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Parents filled the Berkeley Community Theater’s backstage area Tuesday to air simmering frustrations about a special education system in schools criticized as unaccountable and resistant to their children’s needs. 

“We’ve never had such an opportunity,” said Ann McDonald Pacho, a member of Berkeley Special Education Parents Group, who helped organize the gathering. “The silence has been there for years.” 

Approximately 900 families have children with special education needs in Berkeley schools, she said, and about 90 parents came to the meeting. 

Standing for more than two hours, Superintendent Michelle Lawrence candidly acknowledged the organizational problems she inherited last summer when she took the district’s helm. She asked for the parents’ patience. 

“We can make this an American model if we can just get on the same page,” she said. 

Patience, however, was in short supply among the parents, many of whom trembled with emotion in recounting their battles to attain special education services for their children. 

Suzy Marzuola praised the deaf education program her son attends at John Muir Elementary, but in a complaint voiced by many, said the process of setting up an Individual Education Plan for him was “horrific” for its tone of “battle lines in the sand.” 

“We had to pay to make sure we were listened to,” she said. “It’s got to stop. Angry people is what it results in.” 

Also high on the list of parent complaints was staff accountability, with stories of chronically unreturned phone calls, months of inexplicable delays and staffers who arrive unprepared for IEP meetings. Parents were also upset that decisions about their children are being made without explanation. 

“People who never lay eyes on a child are making the decisions,” said parent Raychelle Lee. 

Diane Christensen asked for a “customer service policy.” 

“If you get a phone call from somebody,” she said, “you return it before three weeks go by.” 

David Nygren recommended that the district hire consultants to define job descriptions for everybody on staff to ensure greater accountability. He also accused the district of refusing to place his child in a special school because of cost concerns. 

Lawrence said she would look into having more evaluations, a process that sometimes involves union negotiations. But she admitted frankly: “The evaluation process of employees in this organization is practically non-existent.” 

Parents have asked that finances and programs for the special education system be audited. Lawrence said a financial audit had been requested and that state Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team — soon to step in to resolve the district’s financial crisis — would do its own audit. 

A program audit, however, has not yet been planned, she said. 

Several parents warmly praised individual special education teachers and the teaching staff as a whole during the evening, but noted they were overloaded with work.  

Terri Waller, a parent with a fourth-grader, was the lone voice asking for the creation of a staff position specifically to look-after those whose parents are not, for any reason, advocating their needs.  

“Kids without family structures are totally left out of this discussion,” she said.  

“There are more of those kids than all of the people here,” Waller continued. “A lot of those kids are not in the system at all.” 

Trying to lighten the mood after more than an hour of non-stop complaints, Lawrence, fighting a cold and clutching a handkerchief, made a rare public admission of how difficult her job is. She asked the parents to name the good things about the program.  

“I get so depressed,” she said with a smile. 

The parents obliged by calling out the names of half-a-dozen teachers. One applauded the Berkeley High School occupational therapists as a group. 

The good feelings were short-lived, however. Later, parent Raychelle Lee began naming names of administrative staff she considered problematic, and Lawrence stopped her cold. 

“You can tell me anything you want in private, but I don’t want people to be attacked in public.” 

At one especially tense moment, a teacher in the front row said loudly: “I haven’t been evaluated in 10 years.” 

Lawrence, looking wilted, paused, looked at the teacher and turned to the audience. 

“That’s right,” she said. “She may be great, and she may not be great. Or she may be both.” 

While avoiding a blanket statement of support for “full inclusion” of special education students into regular programs, the superintendent stated early in the meeting that she thought many problems in special education were the result of putting students in a separate administrative category.  

“The minute you group kids under the umbrella of Special Education Department, the ownership of responsibility for educating children with different needs becomes isolated,” she said. 

She referred back to this philosophy after Beth Fine, a Berkeley High parent, said the district had neglected to seek money for special education technology through a sub-program of the state’s Digital High School fund. 

“There shouldn’t be a grant written in this organization that doesn’t include special education,” Lawrence said. 

“Our organization is tightly linked,” she said at another point. “What happens with special education students also happens for regular students.”  

She proposed that special education teachers train regular teachers to share knowledge on issues common to both. 

Throughout the evening, Lawrence attempted to create a sense of unity in tackling the special-education problem.  

“We can no longer be an isolated group of individuals,” she said.  

But she tempered this message at every step with calls for a sober acceptance of the district’s murky financial situation. 

“We can have anything we want, but we can’t have everything we want,” she said twice. “Our community as a whole is not real good at accepting ‘no’ as an answer.” 

A parent rose in the audience and shot back: “People are not going to accept ‘no’ as an answer when we haven’t been given respectful treatment. There has to be a buildup of trust on both sides of the table.” 

Earlier in the evening, Lawrence constructed an outsider’s observation on the nature of Berkeley itself. She said she encounters a lot of “animosities and defensiveness,” — not only among special education staff and parents, but throughout the district’s many departments. 

“I’ve never been any place where so many people are so angry and so frustrated in every aspect I walk into,” Lawrence said. “Maybe Berkeley has its share of passionate people, but it seems there’s some dysfunction here. ... What I’m encountering is very different people who are on very different pages.”