ABLEnews Extra

                    "Sign of the Times"

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What Laurie Jarrett wants for her daughter, Tracey, is the opportunity
for her to live her life as independently as is humanly possible. The
22-year-old was well on her way, attending classes in a special
program for the developmentally disabled at Foothill College, building
the skills she will need to get future jobs, get an apartment, and
live on her own.
   
But in this era of shrinking education budgets, growing demands and
tough choices, Jarrett's dream may be ending.
   
Foothill is changing the parameters of its program--the only one like
it between San Francisco and Gilroy--and Tracey, who has Down's
syndrome, will not meet a new requirement: the ability to read and
comprehend at the fourth-grade level.
   
Yet Jarrett works as a bagger in a grocery store; she's had her own
checking account since high school and uses an ATM; she rides a
transit bus to and from classes. She loves listening to music, renting
videos, and having sleep-overs with friends. At the Special Olympics,
she took home a silver medal in freestyle swimming.
   
"She's my eldest, and I raised her as normally as the other kids,"
Jarrett said. ``She had chores, she took piano lessons, she went to
high school like her sisters--and here she was going to college." She
sees the course as a historic commitment that the college made to the
developmentally disabled.
   
But Foothill, buffeted by changing economic winds, is shifting its
course--from one that "mainstreams" students into the community to one
with a greater vocational bent.
   
The program, which operates separately from regular classes at the Los
Altos Hills campus, covers such subjects as history, local geography,
handling money, human sexuality, horticulture, computer operation,
writing and physical education.
   
"We'll teach them many of the same skills but with a different goal:
make them employable," said Sandra Urabe, dean of instruction and
student development. "In the past, we taught kids how to count money.
We're hoping now to teach them to count (by) making change."
   
Urabe stressed that while Foothill is not required to offer the
program, it not only will continue, but she expects it to expand from
50 students to 65 or 70.
   
The new focus also will put the program more in line with the
college's "mission" of providing two-year vocational training and
educational skills to continue at a four-year college--and make the
program more financially palatable. The changes will reduce the costly
need for one-on-one instruction, allowing the college to increase
class sizes.
   
But Jarrett contended, "If you raise the reading level to fourth grade
and double class sizes, it's no longer a program for the
developmentally disabled."
   
No one knows how many mentally handicapped youngsters will be kept
from the program because of the new admission standard. But Marco
Dondero, a special education teacher in the Palo Alto Unified School
District, said about half his current class of 11 will not qualify
under the new guidelines.
   
"They've upped the ante," he said. "In a sense, the parents have been
given something, and now it's been taken away."
   
Ruth Maitless of Palo Alto knows well how much the Foothill program
has meant to her daughter Michelle, 25, because two years ago she
fought tooth and nail to keep her in it.
   
"I was desperate," Maitless said. "Parents started this program
because of the needs of their children to have this experience, and
they did it before any of the people who are now running it were part
of the program."
   
Her daughter, who reads at a second-grade level, now is living
independently in San Jose, working in a restaurant and paying her own
bills.
   
"She's a contributing member of society, but they told me she
shouldn't be in there because she couldn't handle it," Maitless said.
   
At the San Andreas Regional Center, the clearinghouse for training and
residential programs for 6,000 developmentally disabled in four
counties, Executive Director David Peach said, "This is not good news
because we strongly support people getting training in all the natural
settings that anybody else would be in. Why segregate the people we
serve?"
   
Lynda Steele sees Foothill's shift in focus as troubling but not
crippling for her clients at the Community Association for
Rehabilitation in Palo Alto. Many of them will continue to b benefit,
she said.
   
"It's critical that they learn in that environment," Steele said.
   
 But she understands the college's dilemma.
   
 "It's a sign of the times. Many agencies that provide human or
educational services are struggling. They're having to make extremely
hard choices."
   
With the changes at Foothill, she conceded, "We're losing a role that
people with disabilities can play."

[Parents Blast Foothill's New Rules on Special Ed, Ed Pope, San Jose
Mercury News, April 10, 1995]

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