A Well-Intentioned Start: The Earliest Special Education Programs at LAUSD

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This is Part 1 of a two part series on the history of special education at Los Angeles Unified School District. Read Part 2, The Rocky Road to the Present: Expansions and Limitations in LAUSD Special Education, which starts in the mid-20th century.

Policies for the education of disabled students in the United States developed dramatically in the second half of the 20th century. With the passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973(opens in a new tab) (and its Section 504), the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975(opens in a new tab) (EHA), and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (opens in a new tab)(ADA), legal requirements changed the landscape for what disabled students could expect at school. For the first time, federal laws were in place that required districts to include them in public education (if the district accepted federal funds).

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) combines the Los Angeles City School District, founded in 1853, and the Los Angeles City High School District, founded in 1890. At times, it also included the Los Angeles Junior College District, formed in 1931 and separate from LAUSD since 1969. Although LAUSD didn’t exist in name until 1961, the board records(opens in a new tab) are combined from the beginning, so I’ll use LAUSD throughout the article. The first special education programs at LAUSD opened in 1898, long before they were mandated by law. Tracing the history of special education at LAUSD shows a pattern of mixed results: sometimes ahead of the curve, sometimes behind it.

Special education didn’t always mean what it does today. Initially, the term meant any type of program different from the norm. Schools and programs classified in the special education and special schools sections of LAUSD records include classes for disabled, pregnant, incarcerated, hospitalized and gifted students. Many of these other meanings were removed from special education in intervening years, but the records remain.

The first program for deaf students

The first program in L.A. schools specifically designed for disabled students was an oral education program for deaf students that began in 1898. This was about 80 years after the founding of the American School for the Deaf, the first public school for deaf students.

The first proposals for deaf education classes were brought about by the Southern California Association for the Oral Education of the Deaf, which petitioned the Los Angeles Board of Education for oral education classes beginning in the mid-1890s. The board meeting minutes from 1897 and 1898 show that the board agreed to provide classes for deaf students if the Association paid one teacher and they paid the other (Collection 1923(opens in a new tab), Boxes 3-4).

LAUSD Elementary School Students — Students seated and standing in front of Spring Street School sometime between 1855 and 1900. Classes for deaf children began at the school in 1898. This photo is from when the school was integrated.

Oral education, or oralism, is the practice of teaching deaf people to lip-read and speak by mimicking mouth shapes. The board hired Mary Bennett and the Association hired Helen Taylor to begin teaching one mixed-age oral classroom for “deaf-mutes” in Spring Street School. Deaf-mute was a historical term for those who were deaf and unable to speak oral language–they may have had sign language, but this was viewed as not enough. Students weren’t allowed to sign in oral classrooms; in fact, a former student of Mary Bennett’s recalled her using a ruler(opens in a new tab) on children’s wrists if she caught them signing.

Oral education is a controversial practice today. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was seen as the best approach, promoted by oralist teachers such as Alexander Graham Bell, whose mother Eliza and wife Mabel Hubbard were deaf. Oralism marked the transition from deaf teachers of deaf children to hearing teachers of deaf children, as hearing was required to teach oral language. Practitioners of oralism genuinely believed that they were helping deaf people, but its philosophies were built on ableist views of deafness and sign language. It also cannot be ignored that oralism pushed deaf people out of their own education.

LAUSD Fee Schedule for Bell's Classes — A fee schedule for Bell’s classes. He taught both deaf students how to speak and hearing teachers how to use the oral method. From the Collection of material by and about Mabel Hubbard Bell, Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Melville Bell and education of the Deaf, 1872-1957 (Manuscript Collection 274). Box 1, Folder 9.

In fact, Mary Bennett of Spring Street School was in correspondence with Alexander Graham Bell. In a 1913 letter, he reassures her that oral education is the best method over threats to her program from “the sign-language people.”

Letter from Alexander Graham Bell to Mary Bennett 1913 — A letter from Alexander Graham Bell to Mary Bennett dated August 30, 1913. All 4 pages can be found in the Library of Congress online resources.

Deaf education at the time was characterized by a patronizing view of deaf people that conflated hearing ability with intelligence. Even teachers themselves expressed surprise that deaf students could learn language as a hearing child would–through exposure to people speaking (or signing) it. In a letter between Bell and Helen Keller’s teacher, Anne Sullivan, Bell is astonished that she taught Keller idiomatic language simply by using it in conversation with her (Manuscript Collection 274(opens in a new tab), Box 1, Folder 11).

The LAUSD program for deaf elementary students moved many times before settling at the 17th Street School, later renamed the School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and finally the Mary E. Bennett School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in 1941. Classes for deaf high school students first opened at Polytechnic High School in 1914, and students could go directly from the elementary program to the high school program. Another elementary school for deaf students, Hyde Park Boulevard Elementary, was opened in 1968.

A parallel program for blind students

Beginning in 1917, Los Angeles schools offered programs for blind students as well (also 80 years after the opening of the first public school for blind students, the Ohio School for the Blind). Blind education programs were some of the first federally-funded programs for disabled people in the United States, beginning with the American Printing House for the Blind(opens in a new tab) (APH) in 1879. Through APH, schools were allotted funds depending on how many blind students they had, and they could purchase Braille books and tactile educational materials. Importantly, funds were strictly based on headcount, not race or gender. Whether schools used funds equally for students of color is another matter entirely, and many states in the South had separate schools for students of color.

LAUSD’s blind program faced issues with overcrowding that the deaf program did not. School board records indicate that by 1931, the school had run out of room for Braille books and tactile learning aids, and they had stopped utilizing their yearly funds from the American Printing House for the Blind due to lack of space (Collection 1923(opens in a new tab), Box 878, Folder 6). At the time, they were awaiting the completion of 32nd Street School for more space (later renamed Blend Elementary after its first principal, Frances Blend). However, even with this explanation, the blind program was being financially mismanaged. Rather than using their allotted federal funds, LAUSD was purchasing materials outright and leaving the funds untouched. They only realized the problem when the APH sent them notices warning that their funds would no longer be rolled over into the next year.

In 1929, LAUSD had 112 blind students and received $12.50 per student from APH ($216 in 2022). By 1943, the number of blind students had decreased to only 58, likely due to advances in the treatment of diseases that could leave children blind. Because there were fewer blind students in Los Angeles and nationally, the share of money for each blind student increased ($20.30 per student in 1943, or $314 in 2022).

Teacher teaching Braille — Teacher Jean Kentle, left, and principal Rosalie Calone of Frances Blend School for the Blind pass out story books in Braille to three students for the holidays in 1963.

Polytechnic High School soon had a program for blind students as well as deaf students. Students took classes with the general school population but had study halls where they learned disability-specific skills. The program at Polytechnic was ahead of its time in that it allowed deaf and blind students to take classes with hearing and sighted students, a concept called mainstreaming that wouldn’t be federally mandated until 1975. Still, other programs for disabled students in LAUSD maintained separation of disabled and nondisabled students.

In addition, many practices in deaf and blind education that were widely accepted as the best in the early- to mid-1900s are today considered, at best, controversial, and at worst, abusive. Students in the blind program were denied aids like canes and service dogs which would help them navigate the world independently, while modern research has shown that earlier use of canes is best. Deaf activists consider oralism, and its modern manifestation which uses cochlear implants, an erasure of Deaf culture and language. A more balanced approach teaches both signed and spoken language(opens in a new tab). However, students at LAUSD had no choice but to learn only oral language, as signing wasn’t taught and would be punished.

Patsy Ruth Fergus was a blind 16-year-old who wanted to attend a Los Angeles High School with her guide dog in 1947. The school board banned the dog from campus. Pictured is Patsy Ruth hugging her white German Shepherd, Lucky, from the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education records (Collection 1923)(opens in a new tab) Box 1186, Folder 4.

Sanitorium schools

Some of the first programs for physical disabilities took place in hospitals and sanatoriums where children were confined while sick. Beginning in 1925, LAUSD operated an elementary school at Olive View Sanatorium(opens in a new tab), an institution for people with tuberculosis. Olive View opened in the San Fernando Valley in 1920. Patients describe being forced into the hospital(opens in a new tab) and subjected to cruel (and, in hindsight, completely useless) treatments. Similar to blindness, cases of serious and long-term illness from tuberculosis dropped off in the 1940s and 1950s as antibiotics were introduced for treatment, and the sanatorium became a general hospital in 1959.

Dr. Emil Bogan with dead spiders, 1935 — Dr. Emil Bogan, chief pathologist at Olive View Sanatorium in 1935, with hundreds of dead black widow spiders. The accompanying information doesn’t explain why he’s collecting venomous spiders at a tuberculosis sanatorium.

Stays at the sanatorium typically lasted years, necessitating a school, post office, library, radio station, and other facilities for the over 1,000 patients living there. The first classes opened for elementary children in 1925, followed by high school and adult education classes in 1929. Classes were also held for “pretubercular” children–children infected but not showing symptoms–beginning in 1929. Facilities for those infected but not showing signs were sometimes called preventoriums.

Sanatorium classes fell under the jurisdiction of LAUSD’s tubercular division of classes for handicapped children. In addition to Olive View, a branch of the division was opened at Motor Avenue beginning in 1929, using land leased from the Jewish Orphans’ Home(opens in a new tab), today Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services. A part-time teacher was assigned to the Tujunga Rest Home in Tujunga, California in 1933, and Tujunga became a full branch in 1935. Another branch was opened at Hillcrest Sanatorium, the only sanatorium in the area that took Japanese patients, in 1945.

Olive View Sanitorium record — The first page of the record for Olive View, also called Olive View Sanatorium and Olive View Elementary. Although special education and special schools are separate categories in the records, they aren’t applied systematically. The high school for students with tuberculosis, Joaquin Miller High School, was filed under special education. From the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education records (Collection 1923). Box 2322, Special Schools.

Although Olive View was no longer a sanatorium by 1960, the schools associated with it were never officially closed. Instead, they were transferred to other branches of the special education division or became non-specialized schools.

These changes to the sanatorium schools foreshadow the next phase of LAUSD special education: the creation of specialized and separate school buildings. Beginning in the 1930s and accelerating through the 60s, schools for students with physical and intellectual disabilities opened throughout LAUSD. These separate schools and other issues would eventually bring LAUSD in conflict with federal special education laws, covered in the next installment of this series.

About the Author

Bri McKenna (she/they) is a Ph.D. student in the UCLA Sociology Department with a focus on disability in legislation and education. Her master’s thesis analyzed how U.S. senators use references to disabled people in Congressional hearings, and her dissertation will look at disability, race and gender in U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments. This summer, she was a research scholar in the Center for Primary Research and Training (CFPRT) at Library Special Collections where she delved into the history of education for disabled people in the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education collection(opens in a new tab).