‘They are just like any other child’

Jessica Garrison

NEWPORT-MESA -- After only six days of school, teacher Bill

Klooster said he already feels tremendously protective of the boys in his

class.

Ten of the 11 students in Klooster’s special day class, which he

co-teaches with his wife, Connie, are among more than 150 students in the

Newport-Mesa area who live not with their parents, but in state-funded

group homes.

Klooster said he fears that rising community concern over the number

of group homes in Costa Mesa will cause hostility toward his students,

who live in a Newport Beach residential treatment center for severely

emotionally disturbed children.

According to a city report released Monday, there are 86

state-licensed homes in Costa Mesa, serving a whole spectrum of society’s

unwanted -- from the developmentally disabled, recovering addicts and

homeless to battered women, senior citizens and foster children.

Costa Mesa, the report revealed, has far more group homes per 100,000

residents than any other city in Orange County. Armed with that

statistic, some residents have called for the city to limit the number of

group homes allowed.

Klooster, along with other school officials and group home directors,

said people should be more accepting of children in group homes, many of

whom have been abused and abandoned by their parents.

And some have continued to suffer once in the relative safety of a

group home. In one infamous case, a young man living at New Alternatives

Inc. group home in Costa Mesa was sexually abused by his psychiatrist,

Burnell Forgey, and the psychiatrist’s roommate, convicted sex offender

James Lee Crummel. Crummel was sentenced Friday to 60 years to life in

prison for that crime.

“Those of us who are on the front lines with these children don’t have

the same biases toward them,” Klooster said.

His students -- with their shy, polite smiles and their baggy pants --

are just like normal teenagers, he said.

Insecure. Vulnerable. Capable of heartbreaking sweetness one minute

and terrible errors of judgment the next.

But many people fear them, he said, in part because of what they

represent about society.

“Our society is deteriorating because of a loss of family values,”

Klooster said. “These kids are symbolic of that. The breakdown of family

is to many people the breakdown of society.”

Bonnie Swan, the district’s head of special education, said most

children who live in group homes slip unnoticed into the stream of

activities at district schools.

They go to class. Many play on the football team at Costa Mesa High

School. They generate average daily attendance monies for the school

district.

There are things they can’t do, however. The students in Klooster’s

class are shepherded onto a school bus at the end of each day, and then

ushered behind the closed doors of their facility. They are not allowed

to wander the streets on their own.

Many group homes don’t allow their charges to attend slumber parties,

or stay out late on Friday nights, or watch television for hours on end.

A sizable minority of group home residents are special education

students, Swan said. And there are students who educators believe cannot

handle regular school. For those students, the district offers special

classes, like Klooster’s, or sends students to special schools, like one

that South Coast Children’s Society operates in Newport Beach.

Swan said she is glad Newport-Mesa is such a welcoming place, although

she sometimes wishes the city of Costa Mesa could warn the school

district when a new group home opens, so the district can get ready for

the children.

“It’s a sad place to be, in a group home. Even a good group home,”

said South Coast Director Richard Sewell. South Coast also operates four

group homes in Costa Mesa. “They are wonderful kids. They are just like

any other child, but they’ve been put in a position, not as a fault of

their own, but as fault of their parents.”

It is true there are children who live in group homes who are violent,

disruptive and angry. But educators say they are a small minority.

Not everyone agrees. Many, from Planning Commissioner Katrina Foley to

residents speaking at City Council meetings, have suggested that the

children -- who are wards of the state -- can be noisy, obnoxious and a

threat to property and even neighbors’ personal safety.

Sewell said sadly, he is accustomed to the discrimination his children

face.

“I know a couple of occasions where our children have come home crying

from school as a result of being teased about their living situation,” he

said.

But he added that, in general, Costa Mesa and Newport Beach are ideal

locations for group homes.

“This area offers children opportunities that could be difficult to

find in other areas of the county,” he said. “Employment. Quality

schools. Shady streets.”

And, he said, a school system that welcomes and supports his children.

“Newport-Mesa is really exceptional,” he said.

Peggy Young, who operates six group homes for foster children in

Orange County, including one for severely emotionally disturbed girls in

Costa Mesa, said the proximity to social services in the city makes it an

ideal place to open a group home.

Young added that she herself would feel some trepidation about living

near a group home for adults, but that homes for children are an entirely

different story.

Many girls have graduated from her program and gone on to college, and

even to graduate school, she said.

“You don’t hear the good stories,” she said. “You only hear the

terrible stories.”