Advocating for Off-Campus Orientation and Mobility Instruction in California: A Successful Grassroots Movement

Abstract

Over the last decade, many local education agencies (LEAs) across California imposed significant restrictions on community-based orientation and mobility (O&M) instruction. Administrators from these LEAs prohibited O&M Specialists from transporting students off-campus for instruction, with one large Southern California district going so far as to direct O&M specialists to rewrite existing IEP goals that required transportation. Consequently, students who attended schools governed by these LEAs were denied access to the community-based O&M instruction to which they were entitled under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004), known as IDEA. Orientation and mobility specialists in both Northern and Southern California LEAs attempted various advocacy efforts within their districts, including educating administrators on the legal rights of their students to communitybased instruction, as well as submitting letters of support from the California Association of Orientation & Mobility Specialists (CAOMS). These unsuccessful advocacy efforts within individual LEAs led to the recognition that a statewide approach would be needed. In 2017, CAOMS and the California Council of the Blind (CCB) partnered to start a grassroots movement to resolve the problem. They succeeded in passing a law entitled “Expanded core curriculum: visually impaired pupils,” (AB-947, 2019), amending California’s Education Code. This law affirms the rights of students with visual impairments to community-based evaluation and instruction as needed in both familiar and unfamiliar environments, in “varying lighting conditions,” and outside of school hours, with transportation to support these services. It also authorizes LEAs to consider elements of the expanded core curriculum (ECC) when developing Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). This report describes our procedures, which can serve as a model for other