Well, the Utah legislature wants to close down the schools for the deaf and blind. The reason, they say, is that most students would do fine if left to their own school districts. This is not only a false statement it is a dangerous one. Most USDB students do go to school within their respective districts, but they are not well served by them. These students receive equipment and training from the USDB schools. They have special teachers that help them with work and these teachers help the school to be more accommodating to the student's special needs. For children with multiple disabilities mainstreaming is not possible or would be far to difficult for either the child the district or both, for these children the school for the deaf and blind is essential. Closing these schools would place an undue burden on cash strapped districts, it also could lead to students being denied their legal right to a quality education. I for example would have had a much harder time in school without my resource teacher, during eighth and ninth grade when I didn't have her the school forced me into resource and remedial classes with the profoundly disabled rather than give me printed material that I could read. The truth is, we live in a state that undervalues it's disabled community and this is a tactic to take education away from students who deserve it. In 1973 it was determined that all children deserved an education, this is Utah's way of superseding federal law.
Without doing any research to find out what it would cost for individual districts to provide for these new students they assume this measure will save them $19 million. With some common sense they would realize that either individual districts would end up expending this same amount of money to educated these children, or these children would get an inferior education.
Undoubtedly some of you are thinking, "Aaron, this is just a proposal." My answer to that is look back to two weeks ago when the legislative budget committee said that Utah was doing great but might need to cut 7% from every department. The Utah Statesman reported what that could mean to USU, and Gov. Herbert told us not to worry it probably wouldn't happen. Well now that the session has begun everyone is talking like that cut is a forgone conclusion. In Utah every time the legislature mentions a cut it almost always happens. The chance that this state could lose it's schools for the deaf and blind is real. I did not go to the school, but I did benefit from it, this isn't some unimportant program, this isn't frivolous wasteful spending. This is about educating peoples children.
Utah prides itself on families, but time and time again cuts services to families, services that when cut leave no private option, they just do without. My wife was schooled like she had a mental disabled because her district couldn't be bothered it do paper work, to do an extra hour of work for a student that "wasn't their kind". Not to save money, not to help other students, but to be neglectful. And that's what these new round of cuts are, malicious neglect. If you cut funding to the disabled, we get rid of uppity cripples, who work hard and expect employment. Isn't that the Utah rhetoric, hard working people get ahead. But disabled individuals are working hard, taking the only option available to them, education, but over 94% of them are unemployed. Why? Discrimination, but Utahans we want to believe that good old Molly and Jack Mormon are not the ones responsible for this discrimination. SO the solution, that doesn't make us seem like hypocrites, is to get rid of the educated disabled, put them all into homes, and shut them up. Not to make Molly and Jack Mormon accountable for their bad behaviors, but continue to victimize the victims of prejudice.
ReplyDeleteYou make some very good points and I agree with you. Here's another point - what about the teachers? They are already in classrooms with 30 kids or more trying to give each of them an education. Now they also have to take the time to help someone who is blind/deaf/disabled - special needs. The legislation can now point fingers to bad teachers for the lack of education that the kids get. Only cutting more funding for programs that would help these kids.
ReplyDeleteIt's all a viscous circle that ultimately means they protect their own ass and let the population fight it out.