a first-grade class, not a class of 15- to 17-year-old students, would do. Again, we as taxpayers were paying for three full-time adult salaries, and very little education, in a positive sense, was going on.

One student, about 4 1/2 feet tall, had a full-time tutor because he was so violent. With the lack of motivation, learning and structure in the room, I was feeling that if I were in that class, I probably would be getting into trouble, too.

After two hours, I went to the person in charge of special classes to tell her what I saw. When I told her that no education was going on, she replied, "There never is." Then she called the principal in so I could repeat the story.

He asked me to put it in writing. My supervisor at the guardian ad litem program told me not to because it was the school administrator's job to observe the classes and write down his observations. I was surprised and disheartened that the administrators didn't even try to hide the fact that what I observed went on all the time. It made me sad to realize that we taxpayers would be paying for these 10 children one way or another for the rest of their lives, because we failed to educate them.

Sue liked working on a computer. I wanted to see how she functioned on the computer, and wanted to make sure she could get computer instruction as part of her coursework. I was prepared to buy her a computer to motivate her.

When I went to her classroom, the special education teacher told me she was taking a group special education test in another classroom. When I went down to that classroom, I was informed that the testing was cancelled for the day.

What I observed was about 40 students watching old reruns of "I Love Lucy." Sue was not in the class and no one knew where she was. So I went to the office and reported what I saw to the same administrator in charge of the special classes.

The administrator sent someone to look for Sue.

As a result of an IEP meeting, another professional responsible for Sue's education and I met with Sue to go over her program. We asked her questions about what she learned in her math, science, history and other classes. What we learned is that Sue never had those classes, even though she received "B's" and "C's" in those classes. Her report card was bogus concerning her grades and classes.

I was shocked that a school would do that.

My research into her educational background showed that Sue was reading on the fourth-grade level for 4 years. She was 16 years old.

Part of my responsibility as a guardian ad litem was to report my findings to the Family Court judge. When I reported the events, I told the judge that I had made a mistake when I told the special education administrator that no learning was going on; there was learning going on. The children were learning apathy, which seemed to be killing their spirits.

Because of the situation in Hawai'i, if a child is a foster child under Child Protective Services, they will never recommend that a child go to a private school, even though the public schools cannot provide for her needs.

In this case, it took someone like me, to tell the judge the situation. Fortunately, the judge had the power to send the child to a school that would meet her educational needs. Child Protective Services argued that Hawai'i just didn't do that.

Luckily, the judge felt that the school system had failed this child enough, and asked me to take the child to look for schools that would be appropriate for her.

When I think of all the wasted lives and money that I observed with the current educational structure, I know Linda Lingle is right to want each district to be responsible and accountable for itself.