http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49050-2003Oct5.html
Va. Tries To Balance Its Needs
Budget Shortfall Threatens to Consolidate Sister Schools for Deaf and Blind By Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 6, 2003; Page B01
Joan Cooke sobbed all the way home to Richmond the first time she left her son, then 11, at the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind in the Shenandoah Valley. She didn't think Chase was ready -- and she knew she wasn't ready -- for someone else to tuck him in at night.
But Chase wanted to go to school where his friends would get his jokes without an interpreter and he wouldn't be the only deaf kid on the basketball team. Last month, he started his freshman year at Gallaudet University for the deaf in Washington.
Kelly Karber, 11, is enrolled in Virginia's only other public residential school for the blind and deaf, in Hampton. In addition to his visual impairment, Kelly has cerebral palsy and is fed through a tube in his stomach. Last year, Kelly learned to use a cup; this year, his mother hopes, he'll learn to dress himself.
Even as enrollment declines at both schools, the state spends $12 million each year to keep them open -- about $63,000 per child, tens of thousands of dollars more than local school districts spend to educate students with disabilities. For years, Virginia legislators have debated whether to merge them, and this year they say they're determined to do it.
That's been said before, but nobody has ever been able to choose between the two: the 150-year-old school in Staunton, which offers a full academic curriculum to high-functioning students, or the Hampton school, founded in 1906 for blind and deaf black children and now serving increasing numbers of students with multiple disabilities.
The debate, which begins with money, has often foundered on matters of race and geography -- the two schools are 180 miles apart, neither centrally located. But the main question is whether state-run residential schools make sense almost 30 years after federal laws began requiring local school systems to educate children with disabilities in regular classrooms whenever possible.
Again and again, the decision to do nothing has come down to environment -- to the desire of some children or their parents for a place where students don't feel different and where teaching methods are designed for them.
"Anyone who thinks that you can just do it simply doesn't realize the political implications and doesn't realize the differences in opinion among people who want good training for people with visual and hearing impairments," said Sen. Emmett W. Hanger Jr. (R-Augusta), a member of a task force that must recommend a plan to consolidate the schools' services.
The options on the table go beyond closing one school and moving its programs to the other. Among the alternatives is closing both and building a more central school -- an option that received serious consideration at the task force's monthly meeting Thursday. The only given, according to state Board of Education member Scott Goodman, chairman of the committee, is that there isn't enough money to run all the current programs at both campuses, each big enough to accommodate the other's students.
"You have a very manageable number of children," Goodman said, "and you also have a budget situation that is very dicey."
*continued in post #2 -- too long article had to split them up*
Va. Tries To Balance Its Needs
Budget Shortfall Threatens to Consolidate Sister Schools for Deaf and Blind By Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 6, 2003; Page B01
Joan Cooke sobbed all the way home to Richmond the first time she left her son, then 11, at the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind in the Shenandoah Valley. She didn't think Chase was ready -- and she knew she wasn't ready -- for someone else to tuck him in at night.
But Chase wanted to go to school where his friends would get his jokes without an interpreter and he wouldn't be the only deaf kid on the basketball team. Last month, he started his freshman year at Gallaudet University for the deaf in Washington.
Kelly Karber, 11, is enrolled in Virginia's only other public residential school for the blind and deaf, in Hampton. In addition to his visual impairment, Kelly has cerebral palsy and is fed through a tube in his stomach. Last year, Kelly learned to use a cup; this year, his mother hopes, he'll learn to dress himself.
Even as enrollment declines at both schools, the state spends $12 million each year to keep them open -- about $63,000 per child, tens of thousands of dollars more than local school districts spend to educate students with disabilities. For years, Virginia legislators have debated whether to merge them, and this year they say they're determined to do it.
That's been said before, but nobody has ever been able to choose between the two: the 150-year-old school in Staunton, which offers a full academic curriculum to high-functioning students, or the Hampton school, founded in 1906 for blind and deaf black children and now serving increasing numbers of students with multiple disabilities.
The debate, which begins with money, has often foundered on matters of race and geography -- the two schools are 180 miles apart, neither centrally located. But the main question is whether state-run residential schools make sense almost 30 years after federal laws began requiring local school systems to educate children with disabilities in regular classrooms whenever possible.
Again and again, the decision to do nothing has come down to environment -- to the desire of some children or their parents for a place where students don't feel different and where teaching methods are designed for them.
"Anyone who thinks that you can just do it simply doesn't realize the political implications and doesn't realize the differences in opinion among people who want good training for people with visual and hearing impairments," said Sen. Emmett W. Hanger Jr. (R-Augusta), a member of a task force that must recommend a plan to consolidate the schools' services.
The options on the table go beyond closing one school and moving its programs to the other. Among the alternatives is closing both and building a more central school -- an option that received serious consideration at the task force's monthly meeting Thursday. The only given, according to state Board of Education member Scott Goodman, chairman of the committee, is that there isn't enough money to run all the current programs at both campuses, each big enough to accommodate the other's students.
"You have a very manageable number of children," Goodman said, "and you also have a budget situation that is very dicey."
*continued in post #2 -- too long article had to split them up*