Action Not Words

The LAUSD Superintendent Is Failing At Supporting Special Education

With about 62,500 students in the LAUSD having disabilities, Alberto M. Carvalho needs to develop a more inclusive plan to meet their needs.

Carl J. Petersen
5 min readJul 25, 2022

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the feeling that students with Special Needs are at most an afterthought is now a reality for many parents. I am one of those parents.

- Vicky Maronyan

The LAUSD allocates over 20% of its budget toward educating children with disabilities. In the 2019–2020 school year these expenditures amounted to about $1.75 billion. With the federal government not funding these efforts at the levels required by law, providing special education services puts significant pressure on the rest of the budget. Unfortunately, a lot of this money is wasted by the Beaudry Bureaucrats as they ignore the input of parents and teachers and implement the latest education “reform” fads.

An example of the lack of attention provided to Special Education programs can be found in Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho’s 100-day plan presented at the beginning of this his tenure. While there are about 64,500 students in the LAUSD with disabilities, the words “disabilities” and “disability” only appear a total of five times. The 18-page document only mentions the phrase…

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Carl J. Petersen

Parent, special education advocate and former LAUSD School Board candidate. Still fighting for the children. www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com