Schools Fight Expansion at Youth Center : Education: District officials say a shortage of special education funds will put a strain on their budget if six more foster children are allowed to stay at the Eggleston home.

By DENISE HAMILTON

March 14, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

BALDWIN PARK — Residents routinely show up at public hearings to protest everything from the building of homeless shelters to schools that serve troubled youth.

But a public agency in Baldwin Park finds itself the unusual source of a cry of NIMBY--Not In My Back Yard.

The Baldwin Park Unified School District is appealing a Planning Commission ruling that would allow Eggleston Youth Center to keep the six beds it added to its 40-bed facility two years ago for a total of 46. The City Council has scheduled a public hearing for April 7.

Educators say many of the severely emotionally disturbed children who live at the nonprofit, privately run center near the San Gabriel River Freeway (605) need specialized education that costs thousands of extra dollars.

And the school district, straining to provide services for students already enrolled, says it is scraping the bottom of the special-education barrel.

“We clearly recognize that we have a responsibility to educate handicapped kids,” said Carolyn Coffey, Baldwin Park’s director of pupil services. “But special education funding in California is ludicrous, the pits. For a huge percentage, we don’t get reimbursement.”

Eggleston’s students land in Baldwin Park after being placed in foster care or group homes by the court system and children’s agencies. Although six students won’t make or break Baldwin Park Unified’s budget, school district officials said they are taking a symbolic stand.

“We had an opportunity here,” explained Philip R. Sexton, associate superintendent for business services. “We thought, today’s budgets are tighter and tighter, we have to start looking at these things.”

Eggleston staff say the losers in this bureaucratic squabble are the kids.

“Many of the problems our children experience . . . are a result of their being victims of severe abuse and neglect,” said Clarence Brown, administrator of the 20-year-old Eggleston Youth Center, a licensed children’s institution that houses foster children from ages 12 to 18.

“To deny our children a home because the Baldwin Park School District does not wish to provide them with an education would be another rejection. . . . “

The appeal pits against each other two agencies that traditionally have played the same role: serving children. And it provides a troubling picture of the kinds of painful decisions schools and other public service agencies increasingly feel forced to make when they simply don’t have money.

Pasadena school officials wrestled with a similar problem earlier this year when Bienvenidos, another licensed children’s institution, unveiled plans to build a facility in Altadena that could have brought as many as 75 students with special needs into the district.

Pasadena already spends $15 million on special education each year, according to Jane Stone, district director of special education. About 2,600 of its 21,990 students are in special education. Of those, 19% live in foster homes--the highest percentage of any district in California.

Ultimately, Stone said the Pasadena School Board backed down under political pressure and opted not to fight Bienvenidos’ planned expansion.

“We’re talking about poor little children,” Stone said. “We have always had a real good reputation for serving these children, but we’ve gotten to the point in the last year where . . . we’re not going to be able to adequately serve the ones we have.”

In Baldwin Park, Brown has launched a letter-writing campaign to city officials, explaining the urgency of keeping his foster children in the center and in school.

Two years ago, Eggleston received city approval to expand from 40 to 46 beds with the caveat that the children’s home would have to renew that permit in two years.

City planners said they were concerned that the expansion would increase noise and disruption in the community. But Milan Garrison, the Baldwin Park planning technician who handled the application, said local police have found no significant problems.

If Baldwin Park turns Eggleston down, Brown said in an interview, he intends to file a complaint with the state Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

School officials are reluctant to put a dollar figure on special education because the costs vary per student. Although schools receive about $3,000 in state funds each year per regular student, those with disabilities can require tens of thousands of dollars more in care.

Those special education costs are reimbursed by the state according to complex formulas calculated by the Department of Education. But local educators unanimously complain that the payment schedules rarely meet their real costs. Severely disabled students can cost up to $60,000 per year for counselors, psychologists, medical care and therapy, they say.

More common, according to Coffey, is the special education student who might cost Baldwin Park Unified up to $10,000 per year in non-reimbursed expenses.

Coffey said that for a child with multiple handicaps, that figure would include non-reimbursed portions of the child’s transportation to and from school in a specially equipped bus, a classroom aide, a personal aide, a speech therapist, a physical therapist, a mobility specialist and a specialist who would help design curriculum to suit the child’s needs.

To streamline costs, 11 school districts in the East San Gabriel Valley--including Baldwin Park--have pooled their resources to hire special education teachers and set aside classrooms, said Jack Lucas, a Los Angeles County Schools official who supervises special education in that 11-district area.

The 11 districts enroll 12,000 special education children, including 160 who are so disturbed that they must attend special private schools.

“It’s something you have absolutely no control over,” Lucas said. “School districts have a responsibility to provide services to kids who live within their boundaries. But they are not reimbursed dollar for dollar for their cost.”