Private Schools Catching Up to Special Education

When fifth-grader Andy Jones was diagnosed with dyslexia two years ago, his mother, K.C. Desmet, faced what she saw as two unappealing choices: She could enroll him in a private special education school, which she considered “overkill” for Andy’s relatively minor disability. Or she could embark on a bureaucratic journey to get tutoring and other services from his public school in Long Beach.

“We were beside ourselves,” said Desmet, 39, an interior decorator.

They found a third option: a special-ed school tucked inside a private school.

Since third grade, Andy, now 10, has been attending Grace Christian School in Cypress. He is also enrolled in Opportunity Schools, a nonprofit organization housed inside the private campus that offers special education to 30 of Grace’s 450 students. The schools are partners but function independently, with separate staffs and classrooms.

For students like Andy, the program offers the best of both worlds, Desmet said. He attends regular classes at Grace but gets the special education he needs in Opportunity Schools.

The goal, Opportunity officials say, is to franchise the program to other private schools, Christian or otherwise.

Last year, Opportunity Schools opened a satellite program at Watts Christian School in South-Central Los Angeles, where 12 of the school’s 55 students are enrolled.

“We are serving a niche,” said Bob Drummond, Opportunity’s executive director. “Private schools are really underserved” when it comes to special ed.

By some estimates, as many as 20% of U.S. children have some form of learning disorder, involving conditions such as dyslexia and autism. In most cases, the disabilities are mild, but the children need specialized lesson plans and tools to keep up.

Unlike private schools, public schools are required to provide such services. California serves more than 660,000 special education students.

For private schools, special education is mostly uncharted territory, those in the field say. They, and many parents, say that without the requirement to offer it and because of a perceived public stigma in doing so, there’s little incentive.

The National Assn. of Independent Schools has no numbers on private schools that offer special education classes.

Sherry L. Kolbe, director of the National Assn. of Private Special Education Centers, said her group often fields calls from disheartened private school parents.

They “opted to send their children to a private school for the unique education,” Kolbe said, and later “they find out that the child has a learning disability and the school has no services for them.”

Public schools officially have the services, but accessing them can be a long and sometimes confrontational process between parents and districts with limited resources, Kolbe and others said. Many parents decide to home-school their children.

Louise Ukleja, chairwoman of Opportunity Schools’ governing board, understands that frustration. Her daughter, Michelle, struggled for years in private and public schools. Because of the way her brain processes visual information, she can’t write cursively, making learning an excruciating task.

“When she’d come home from school, she’d say, ‘I’m brain dead,’ ” Ukleja said.

In 1990, Ukleja enrolled Michelle, then in third grade, at Grace Christian School. The family belonged to the church, and her older son was already attending the school.

Ukleja said she wanted Michelle to have a regular school environment. But she recognized that her daughter had special needs. So she proposed to help the school create a special-ed program from scratch.

Opportunity Schools was founded with a $250,000 grant from Ukleja’s parents. Her father was founder and chief executive of the General Nutrition Center store chain.

The money allowed Anita Burch, a Grace Christian teacher, to get special-ed training. Michelle and five other students worked with Burch for several years. All six have gone on to college. Michelle, 23, is a junior at Cal State Long Beach studying early childhood development.

She also teaches at Grace’s Opportunity program, which has grown to a staff of seven and an annual budget of more than $200,000, mostly from donations and grants.

“It is the most amazing program,” said Desmet, Andy’s mother. “I cannot tell you how much it saved my kid’s life.”

Andy is engaging and bright, but his dyslexia means spelling even simple words can be painstaking. For a couple of hours a day, he meets with Opportunity teacher Julie Lieneke to work on exercises. During a recent session, Andy and three classmates, all boys, were taking turns spelling words Lieneke had written on the whiteboard.

When it was his turn, Andy looked at the word on the board, then turned around to see if he could spell it from memory.

“V ..., “ he began.

“A ..., “ he continued slowly. Lieneke nodded patiently from the back of the classroom.

“G ..., “ Andy stopped, unable to unlock the word he had read only a moment ago.

“Turn around and look at the word again,” Lieneke instructed. Andy swirled on his feet.

“Vaguely,” he said running his finger under the word. “V-A-G-U-E-L-Y.”

He turned and faced Lieneke and his classmates again.

“V ... A ... G....” He hesitated. “V ... A ... G ... L-E-Y.”

“One more time,” Lieneke said.

Without a hint of frustration, Andy faced the board a third time, turned around, and this time the letters flowed from his lips as if he had spelled the word a thousand times.

The point was not to test Andy but have him see the letters as often as needed until the mental image was no longer ... vague.

“We proceed according to the child’s ability,” Lieneke explained. “It is not curriculum-driven, it is child-driven.”