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THE UNION
FEATURES
FEBRUARY 2023
Disabled students access facilities, curriculum with accomodations By Riya Vyas
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is a federal law that prevents schools and other state agencies from discriminating against and denying benefits to people with disabilities, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. As a result, schools provide various accommodations to ensure that all students, including those with physical and learning disabilities, are able to access the same curriculum as abled and neurotypical students. Students that require accommodations can be on either 504 plans or individualized education plans (IEPs), MUSD Executive Director of Inclusive Services for All Learners Mary Jude Doerpinghaus said. An IEP, in addition to providing access, ensures students can have educational benefits and includes services such as speech therapy, occupational therapy, and interventions, Doerpinghaus said. “Accommodations don’t alter what’s being taught,” Doerpinghaus said. “They alter the environment, or a format, or provide equipment or additional support that allow individuals with disabilities to gain access to the content or to complete a task.” Teachers district-wide receive students’ IEPs at the beginning of each school year, and students’ case managers are responsible for making sure teachers know the accommodations those students need, Doerpinghaus said. “There are some folks who have a hearing loss where they can benefit from something like an FM (frequency modulation) system, where the room might have speakers that amplify the speaker’s voice,” Doerpinghaus said. “If they are perhaps deaf or have a permanent loss, the teacher could speak into that that lapel microphone, but it might go directly to their hearing aid.” Students who have visual impairments might work on learning braille at school with vision specialists, Hutchison said. “If you have somebody who’s
blind, instead of having to read using braille, they could also have things audio taped for them. They could have notes electronically formatted,” Doerpinghaus said. Some students have powered wheelchairs to help them navigate the hilly MHS campus, but those that cannot operate the wheelchair themselves will have an adult pushing the wheelchair for them, occupational therapist Priti Shukla said. The role of occupational therapists is to help students access their academic programs through modifications, accommodations, and adaptations, Shukla said. To provide classroom accessibility for students who use wheelchairs, the school district provides adjustable tables and other assistive devices, she added. “They may need an assistive device, like a universal cuff, if they’re not able to hold a pencil or a pen,” Shukla said. “It’s a device that you put on your hand, and it holds a pencil so you’re able to hold it.” Senior Don Jose Navarro, who has autism, gets extra time on assignments and has a team of people who can help him with his work, he said. He finds it easy to navigate the MHS campus because he has been here for four years, Navarro said. “All of my friends, classmates, and teachers have supported me,” Navarro said. Shukla works with students to make sure they feel like they belong and are able to participate in school activities, she said. Physical education activities can be adapted so that students with physical disabilities can participate, she explained. To promote a greater sense of belonging on campus, a center or a designated place where students with disabilities could meet each other could help, Navarro said. “It’s really tough for someone like me to make friends, or for people to want to reach out,” Navarro said. “I’d suggest a place where people can meet with people that have the same disability.”
Adrian Pamintuan | THE UNION
Students choose from an array of brunch menu items, including burritos and oatmeal bars, at the cafeteria.
School cooks up balanced, diverse lunch menu By Adrian Pamintuan
In spite of the long lines and the overall stereotype that school lunch is poorly received, a school survey conducted by The Union found that 58%, of the 148 student respondents expressed positive feelings towards the items on the brunch and lunch menu. The development and maintenance of such a menu, intended to serve a little over 3000 students, is a lengthy process, MUSD Director of Student Nutrition Services Sandy Huynh said in an email. “Our meals must meet the federal meal pattern and nutrition guideline, and they are grade-level specific,” Huynh said. “Each of our meals must offer whole grains, lean protein, fruit, vegetables, and milk while meeting the specifications for calories, sodium, and fat.” While the development process for the lunch menu is la rgely handled at the administrative level, on the field interaction with students are handled by the cafeteria workers. Whether it’s preparing or plating the food, restocking ingredients, or monitoring the ID lines, these essential service workers have firsthand experience with student attitudes towards the menu. Certain items
Courtesy of Yeonsoo Kim
Students in the first-level language development class, Emerging ELD, take notes to learn English.
ELD cultivates essential language skills, prepares students for mainstream classes By Erick Johnson
Milpitas is a city with a large pool of immigrants, and young people arriving in the United States need to learn how to communicate properly and adjust to a new school system. The English Language Development (ELD) program is designed to assist these students to integrate into their new life. With 70 to 100 students enrolled in the ELD program, En-
glish learners make up a significant population of MHS, ELD teacher Amy Huddleston said. The ELD program, at its core, is designed to develop speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills at an accelerated rate, she explained. “The first level, Emerging ELD, is all about speaking,” Huddleston said. “We want them to be conversational when they leave that class. ELD 1, which is taught by Mr. Payne, is much more read-
ing-focused — being able to summarize texts and being able to understand when you’re reading something. When they leave that class, the expectation is that they can write a simple paragraph.” In ELD 2, the students begin to read novels and analyze text, similar to a mainstream English class, but with added support, Huddleston said. The process is slow, and students are guided through it, but the expectation is that after they complete ELD 2,
have become student favorites over time. However the main struggle is encouraging students to take a complete meal, Student Nutrition Services (SNS) Senior One Patricia Yount said. “We don’t want to nag them or make them feel like they have to, but they really do have to take a complete meal,” Yount said. “You know, they have to have a fruit, they have to have a vegetable.” Though student resistance to complete lunch meals is ongoing, MHS Student Nutrition Services branch lead Caterina Lapena said that there are consistent efforts to diversify the menu to cater to a variety of students’ preferences. “Just recently we were doing Indian food, so that’s something new,” Lapena said. H o w ever, the process of adding new menu items is tedious due to compliance regulations from both the federal and state government that the school district must follow, Huynh said. “We constantly are searching for new, compliant products; reviewing historical data; solicit-
ing feedback from students via surveys; and taste testing new items,” Huynh said. “We strive to offer a menu that is not only compliant, but tasty and enjoyable to our students.” Yount said both students and the supervisors of SNS were working towards being more culturally responsive to the student body. “We really are trying to please everyone,” Yount said. “There was a student member that came in and started this little vegan area.” The universal meal program, which is a state initiative that began providing free brunch and lunch meals in the 2022-2023 school year, has added a new strain on her department to meet the demand, largely because meal participation has increased as a direct result of the free waiver, Huynh said. “In addition, the pandemic has disrupted the supply chain,” Huynh said. “We are constantly experiencing supply shortages and limited product availability.” Sophomore Carmella Henderson, who gets brunch and lunch almost everyday, noticed the food department’s efforts to diversify the menu, she said. “It’s pretty good how we have different things,” Henderson said. “And it’s kind of interesting to discover new cuisines from different areas of the world and different cultures.”
they will be placed in a Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE) class, so they must be ready to read and compose easy and small essays, she added. At the end of the day, the students’ biggest challenge is communicating and connecting with people outside the program, Huddleston said. “I think it’s very hard to make friends outside of the ELD classes for them,” Huddleston said. “They are kind of limited by who they can communicate with, and navigation of the whole high school experience is a lot more challenging for them. We have to keep an eye on them. Are they able to advocate for themselves if they’re in the wrong class, or if a teacher is being unfair to them?” The challenge for ELD students is that they’re not exposed to other people at school, and the interactions are usually limited because of the language barrier. They are not given opportunities to be exposed to things they have not experienced before because they are usually all together all the time for their classes, ELD teacher Yeonsoo Kim added. “The (mainstream) teachers get upset with us because we don’t know their language and we don’t understand them,” ELD student Daniela Valderrama said in an interview translated from Spanish. “They come here to teach and do their job, and with us who don’t speak their language, they feel frustrated.” It is important that the teach-
er who teaches ELD speaks the student’s language, which is currently not the case with any of the ELD teachers, who can only speak basic Spanish sentences, Valderrama said. When a student has a question, the current ELD teachers can not directly explain and help the students and instead rely on an assistant to act as a third-party translator, she said. As a result, there is confusion about the instructions being given and students might not fully understand the material being taught, she said. “I always ask for ELD tutors in this class who speak Spanish or Vietnamese because they can help students,” Kim said. “(Students) are not on the same level, and all of them are at a different place because they have different educational backgrounds.” Despite the language barrier and other educational concerns, being an ELD student also has its advantages, Huddleston said. ELD students have their year schedules filled out before most students and receive priority attention from course counselors, she said. Unlike most students who can only take MHS courses over the summer to recuperate credits, ELD students can take summer classes in order to help them catch up with their English, she said. The school also makes sure ELD teachers have sufficient materials, and the school sets aside a portion of the budget for the ELD program every year, Huddleston added.