SANTA ANA : Special-Needs Pupils to Be Mainstreamed

The Santa Ana Unified School District will begin districtwide mainstreaming of students with special needs this coming school year.

As part of that program, Mitchell School will switch from a K-12 special-education campus to a regular preschool and serve both disabled and other preschool students.

The school will be known as the Mitchell Childhood Development Center and will house programs for infants and preschool children up to age 5 and also Head Start programs. Disabled students as old as 21, who previously attended Mitchell, will switch to regular campuses, said Edward Lee Vargas, assistant superintendent of support services.

Two other special-education schools will undergo similar changes in September. Taft Hearing Impaired School will merge with Taft, forming a single school, and Harvey Orthopedically Handicapped School will become a regular elementary school campus.

The shift is part of the district’s continuing effort to place disabled students in regular classes whenever possible. The policy aims at preparing disabled students for life after school, Vargas said.

“When our kids leave the schools, there are no special restaurants or grocery stores or movie theaters that young people with disabilities go to. There’s just the real world. By educating students with disabilities in a natural environment, alongside non-disabled people, we can more effectively prepare them for that,” he said.