Community commentary

The story in the Daily Pilot (“Lawsuit provides district windfall,”

Oct. 27) was very disappointing to read.

My son is a third-grade student at Mariners Elementary and has been

diagnosed with high functioning autism. The Newport-Mesa School

District’s “Instructional Education Plan” calls for my son to have an

aide go with him to his classes. The federal and state governments

mandate that special needs children (like my son) have “the least

restrictive environment” provided for them. What this means is that a

child like mine who has special needs, but a normal IQ. level, should be

attending regular class as much as possible and not be taken out of their

neighborhood school and bused to a campus across town to be placed in a

special education class. The district is suggesting this to me, instead

of providing an aide and allowing my son to remain at the school he has

been at since kindergarten.

On Tuesday [last week], I got word that the district has denied my son

an aide, even though the district has written an education plan that

states that my son should be provided an aide. The district has denied my

son the help he needs because they don’t want to pay for it. I am told

that the district has denied aides across the board to most special needs

children, even if their educational plan calls for an aide. I pose the

question: What is the Newport-Mesa School District going to do with the

$800,000 in special education funding this year and the “millions of

dollars” in special education funding to be paid out over the next 10

years and their portion of the $100 million in annual increases if they

are not going to provide for special needs students?

My additional frustration is that we as a parent group have been

forced to form foundations, in which we have raised millions of dollars

to repair our aging schools, and we give money to our teachers at “wish

night” to buy supplies and materials for our children as the district

does not provide enough money per child per school year for materials and

supplies. This money includes the cost of copying curriculum. If you

figure out that it costs 3 cents a page and our children use five pages

per day of curriculum and there are a total of 180 school.

It seems we are forced to raise all of this additional money privately

because if we don’t we will be back at the conditions of when my older

daughter started school at Mariners. Mariners had peeling lead paint that

was 20 or more years old and massive plumbing leaks and carpets that were

20 or more year old, as well. We privately have had to buy and donate the

computers that our children use in their lessons. We have had to buy the

paint to repaint our children’s school, and then show up on a parent

workday and repaint the school. We cannot hang anything on the walls of

our multipurpose room as the walls are made of asbestos and we cannot

penetrate it.

We still have class sizes of more than 30 students in fifth grade and

above, and almost all of the classroom aides provided on our campus are

paid for privately through the foundation.

Where is all of the money going from the state increases in school

funding? It certainly isn’t going to our teachers. Where is the

Newport-Mesa School District spending our money, as it certainly isn’t

going to our children’s education, and where are they going to spend this

million-dollar increase in special education funding if it is not going

to be for providing for special needs children like my son?

KRISTY M. NEUBO

Newport Beach