Deseret News editorial
Published: Sunday, July 13, 2008 12:08 a.m. MDT
In 2009, when state lawmakers prioritize funding for construction projects, they need to move a central campus for the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind to the top of the list.
Construction of a stand-alone school, which would serve 350-450 deaf students throughout the Salt Lake Valley, has failed to receive funding for several years. Meanwhile, students have been served in older school buildings that are not fully accessible and have other life/safety issues. Others are served in satellite locations in public schools on a space-available basis.
This past week, parents, students and advocates for hearing-impaired and visually impaired students rallied at the Utah state Capitol for better capital facilities. As one parent told the Deseret News: “Kids have to be moved around every year, and much of the space we do have is literally falling apart. All children deserve an excellent education,” said Jodi Kenner, a West Jordan mother of two deaf children, who is deaf herself.
Kenner is right. These students deserve a safe, permanent home within reasonable driving distance.
Unlike local school districts that have independent bonding authority to pay for school construction, the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind rely solely on state funding. The school competes with other departments of state government for building, planning and construction funds. USDB received planning money for a school in central Salt Lake County in the past, but it has not ranked high enough on the state building board’s list to receive construction funds. A new school would cost approximately $20 million.
USDB has leased space at the 55-year-old Grandview Elementary School at 2870 Connor St. for nearly 25 years. The lease on that building is set to expire at the end of 2009. While the two-level school has been adapted to accommodate students with physical disabilities, better facilities are needed.
The school presently houses three blind-preschool classrooms, administrators and service providers. This fall, it will absorb students from the Jean Massieu School in South Jordan. That school, established as a public charter school in 1999 specializing in American Sign Language, was later merged under the USDB umbrella. The building that housed the Jean Massieu School lacked air conditioning or a central heating system.
USDB students, some with multiple disabilities, should have a safe and stable school environment. They and their parents deserve to know precisely where they will attend school each year, that their school is safe and accessible and that it has needed technology and facilities to serve these students’ specific needs. Lawmakers need to make funding of this school a priority.
http://www.desnews.com
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_9873429
Parents fume over lack of school for deaf, blind kids
mailto:bfulton@sltrib.com
By Ben Fulton
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 07/14/2008 06:23:14 AM MDT
Jodi Kinner of West Jordan is deaf and has two deaf children, so she can’t hear the excuses state lawmakers dole out when explaining why Utah’s deaf students don’t have a school building to call their own.
That doesn’t mean she can’t see what’s going on, however. Along with several other parents of deaf children, Kinner has tired of watching her children shuttle from school to school, attending class in facilities with insufficient space or in “rundown” condition.
The struggle for permanent facilities for deaf students has gone on so long that parents and administrators for the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind can’t agree on how many years it has lasted. Kinner counts this as the 10th year state lawmakers have turned down requests for a building. Melanie Austin, assistant superintendent for USDB, said the schools have been asking lawmakers politely for seven or eight years.
Parents feel their children are slighted, if not because of their disability, then by the fact that they can’t speak up like other children.
Austin said USDB has made solid efforts to secure a school, but only so much can be granted by a state continually strapped for education funds.
While a USDB facility exists in Ogden, parents feel Salt Lake County needs its own building to serve deaf and blind students in the largest population center.
Fed up, Kinner and about 100 others protested Tuesday at the state Capitol, hoping that lawmakers might finally find funds for a permanent USDB school in Salt Lake County.
In the 2007 legislative session, lawmakers offered Utah Schools for the Deaf and Blind a five-story office building plus half a million dollars for renovations. It was that or nothing, Kinner remembers. USDB soon learned the building’s first floor alone would need $1.4 million worth of renovating, and that building code wouldn’t allow a school in a building of more than three stories. When USDB was offered a building in the Salt Lake City School District at $660,000 per year to lease, Kinner said the state offered only $248,000 in one-time funding.
The Jean Massieu School of American Sign Language at 1350 W. South Jordan Parkway, where Kinner’s children are students, is scheduled for demolition by a charter school that shared its lease with Massieu students while waiting for its new school to be built.
The 72 Jean Massieu students will then move into USDB’s old administrative offices in Salt Lake City at the old Grandview Elementary School building. Even that move is temporary, Austin said, because the lease there expires next year.
With school starting in less than six weeks, Kinner has little faith the building can be ready in time.
“We feel our children have been marginalized, because their sensory impairments appear to make them less worthy citizens than other ‘normal’ school children who have buildings and equipment and green space and mascots and identity,” Kinner stated in an e-mail.
Kinner points to the federal Disabilities Education Act, which requires “equal and appropriate education placement options” for students with disabilities.
USDB serves about 2,100 students from birth to age 21, said Austin. Anywhere from 85 percent to 90 percent of those are deaf, 10 percent to 15 percent are blind or visually impaired, with a small percentage both deaf and blind. Many deaf students attend traditional schools where most learn skills in reading lips, while students who prefer an American Sign Language curriculum with their deaf peers attend Jean Massieu. Deaf and hearing impaired students often respond better to one curriculum over another.
Because the USDB is considered both a state agency and a school, it cannot bond and collect money similar to other schools, but must go the Legislature every year to explain its needs and request money through those avenues. As a state agency, it’s also vulnerable to budget cuts.
SDB was the subject of a state audit report in February 2004 that was critical of its financial management practices, and ways in which it monitored teaching effectiveness. Joe Zeidner, a Salt Lake City attorney whose 15-year-old daughter Jesse attends the school, believes USDB’s ineffective management practices have tainted agency requests for improved school facilities.
“They need leadership that can articulate problems and present them to lawmakers in a better fashion,” Zeidner said. “Parents would be outraged if this was happening to hearing students.”
Gwyneth Kenner’s 10-year-old son Joshua receives USDB instruction at Millcreek Elementary, but even she saw the need to protest Tuesday for a permanent school. “Because the Legislature funds us as one school, what affects one of us affects us all,” she said. “It was no treat hanging around in the heat of the Capitol, but it was necessary.”
bfulton@sltrib.com
Utah Schools for the Deaf
and the Blind
* USDB serves about 2,100 students from birth to age 21.
* Anywhere from 85 to 90 percent of those are deaf, 10 to 15 percent are blind or visually impaired, with a small percentage both deaf and blind.
* Because the USDB is considered both a state agency and a school, it cannot bond and collect money as other schools do, but instead must go the Legislature every year to explain its needs and request money through those avenues.
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=3712456
Utahns rally for better treatment of deaf and blind students
July 8th, 2008 @ 12:00pm
By Nicole Gonzales
Parents, children and advocates for deaf and blind students are letting their voices be heard today. Nearly 100 people gathered at the Capitol this morning to rally for children who attend Utah Schools for the Deaf and Blind.
Parents, children, grandparents and even a legislator showed up this morning to support deaf and blind children who, they believe, should get the same benefits other children get.
Parents say their children are facing an educational nightmare. Students have been moved every year to different locations with no permanent building to call their own.
Whitney Ingram was one of the older deaf children at the rally today. She is going into 10th grade and wants to finish out high school at a stable location.
“We’re in one building for a few years, then they send us to a different building. And the buildings are old, and they’re kind of crumbling. We really want to go to a school that’s nice, where we can stay,” Ingram said.
Ingram is like many Utah deaf and blind students who have to move year to year to different locations to go to school. Some of the younger children don’t understand why they’re being moved.
“They’ll ask, ‘Well, why can’t we go back to that school?’ And you just say, ‘They don’t have room for us.’ And they ask, ‘Why don’t they have room for us?’ ‘Well, we don’t know, honey,” explained Ellen Porter, grandparent of a deaf student.
Utah has just over 2,100 students who are blind or deaf; 350 to 450 of them attend schools in the Salt Lake Valley, most are part of regular classrooms or mainstreamed.
Seventy-five to 80 children will move to a temporary facility in Holladay this fall. But some mothers still do not know where their children will be this year. “I’m scared to death. I’m scared to death. He wants to know where he’s going to be,” Jennifer Jackson said.
Organizers hope today’s protest brings awareness to the situation and gets the Legislature to back their cause. A House representative at the rally said there’s no excuse to ignore these children.
“I’m hoping that this year will be different. I’m hoping that these parents and teachers and the advocates being more vocal, more visible, will make it harder to deny their legitimate request,” said. Rep. Christine Johnson.
People who spoke at the rally wanted to remind residents to write to their representatives about this problem. They said the only way the system will change is if more of the public speaks up.
E-mail: ngonzales@ksl.com
