Parents say the Inglewood Unified School District isn’t meeting their kids’ special needs

Parents in the Inglewood Unified School District believe the district’s special education program isn’t doing enough for their children. 

They aired their grievances at two meetings between district officials and parents in January, expressing frustration with the program, bringing up major issues that included missing special needs services, irregular progress reports, insufficient communication with parents and unsecured campuses.

In response, school district officials wrote in a statement to The LA Local that they’re listening to the concerns and are “fully committed to meeting the needs of all students, including our students with special needs.”

“We hear the urgency in our parents’ voices and the hope behind their ideas. IUSD remains dedicated to continuing this important work together, and in a way that honors the diverse strengths and unique needs of every student,” wrote Bernadette Lucas, assistant superintendent of education services.

Here’s what parents are concerned about

The two parental advisory meetings were held on Jan. 7 and 28 as part of the district’s efforts to find new ways to get parents involved. About 40 people attended the Jan. 28 meeting — either in person at the district headquarters or or via Zoom — and Irvin Shannon, the assistant director of special education, asked them to offer input on what would help improve the department and create better communication between the district and parents. 

But soon after the meeting started, the matters Shannon intended to discuss were sidetracked by parents’ complaints. 

One of the main sticking points for parents was about their students’ Individualized Education Plan, also known as IEP, which is a document or file created with input from parents, teachers and specialists as a roadmap of what services a student qualifies for and what the student needs to achieve academically. They’re also used to track student progress. 

Some parents said that when they request meetings about their child’s IEP, it can take months to get an appointment. One mother, Teresita Garcia Ruy Sanchez, said her daughter had not received an IEP progress report from her teacher in three years. Typically, progress reports are given quarterly.  

Read more: Inglewood residents could finally have a say in their school district again

As for other parents, they said they feared retaliation if they spoke out about their frustrations and felt left out of their child’s learning experience.  

Whitney Munir, who has 4 and 5-year-old sons currently in the special education program at Frank D. Parent TK-8 School, said she filed three complaints with the district’s human resources department and shared those documents with The LA Local. Brian Coffey, the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources, confirmed the filed complaints, which involved concerns about a lack of administrative leadership, staff negligence and missing services. 

“In my son’s last meeting after I filed a complaint, none of the administrators came to the meeting,” Munir said. “That was the first time I never had a representative from the special education department.” 

Munir’s grievances are mainly connected to an incident from last year during summer school at Bennet Kew Elementary. She said the speech specialist left the district and she wasn’t notified that her sons were not receiving speech therapy for weeks. The district is required to provide the service based on their IEPs. 

After alerting administrators about the incident, Munir said the department agreed to reinstate the hours missed — but for only one of her children. The agreement would prohibit Munir from filing any more complaints about the matter, according to documents she provided to The LA Local. She said she refused to sign it.   

“I don’t know if in the future, this is something I might want to talk to an attorney about. So, I didn’t want to just take what they gave me,” Munir said. 

In an email to The LA Local, Coffey said “that each (complaint) was investigated; Ms. Munir was notified of the outcome of the investigations and of the rights of both parties to appeal a decision.”

Read more: Inglewood teachers and advocates call out campus safety issues

Arlette Zamora, another parent at the Jan. 28 meeting, tearfully explained that her 6-year-old son, who she said is on the autism spectrum, wandered out of the classroom and into the street while at Oak Street TK-8 School earlier that day. She said he was found unharmed by another parent who was walking nearby. 

“My child is not the first child you have that’s on the spectrum, nor will he be last. So something needs to be changed, and something needs to be done,” Zamora said.

Though Zamora’s son is not enrolled in Inglewood’s special education program, she said her child needs one-on-one supervision, meaning someone needs to be with him at all times while at school. Zamora explained that she had recently requested an IEP assessment for her son, but the department had not yet scheduled a meeting. 

The district is not required to provide one-on-one supervision unless it’s been approved through the IEP process.    

Both Latonya Southall, executive director of special education, and Bernadette Lucas, the assistant superintendent of education services, apologized at the Jan. 28 meeting to Zamora and other parents, vowing to address their concerns. 

“I’m not afraid of feedback. It hurts sometimes,” Lucas said. “It doesn’t always feel good to get it, but that is the only way we’re going to grow. I’d much prefer to confront it, and I’m not going to make any excuses.”

Concerns about IUSD’s special education program have led to a formal complaint

The issues parents brought up, however, are not new. John Hughes, president of the Inglewood Teachers Association and a special education program specialist in the district, told The LA Local that Inglewood’s special education department has been understaffed for years, making it more difficult to provide adequate services. 

“Special education, as well as the entire district, has to prioritize making decisions for students. The biggest problem is that they’re inadequately servicing students, which is directly against the law,” he said. 

In December, Hughes joined the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California in submitting a complaint against the district to the state attorney general’s office. The complaint alleges the district didn’t fully evaluate how school closures would disproportionately impact special education students.

Read more: Inglewood teachers keep pressure on district leaders over safety concerns 

The California Department of Education’s most recent data shows that nearly 13%, or 1,105 of Inglewood’s 8,724 students, were enrolled in the special education program during the 2022-23 school year. 

Since the 2018-2019 school year, there has been a 2% increase in the number of students qualifying for special education services, as reported in EdSource. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently proposed increasing special education funding by $509 million to address school funding constraints across the state. The EdSource article noted that improved disability identification, advocacy and reduced stigma play a role in the rising number of special education students.

Next steps for the department and parents

For now, Munir says her children will remain in the program, but she would like to renegotiate the agreement presented by the district. 

The district would not provide any information or an update on specific cases some parents discussed during the advisory meetings. 

Hughes, the teachers association president, told The LA Local he plans to meet with district administrators in the next few weeks to discuss the special education department and the issues brought up during the meetings. He said there are currently no other parent meetings scheduled. 

He also said he plans to call for an overall review of the department from the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence — an organization created by the state legislature and the governor to help districts achieve their objectives by providing additional guidance and resources.  

“We’re committed to providing good service,” Hughes said. “We just need support, so that all students are safe, first and foremost, and then we’ll deal with personnel turnover. But we have to make sure that there is enough staff and that has to be managed properly.”