Guest Opinion: Dianne Lewis: What Would School Closures, Consolidations, or Program Relocations Mean for Students With Disabilities?

I agree with Elizabeth Pomeroy that if Pasadena Unified School District is serious about “transformation,” the community must have a meaningful role in defining what that transformation means.

But there is another question that must be answered before the conversation moves any further:

What will school closures, consolidations, or program relocations mean for students with disabilities?

That question is particularly urgent because Special Education has already undergone a major restructuring. Parents were told that the restructuring would be transformative. We were promised a new structure and better services.

We are still waiting to see those results.

What is increasingly difficult to ignore is the loss of institutional knowledge — the experience of people who understood why programs were created, what had been tried, what worked, what did not, and what particular students needed.

And now, at the beginning of a new school year, parents are reporting problems.

During the first week of school, I received calls from multiple parents who said their children were not receiving services or were in placements they believed did not meet their needs.

These are individual reports, and they should be investigated, not assumed to represent the entire system. But they raise an important question: if the district is still working to ensure that students are appropriately placed and receiving the services identified in their programs, how can it responsibly make decisions that could move, consolidate, or close the schools and programs those students depend upon?

Students with disabilities are not enrollment numbers. Some require autism-specific classrooms. Some require Special Day Classes. Others need intensive academic, behavioral, communication, related, or transportation services. Their programs cannot be treated as interchangeable pieces on a facilities spreadsheet.

The district’s own August 13 Community Facilitator Report identified concerns about program mapping, special program assessment, staffing, disproportionality, and coordination of Special Day Classes. It also identified shortcomings in the previous process, including insufficient communication about the “why,” limited two-way involvement, inadequate consideration of alternatives, and information arriving too late.

We cannot repeat that process with students with disabilities caught in the middle.

Before another school is closed, consolidated, or reconfigured, PUSD needs to answer some basic questions: Where are all of the Special Education programs, and how many students does each serve? What are their needs, and what staffing and related services do they require? Where are the autism programs and Special Day Classes, and what is each program’s capacity? If a school closes, where will those students go — and will the receiving schools have the appropriate programs, staffing, and services? What will happen to transportation? And what does the data show about academic outcomes, placement, inclusion, and disproportionality?

These are not questions to answer after a decision is made. They are questions that should come before it.

There is also a larger lesson from the Special Education restructuring. If the district wants the community to trust a new transformation process, it should first demonstrate what the previous one accomplished. What changed? Where is the evidence? Have services improved? Have student outcomes improved? Has the district maintained the specialized knowledge necessary to serve students with complex needs? And how were special education teachers and staff — the people with firsthand knowledge of these programs — engaged before the restructuring decisions were made?

Those questions are not about any individual employee. They are about whether the planning process included the expertise necessary to understand the consequences of major structural change. That expertise matters now. Special education teachers, parents, advocates, and the district’s Community Advisory Committee for Special Education should be part of the next conversation from the beginning — not brought in after a plan has already been developed.

The same principle applies to the district’s broader academic planning. The recent goal-monitoring presentation identifies specific academic targets for Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino students, but it does not provide comparable targets or outcome data for students with disabilities. The LCAP likewise did not establish a specific goal dedicated to this population. That does not mean students with disabilities should be reduced to a single test score — they should not. But if PUSD is committed to data-driven decision-making, the public should be able to see whether these students are making progress and whether the programs meant to support them are working.

I also want to be clear about what inclusion does — and does not — mean. I support inclusion. But inclusion does not mean every student receives the same program. A student with significant autism may need a specialized classroom. Another may need a Special Day Class. Another may need intensive support within a general education setting. Those differences do not make students less deserving of belonging. Specialized programming is not the opposite of inclusion — it is often what makes meaningful inclusion possible.

That is why I agree with Pomeroy that families, students, employees, and the broader community must have a meaningful voice in the district’s transformation. But that voice must come early enough to matter. Do not ask the community to support transformation while we are still trying to understand what the previous restructuring changed. And do not close, consolidate, or relocate schools serving students with disabilities until the district has mapped the programs, understood the students they serve, identified the consequences, and demonstrated that the proposed alternative can meet their needs.

Transformation should mean building a better system — not repeatedly reorganizing the system while losing the institutional knowledge needed to make it work. Before PUSD closes a school, it needs to know exactly which students will be affected, what programs they depend upon, and whether there is a fully staffed, fully supported place for them to go.

That is not resistance to transformation. That is responsible transformation.

Dianne Lewis an advocate for students with disabilities and an Altadena community member.