Closing USDB schools

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.

Money for schools

So the federal government authorized money to go to individual states to help keep classrooms solvent in this economic crisis. What does the state of Utah do? They first say that they don't need it. "Ah who needs well educated kids, we pay the least to help our students and that's just fine by us. "
This would have been the end of it, no money for our kids except that there is a catch. See if a state legislature refuses the money than it gets dispersed among that states schools anyway. Well our legislature couldn't let that happen so they begrudgingly took the money.
Some Republicans said that giving aid to our underfunded schools was taking away states rights, his reasoning was that the state of Utah should have had the option to refuse the money.
This to me is like a neglectful parent suing DCFS for taking their child out of the home and feeding him/her. "Hey that's my kid, and if I don't want to feed him that's my right"
Well, what about the rights of the children who are owed a decent education. With this money we could ensure that class sizes stay small, and that children with special needs get the education that they are entitled to under 504.
When the legislature slashed our budget last year they put us back in the black, good for them. But as far as I know they have no intention of raising funding for schools in the near future. To revisit my analogy, if the parents won't feed their children then someone has to make sure that they don't starve.