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Autumnal Equinox September 23, 2:46 a.m.
News: An Auraria chapter of a '1 national organization plans to make its presence known.
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Page 3 Feature: What better way to spend a s_unny Sunday? Some people had something else in mind. Page
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Metro Style: Our reviewer says "Pink Floyd The Wall" views "like a good Page fiction piece"
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Volume 5, Issue 5 © Metropress September 22, 1982
S~pporters
testify for Special Ed. '•
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' by Randy Golkin and Kathleen L. Humphreys
Hundreds of outraged parents and special education advocates attended public hearings at the Auraria campus Sept. 20-21 to express their concerns s:. about the proposed federal changes that would deregulate crucial sections of the Education of the Handicapped Act (P.L. 94-142). The orginal Act of 1975 insures all handicapped children the right to a free ~ appropriate public education, including nondiscriminatory evaluation and the right to due process of the law. The new proposals, issued on Aug. 4, are aimed at increasing state authority and deregulating the original federal law. The following three proposed revisions have created the most controversy among advocates of handicapped children. *The "related services" regulation meaning physical, occupational, speech and other therapies and treatments ~ was rewritten to allow schools to impose "reasonable limitations" on these services. •The regulation that currently r~ quires parental consent would no longer require the permission of parents before a handicapped child is placed in a ~ special education program. •Another crucial change that could affect handicapped children would be allowing the schools to limit educational
services rather than being required to offer tehm, which many parents feel will rever~e the long-sought goal of mainstreaming handicapped children. According to representatives of the Reagan administration, the proposed regulations will "reduce fiscal and administrative burdens on state and local school systems." But many advocates of handicapped children contend the underlying issue is a lack of federal funds, which triggered state and local school systems to com~ plain because they were being pressured to enforce a law without the funds to do so. "The federal government puts in about 10 percent for special education in Colorado," · said Allan I. Bergman, executive director of the Association for Retarded Citizens of Colorado. "Part of the beef of the school districts (in Colorado) is that they are told (by the federal government) to do certain things but they don't have the money," Bergman said. "They are solving the wrong problem - there is nothing wrong with the law, they just need to get more money," he added. Even though the Colorado Commissioner of Education, Calvin M. Frazier, supports the proposed regulatory changes, he agreed witb Bergman on the funding issue. "Colorado received $9.5 million last year to help offset the $108 million in excessive costs of serving the handicapped.
Colorado was scheduled to receive up to five and six times this amount, or $45-55 million which we never received," Frazier stated at the Auraria press conference. "State and local budgets have carried over 90 percent of the costs as a result and prescriptive rules by a reneging partner is hardly the basis. for a cordial relationship," Frazier added. He said he supports the new proposals only because "there is no other way of getting the responses and recommendations" from parents and professionals in the field of special education. ·
However, supporters are responding negatively because they think this is just another way of undermining the law by rendering the regulations ineffective. "Last year, the Reagan administration tried to repeal this law (P.L. 94-142) by diluting it inside of a block grant," said Alice Kitt, chairperson of the Colorado Developmental .Disabilities Council and the Colorado Coalition for Persons with Disabilities. If Congress had passed the block grant, Colorado would have received a large chunk of money to divid!=' any way Continued on page 4
Active parent Allee Kitt is shown during her testimony before a group of federal administrators.