“We just want what is best for students, and we believe now we can offer that at Taft,” said Angela Burrell, a Santa Ana School District spokeswoman.
The Santa Ana statement directly contradicts that of Newport-Mesa officials who previously said they decided to reevaluate and “phase out” the Kaiser program after Santa Ana educators had made the decision to pull their students.
Susan Astarita, assistant superintendent of elementary education, had no comment at the Newport-Mesa school board meeting Tuesday night.
The casualties of Newport-Mesa’s decision to accommodate only Newport-Mesa children in their programs for hearing-impaired children increased recently when the district decided to serve only the three Newport-Mesa students in the program at Costa Mesa High School starting the next school year.
The remaining 14 students from the high school program, the majority of whom are from Santa Ana, will be forced to return to their district or enroll in a program elsewhere, Newport-Mesa officials said.
Parents within the district were notified within the last two weeks they would not be able to enroll in Costa Mesa’s program after the end of this school year, officials said, but the notification of families living outside Newport-Mesa was left up their home city’s school district.
“We have less than two months to make a decision as to what we are going to do,” parent Angela Delgado said.
Delgado, who was recently told of the change by a teacher at Costa Mesa High School, spoke at the school board meeting and plans to fight efforts by the district to end the program at Costa Mesa High School.
“We are trying to play the advocates for these kids because they can’t do it themselves,” she said.
