Parent Win Fight with School Board in Virginia

Parent Win Fight with School Board in Virginia

Parents Win Fight with School

Board in Virginia

From the Editor: Readers may remember that in

the Winter/Spring, 1997, issue of Future Reflections, we carried an article titled

"Virginia Parents Battle Teacher Shortage." At that time parents were pressing

the Hampton school district in Virginia to hire more teachers of the blind and visually

impaired students. Parents, at that point, had won a partial victory—the board had

agreed to hire a second teacher. That was in December, 1996. The following article was

published in August, 1997--more than six months later. As this article makes clear,

Hampton, Virginia, school officials now seem to understand that their past struggles to

provide only the barest minimum of services to blind students enrolled in city schools

have done incalculable harm to youngsters who were already facing heavy odds against their

success.

Once again we see the damage done by imposing the

failure model on the education of blind children. Waiting for the child to fail using one

set of supports before permitting more useful ones to be tried virtually insures that the

student's self-confidence will evaporate a little more with every poor grade or

uncompleted assignment.

Hampton parents, with help from the parents

division of the NFB of Virginia and its active President Vicki Messick, forced school

officials to change things for the future and correct past mistakes as far as possible.

Here is the story by Sandra Tan as it appeared in

the August 7, 1997, Daily Press.

Hampton to Hire Third Staffer for Blind

Schools to Offer Makeup Services

Theresa Brooks sat in her car as the rain turned

the cold February night colder. She had just left a school board meeting to speak on

behalf of her visually impaired daughter, but no one seemed to hear. Her husband had died

several months earlier and could lend no comfort. So she prayed.

"Lord, I'm tired. I feel like I'm all alone.

What I said, did it go into people's hearts? Is anybody listening?"

Someone finally listened. Brooks's daughter and

other visually impaired students in Hampton City Schools will be getting more help.

"I don't know what did it," said Vicki

Messick, president of Parents of Blind Children, a local chapter of the National

Federation of the Blind. "It could be God; a lot of people have been praying."

After more than nine months of complaints and

lawsuit threats, Hampton City Schools' administrators agreed to make up for some

incomplete and incorrect special education guidelines that parents say robbed their

children of adequate instruction for years.

Since November, parents have complained that

their children were illegally denied preschool instruction because of their age, that

unqualified administrators were making decisions about their children's schooling, that

the number of school vision specialists was grossly inadequate, and that the guidelines

used to determine a student's right to services were too narrow.

Most of all, parents complained that school

administrators didn't seem to care whether they were doing the right thing for a group of

children that make up less than two-tenths percent of Hampton's overall student

population. These complaints were finally addressed in meetings with parents and parent

advocates over the last two weeks.

Given a pending suit filed with the U.S.

Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights and more protests brought before the

local school board, school officials have now promised to hire more specialists and offer

make-up services to children whose parents have said were wrongly denied instruction.

"A lot of parents had threatened to go to

due process hearings, basically take them to court," Messick said. "I have no

desire to go to court. If we can make progress another way, so be it."

Superintendent Billy Cannaday conceded that the

school system could have done a better job of addressing these parents' complaints from

the start. Instead of wasting time arguing about who was technically correct according to

state and federal regulations, the school system should have taken a closer look at the

potential harm being done to visually impaired children, he said.

"We only looked at the letter of the

regulations, not the intent of the regulations, which is to serve children," he said.

"When it came down to doing what's best for students, it became a much easier issue

to resolve."

As part of the solution, the Hampton City School

Board voted Wednesday to hire a third vision impairment specialist to help work with about

thirty-five children. Last year the school system had only one specialist working with

more than twenty-five children. In December of 1996, the board approved another position,

but the second specialist was not actually hired until last month. In addition to

increasing staff size, the school system has agreed to offer more than 600 hours of

make-up services* to children who received inadequate vision instruction in their earlier

years.

Cannaday said some personnel changes will also be

made to insure that such students are never overlooked or shortchanged again. Money will

be reallocated to meet the agreements reached with parents, Cannaday said, but that the

amount will not stress the existing budget approved by City Council.

Parents and advocates praised the school

administrators and board members for their actions but still wondered at the time it took

for those actions to come about.

"I'm very happy that they finally, finally

are giving the services that Christina needed and deserved," said Brooks, in regard

to her fifteen-year-old daughter, a tenth grader at Bethe High School, "I thank God,

I really do." Christina, an albino with severely impaired vision, received no school

vision assistance until she nearly failed the second grade, Brooks said.

Brooks's daughter will receive 345 hours of

make-up tutorial and counseling services. "Even though they're the educators, we're

both on the same team," Brooks said. "It's a partnership, raising a child."

*Editor's note: What the author calls

"make-up services" is called "compensatory education services" by the

courts. Children who were either denied appropriate special education services (services

which they needed, but which were never put on an IEP), or who never received all or some

of the special education services listed on their IEP's (this is often common with

orientation and mobility services), may be able to negotiate for compensatory hours of

services. In some rare cases, parents have negotiated to receive cash, technology

equipment, or other goods and materials in lieu of hours of teaching services. For more

information contact:

National Organization of Parents

of Blind Children

Barbara Cheadle, President

1800 Johnson Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21230

phone: (410) 659-9314.

E-mail: [[email protected]]