Specialty education

As soon as she held up the tiny basketball, Vikki Brown knew she had

gotten through.

For the last hour, Brown and her group had gone through a bucket

of toys, trying to find one that would get a positive reaction from

the 3-year-old seated on the carpet. On the surface, it may have

looked like play, but underneath, it was serious work: The boy in

front of them was autistic, and their assignment was to find a

favorite toy so they could control his behavior.

Last week, Brown was among 32 employees of the Newport-Mesa

Unified School District participating in a workshop for faculty who

deal with autistic students. During the week, trainees at Harper

Preschool learned how to give orders to the children, how to prompt

verbal responses, and how to handle tantrums. The first task, though,

was to find “reinforcers” -- objects that the children like and that

can be used as rewards later.

The basketball elicited the proper response in Brown’s case.

“One thing autistic kids do when they’re really excited is flap

their hands,” said Brown, who joined the school district as a

part-time aide in March. “You could tell he was different from

another kid his age because he was flapping. I knew he was trying to

control his behavior because that’s what they’re taught in the social

group, but his arms were shaking.”

By Tuesday morning, Brown had a few other reinforcers on her list

and started the second phase of her training. She and her colleagues

around the room took turns giving the children directions -- to match

similar objects, to identify pictures -- and placed toys in their

hands if they followed them.

“As with everything, early intervention makes a difference,” said

Mitch Taubman, associate director of the Autism Partnership, which

led the workshop. “All individuals tend to learn better, faster, more

profoundly, early on.”

Aides such as Brown will contribute to Newport-Mesa’s expanded

autism program this fall. In the long run, though, they may also save

the district some money -- and grief. With the district’s

special-education costs higher than the state average and its

percentage of autistic students more than double, many parents are

turning to outside agencies to meet their children’s needs. With

programs like the one at Harper last week, the district is hoping to

strengthen its services enough to keep the care in-house.

THE DISTRICT’S GOAL

In June, a report by School Services of California found that

Newport-Mesa paid nearly 50% of its special education costs -- the

average district in the state pays only a quarter of its costs. Even

before the report, however, Newport-Mesa had already taken steps to

streamline its program. In the summer of 2004, the district enlisted

the Autism Partnership for a pair of workshops to better train its

instructional aides.

Now, Newport-Mesa has contracts with dozens of agencies that

provide aides to students in the classroom. More often than not, the

district foots the bill for these caregivers -- and it would prefer

to stop.

According to specialeducation director Denise Knutsen, employing

outside agencies not only runs up the district’s expenses, but it

also distances administrators from the children they serve.

“We have very little oversight when it’s outside people, and yet

we’re responsible for that child’s education,” Knutsen said.

Over the next three years, Knutsen and other Newport-Mesa

officials want to phase out the agency workers and replace them with

ones trained by the district. By improving the quality of their

special-education services, they hope to prevent parents from wanting

to thumb through the Yellow Pages.

Newport-Mesa already provides the majority of instructional aides

for its special-education students: Of the 300 instructional aides

employed by the district, 45 come from outside agencies. But

classroom assistants are only part of the larger problem of families

seeking services outside the district. According to Knutsen,

Newport-Mesa spent about $12 million last year on nonpublic agencies

and schools.

For the next year, Newport-Mesa has already spent more than $1

million on new special-education staff and materials, with nearly

half of that going to autism services. Sandi Ames, chairwoman of the

district’s community advisory committee on special education, said

Newport-Mesa’s increased autism staff could allay parents’ fears

about their children being underserved.

“I haven’t heard of any district that has enough aides,” Ames

said. “Number one, there’s just not enough people to fill that role,

and number two, we haven’t had the opportunity to train our

instructional aides to the degree we’d like.”

The difficult question is how much training an instructional aide

really requires. Over the next school year, the Autism Partnership

will monitor each of the participants in last week’s workshop up to

six times a month, observing them in the classroom with children.

Newport-Mesa had the group monitor its aides twice a month last year

but decided the system wasn’t effective enough.

Still, parents and agency officials wonder if the district can

entirely supplant the services from outside.

“We all know the agencies aren’t going to go away,” said Vince

Redmond, senior managing supervisor for the Center for Autism and

Related Disorders in Garden Grove. “The need is going to increase and

districts aren’t going to be able to meet all the needs of kids.”

Newport-Mesa turns to agencies such as the Center for Autism when

a child requires services the district can’t provide.

Knutsen said she sympathizes with families who have long

relationships with their professional aides, but she noted that one

of the district’s major goals is to provide a transition from one

caregiver to the next. Ultimately, she believes, having a larger

group of assistants will help the social development of most autistic

children.

“We’re trying to move away from one-on-ones because that leads to

dependence,” she explained. “You assign one adult to a child, but

your goal is to make that child independent.”

BACK IN CLASS

By the end of last week, Vikki Brown had worked one-on-one with

two autistic children: the quiet boy she started with, and an

excitable little girl. The Autism Partnership paired her with both so

she could handle one compliant child and one who tended to act up.

In three days, she made considerable progress with the boy. After

trying to get him to pay attention Monday, she got him to match

colors and identify animals in pictures.

Finally, she decided to test his analytical skills. On Wednesday,

with a pile of colored sticks on the floor between them, she asked

the boy to hand her a color that wasn’t there.

“He gave me an invisible stick,” Brown said. “He totally knew what

I was asking. It was unbelievable because they’re not supposed to get

that, and he totally did.”

On the final day, each of the trainees in the workshop took a

written test. Officials from the district and the Autism Partnership

had already observed them at work with the children. By fall, the

district will determine which of the trainees will work as autism

aides for the next year -- a success rate that Knutsen estimated to

be around 50%.

Brown, the mother of two teenagers who were in special education,

acknowledges that the training process will extend far beyond one

week.

“I don’t think anyone is ever professional at this,” she said.

“You have to analyze daily and keep focused on what your goal is for

the child, and you have to anticipate. It’s an ongoing thing,

forever. You’ll never have all the knowledge. You’ll learn new things

every day, sometimes four or five a minute.”

* MICHAEL MILLER covers education and may be reached at (714)

966-4617 or by e-mail at michael.miller@latimes.com.