A grand jury investigation has deemed the Sacramento City Unified School District is not meeting the needs of students with disabilities, and hasn’t been for quite some time.
Steve Caruso, foreperson of the Sacramento County grand jury, revealed that after eight months of investigation and fourteen interviews, they concluded that the district's special education program is in a critical state.
“What we found was shocking,” he said. “They've been told and warned since 2017 to make changes in their special education program and they haven't done anything.”
The district released an apologetic statement in response.
“The report is a sobering reminder that our students and families deserve better and we must do better by them,” the district wrote. “The troubling criticisms contained in this report are known to the District. SCUSD is actively engaged in the process of improving special education services.”
The grand jury research spans back seven years, revealing no progress for the district's 7,000 students in special education, nearly 18% of the student body.
The report underscores that “by not providing early intervention to all students in all schools, SCUSD inappropriately funnels students with learning challenges into often-isolated special education programs.”
“That's why we started the investigation, because we heard there were some problems with a special education program,” said Caruso. “We didn't expect to show no plans, no goals. That was stunning to us.”
The report cites numerous education code violations:
- failure to develop and review individual education plans with parents
- lack of implementation of early intervention programs in schools
- relegating students with disabilities into separate classrooms, known to adversely affect their educational outcomes
Despite being cautioned by Sacramento City Teachers Association, the California Department of Education and others, the district continued to be non-compliant with the law.
The California Department of Education has also been monitoring the district. In an emailed statement, they wrote the school board will have to use a portion of their budget to hire a technical assistance facilitator, who will enforce state mandates.
Latest sign of trouble for special education program
The grand jury report isn't the only finding against the district's special education program.
A 2017 report by the Council of the Great City Schools, an organization dedicated to the improvement of larger urban public schools, indicated English language learners in the district were being put on special education plans at a higher rate than others.
The district settled a disability lawsuit with the Black Parallel School Board last year, with the understanding that the special education program would be revamped to be more mindful of Black students with different needs.
When external experts were enlisted in 2021 to assess bias and cultural sensitivity across Sacramento City’s schools, they found only one out of the 32 schools met the standards for advancing Black students academically. The Black Parallel School Board lawsuit found that many of these issues highlighted in the report were heightened for Black students with disabilities.
Carl Pinkston, director of operations for the board, explained that a disproportionate number of Black students were being involuntarily pushed into special education classes in Sacramento.
“Black students are basically perceived as a problem – if you're a student of disability, you're pushed out,” he said. “The notion is we need to segregate them and send them someplace else, so we don't have to deal with the problem.”
The Black Parallel School Board spent the last year holding listening sessions and compiling data to propose revisions to the district’s special education program. They were on the verge of presenting their findings when the grand jury report was issued.
Darryl White, chair of the Board, said the grand jury report aligns with their findings but doesn’t account for “discipline issues of expulsion and suspension.”
“We have been working tirelessly the last several years trying to get the settlement into an action plan,” said White.
White and Pinkston will be releasing their report on June 27, which will have data and recommendations uniquely addressing the needs of Black students with disabilities.
“The district has an opportunity now … and I wish they'd take full advantage of it,” said White.
“We have to reimagine it”
Along with the comprehensive look into the special education programming in the district, the grand jury investigation confronts the strife within the district’s administration, board, and its teachers.
According to the report, the mismanagement of the special education program exists as a byproduct of poor communication from the school board, a “history of distrust,” and high turnover rates.
Nikki Milevsky, the president of the Sacramento Teachers Association, has been on the receiving end of the disorganization.
“Special education has been a priority for teachers here for years,” she said. “We had a horrible superintendent for over six years — Jorge Aguilar started his tenure in 2017 [and] this grand jury [report] goes back to 2017.”
But under the new school board and Superintendent Lisa Allen, the teacher’s union has retroactively increased salaries for special education teachers and is planning to add more instructional aides to classrooms.
“Now we're facing a period of time where we have a new superintendent that is really focused on improving intervention for all of our students, which is exactly what teachers have been fighting for for years,” said Milevsky, and is optimistic for the future of the district.
The funds for the added support are coming from the $40 million that the district recovered by adding instructional days to the school calendar, she explained. The time was lost during the 2022 teachers’ strike under Aguilar’s supervision.
District School Board Trustee Taylor Kayatta is determined to honor the renewed commitment to the special education program.
“Everything in this report, to people like me who have been paying attention, has been well documented over the years,” he said. “It really is a cultural issue how we approach special education and how we view special education as an educational tool for our kids.”
Kayatta’s dedication stems from his own experience as a parent frustrated by the lack of resources available for his son with disabilities. When he joined the school board two years ago, his priority concern was to improve accessibility in the classroom.
“I really do think that it's the board's role, and to some extent, the superintendent who's following the direction of the board to say, ‘We need to move past the failures of the past and we can't just work on fixing what's gone wrong. We have to reimagine it and really think about how do we treat these students?’” described Kayatta.
Kayatta said the schools board is hopeful the district can implement a special education plan this coming year satisfying both the grand jury and the Black Parallel School Board. The next step is for the district to respond to the grand jury within 90 days.
The report’s recommendations include professional development opportunities, points of contact for parents with students who have disabilities, and accommodation within the classroom for students with different learning needs.
From the county’s grand jury and the Black Parallel School Board to the teachers union and the school board, there is consensus that accountability measures and metrics will be crucial in ensuring that the most vulnerable student population in the Sacramento City Unified School District receives the support they deserve.
Srishti Prabha is an education reporter for CapRadio and Report For America corps member.
