I will honestly say I have an issues with how the special ed dept is ran and the lack of help. Although I know my comment will effect how my child will be treated at school.
But I am one voice and we need more!
I have an issues w the district because there are more disabilities then just autism. Great that they are helping kids who are autistic but we have children w ADHD auditory issues and epilepsy among other disabilities.
Those kids are not getting help that desperately need it! My son has a combo of all three along with other issues and is barely reading at first grade level when he is going to go into fourth. Daily, we have to worry about him at school and his safety because of the kind of Epilepsy he has( non convulsive kind). Special ed dept needs to step up and help these children and get educated in their disorders. The epilepsy foundation among other foundations I'm sure offer free education classes for individuals interested. I know that the epilepsy foundation have offer to come out if they district wanted to and everyone told me that they are too busy for that.
This children deserve the same right to an appropriate education like other children We also need to provide more education to the staff teachers and district regarding difference kinds of disabilities because if they don't see it then they don't get it! And so that understand better how to assist these children. Another matter with this is if you ask the superintendent for help with the matter, you are told that he is too busy to meet with you or to discuss your issues with the special ed dept. We need our district to step up and help these children just as much as the other children! Please be a voice for our children, they deserve us to fight for their rights!

A big problem is how the children are classified to begin with. We made the mistake of marking a little box saying we spoke Spanish at home and my child was then classified as an English learner from kindergarten though she's only ever spoken English. It's been 5 years of meetings and tests that are nearly impossible to pass even for English only speakers. It feels like our kids are being let down. We see it even more now that the schools are divided into two. The meetings for Spanish speaking parents lack information and tools to help our children overcome obstacles and keep them from becoming another statistic.

Hire more district administrators, principals and teachers that are 100% bilingual/fluent in Spanish and pay them more. I think only the principal at the new Dual Immersion school is the only one truly fluent in the language. That broken high school/college Spanish that most are speaking just doesn't cut it and a lot of meaning and nuances and content gets dropped in communication.

English is not my mother tongue, there are no teachers or admins fluent in my mother tongue, but I learned and keep learning English, participate in my child's education, and I don't expect English speakers to be attentive to any nuances of my communication in my mother tongue.
Just sayin'....

@Non Spanish speaking foreigner

Good for you. Unfortunately the decades old and worsening achievement gap in the district is among Spanish speaking students.

Well, there is a point to be made from the commenter above who is making it a point to learn English and make strides to help with his/her child's education. We can race and race and race to bend over backwards to meet the needs of everyone who doesn't speak English, but (warning: won't be popular): what about these parents taking a bit of responsibility too? Attending English classes? Scheduling more meetings with teachers? Translators are ALWAYS offered. Making sure homework is completed? Kids are fed breakfast before coming to school? I really am a compassionate person but I just think there are always two sides to a coin.

There are two organizations that work for special education families to communicate with the district and we want to get the word out so that we can help more! The Learning Challenges Committee is local to MVWSD and is a PTA council committee. All the PYas should know about it. Check out LCC.lamvptac.org. There is also SeLPA1CAc. Org. LCC meets monthly with Spec ed admin and we want to help give you a voice, especially families of kids who are both Spec ed and ELL.

So is the plan to reduce the achievement gap by stunting the advancement of average and above-average learners? Students from this district may all end up unemployed.

Kids model their parents.
If parents don't learn, will kids learn?

That's never been the official plan but it was absolutely our experience.

The achievement gap in the district has more to do with socioeconomic factors and parental education than with home language. Although the language gap (and the culture gap, which exists even for parents coming from from a foreign but English speaking country) adds an extra layer of difficulty for advocacy. Speaking as a non native speaker with an above average mastery of the language (learned in the public schools of a foreign country, so not exactly as if I "made a point to learn English"), a graduate degree and the advantages of education and money.

And considering how much time, effort and money native US parents have to expand to navigate the special ed system I am actually very impressed to see parents with little formal education and limited English working hard to successfully advocate for their kids, despite all the obstacles. Anybody dumping on them should attend one of the ELAC meetings at their school, or a PIQE workshops.

Re. the task force, it has had a hard time finding a focus, and has finally narrowed expectations to improving communication with parents (as attendance dwindled to mostly parents). There is only so much one can do, and there is truly a crying need for better communication, especially for ELLs.

@ Castro Parent: you are not the only one with this issue, which is not limited to the district. There is actually a law under consideration by the CA legislature (AB81) asking districts to warn parents of the consequences of checking the boxes when filling the home language survey.

Since the survey asks whether the child has been exposed to a language other than English in the home setting and checking all but one box will trigger testing (using a test that, when administered to a representative sample of English-only incoming Kindergarteners state-wide, identified 75% of said children as ELLs, vs. 95% of children whose parents had checked a box), one wonders whether it wouldn't be simpler (and cheaper) to fix the test than to basically encourage parents to lie about languages spoken by members of the household.

The Superintendent must not be aware or is blind to how poorly Special Ed department is being managed. It doesn't seem to have improved and teachers must be unhappy, to see so many job openings and turnovers. Seems like the District Quality Review has been ignored. It directly pointed out that staff aren't equipped or qualified, yet we have administrators who are managing the department with minimal or no technical experience -- and they don't have the communication or leadership skills to make up for it. How are they supposed to hire quality educators if they're not qualified to make that judgement themselves? Is the superintendent blind to the fact that it's easy for the public to look up his staff on California Commission on Teacher Credentialing website or LinkedIn???
Yes, parents should know their legal rights!