In California, incarcerated students fall through gaps in special education laws

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Michael Garcia (center in photograph), who was once a junior cadet in the Bell Police Department's junior explorer program, struggled to receive special education services as an inmate in the Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail for 19 months.

Credit: Kelvin Kuo/For The Center for Investigative Reporting

TEHACHAPI, Calif. – School ended for Michael Garcia with a routine transfer from juvenile hall to adult county jail. There was no fanfare, diploma or cap and gown. He hadn’t graduated or dropped out.
He’d simply turned 18.
For the next 19 months, he was in limbo, unable to receive the high school diploma that he’ll need for most jobs and to attend college. Despite being eligible for special education under state and federal laws – Garcia has a learning disability, an auditory processing disorder and a speech and language impairment – in the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail, he was a student that no one wanted to teach.
California and federal laws allow students with disabilities to receive special education until age 22. But the laws are vague enough that deciding who should provide that education is unclear.
Garcia has spent nearly five years in legal battles trying to hold someone accountable. This year, the California Supreme Court is expected to hear Garcia’s case to determine whether an incarcerated student’s local school district – the one in which his or her parents reside – is responsible for his or her special education.
The case has implications for county inmates with disabilities and school districts across the state that could be required to send teachers into jails to instruct special education students. In L.A. County jails alone, attorneys for Garcia estimate, between 400 and 700 young adults are eligible for special education on any given day.

Sheriff's deputies inspect a cellblock at the Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail. Michael Garcia was transferred there from juvenile hall after he turned 18 and did not receive special education services for 19 months.

Credit: Reed Saxon/Associated Press

The court’s decision will come too late for Garcia, who is incarcerated at a state prison – a system beyond the scope of his petition. Still, said Garcia, who turns 23 in June, “it’s the least I can do.”
“I know other people are struggling to get education too but don’t have the courage to keep pushing,” he said. “I already went through that struggle. Why not keep going to help everyone else?”
During a recent interview in prison, Garcia recited the Lord’s Prayer quickly, unblinking, through the thick glass of a visiting booth. The words weren’t always this easy for him to recall. Garcia grew up with his mother, Yamileth Fuentes, and four siblings in Bell, a small city in an industrial corridor southeast of downtown Los Angeles.
After long hours of driving a county Metro bus, Fuentes would return home and teach Garcia angel prayers, first in Spanish and then in English, by having him repeat after her, line by line. Even after a month of saying the same prayers every night, Garcia would struggle to recite them on his own, Fuentes said. And because Garcia glossed over Rs and Ls, his words were garbled and difficult to understand.
In second grade, Garcia was found to have a learning disability caused by an auditory processing disorder and a speech and language impairment. He was assigned weekly speech therapy and placed in a special education class. Garcia said he hated the class for separating him from his peers and because it made him feel stupid.
So in sixth grade, when he realized he had been mistakenly placed in a general education course, Garcia said nothing. He relished the chance to prove he was smart, that he did not need special education after all.
“It was a conflict I had with myself because I knew I was smart enough,” he said.
He failed the class. With an F on his report card, Garcia was dropped from the Bell Police Department’s junior explorer program, in which he had been a proud junior cadet who hoped to someday be a police officer.
Garcia said he got involved with the wrong crowd shortly after. By the time he finished middle school, he was a member of the Barrio Mojados gang.
One evening in January 2006, Garcia was acting as a lookout as his friends tagged a corner store wall in South Los Angeles when two men from a rival gang came up to them and started shooting. Garcia said he ran toward them, shooting back.
He then took cover behind a car in the driveway of a nearby house. The man and woman who lived there told Garcia to get out and tried to push him off their property. As the couple tussled with Garcia near the front yard, another teenage boy approached, pulling a gun from his waistband.
The couple testified that Garcia told the other boy, a fellow gang member, to shoot the man – a claim Garcia denies. Still, the other boy fired, striking the man’s pants.
Garcia was sentenced to 12 years in state prison for one count of attempted murder and two counts of vandalism. With time served, he’ll be released in 2016, when he’s 26 years old.