"non CI? with about more than half of deaf kids being implanted these days?"
Are 50+% of deaf people profoundly deaf and eligible for a CI? I would think that the numbers of mild, moderate, and severe hearing losses make up a bigger percentage of the deaf? I've never heard the actual breakdown, and that's interesting to know if it is true.
It would seem to me that if this many children are getting implants, the deaf schools would have more to worry about than having enough players for a football team, since a lot of these implanted children would be in mainstream or TC school settings, and not necessarily in the deaf schools. And if they aren't in the deaf schools that's fewer students in the classes...