[blindkid] Question about Student Loan Forgiveness for Parent

[Heather Field]

Hello Richard,
I'm taking the liberty to reply regarding Natae's statement regarding her 
rural situation and the quality of the education available through the 
school district. I know Natae well and she's one of the most positive and 
accepting of blind people person I know. She is one of the parents currently 
involved in launching our new Parent division here in Tennessee. In 
commenting on the quality of education available in her school district, she 
speaks of what she knows. She worked for the school district and has had 
discussions with administrative staff in which she has bluntly been told 
that, despite IDEA, they don't bother with the blind children, they just pay 
for them to be bused, one and a half hours each way, to the Tennessee School 
for The Blind. She has decided, as I would also, that this is not an 
acceptable educational option for her son.

Speaking as someone who lives in Tennessee and is in touch with parents and 
teachers all over the state, let me assure you that it's not as easy as 
simply persuading a school district to "contract with professionals". 
There's a shortage of these professionals in the United States and there's 
certainly a shortage in Tennessee. I have friends who teach in the blindness 
field in Georgia and, given the level of service available there, I think 
you would find it almost impossible to imagine what goes on in Tennessee. 
for example, in Chattanooga we are working with a mother whose perfectly 
average, only blind, 10-year-old son was sent to a school for mentally 
retarded children for several years because they "thought he would do best 
there." No testing, just a decision by someone who didn't want to deal with 
a blind child (this school district has a history of this attitude), and a 
mother without support. While there the child received no literacy, 
numeracy, speech or occupational therapy, and certainly no orientation and 
mobility. I can tell you of another case where a teenager whose sight is 
rapidly deteriorating, to where he will soon need to be a braille reader, is 
being  refused services of any kind. The parents have been told "we don't 
care what advocates or who you bring with you to the next IEP meeting, your 
son is not getting any braille or training with a cane". Even if many 
counties would agree to hire teachers of the blind, the teachers can't be 
found. Early intervention is my passion but, the program available in 
Tennessee is woefully inadequate. It is my experience that most of the 
visiting teachers are not trained in working with blind children. The few 
that are believe in the "use vision at any cost" approach to early 
intervention and they counsel parents to expect delays and retarded 
development. Parents who move from other states to Tennessee have told me 
that they are so amazed at the lack of services that they almost can't 
believe it's true. So, living and working on the coal face of blindness 
education in Tennessee, I wholeheartedly encourage ay interested parent to 
homeschool their blind child and I help them access the resources to do it.

As to your discussion regarding homeschooling a blind child, I am a member 
of a Yahoo group which is made up of parents who are very successfully 
homeschooling their blind children. The laws differ somewhat from state to 
state but, basically, all blind children are eligible for Quota funds from 
the American Printing House and parents work with the state trustees to 
obtain equipment and materials. Involvement of school districts and the 
state agencies for the blind vary between states but homeschooling is very 
doable. Those who believe in it actually believe with all their harts that 
it is the superior way of schooling blind and low vision children because 
one can integrate life skills and experiences, such as self-advocacy, 
orientation and mobility work, braille writing and reading and maths facts, 
all in a simple trip to the supermarket. I am seeing incredible progress in 
literacy, numeracy and language learning in newly adopted blind children and 
incredible achievement by children who the system was trying to convince 
parents were all but unteachable. Parents are saying "no more print" for 
struggling low vision children who are only six or seven years old and can't 
read their own writing the next day and have no hope of ever reading more 
than 30 or 40 words per minute with print and visual aids, provided their 
sight doesn't deteriorate. They are saying "yes" to braille and potential 
reading speeds of 300-400 word per minute. they are teaching their children 
to use their sight for what it can do and their nonvisual techniques for 
what it won't. These parents have had enough of fighting schools to allow 
their children to be given the tools for acquiring an education. They have 
taken them home, or kept them home, and are teaching them themselves and, 
I'm excited to say, they're really doing a great job. As an ever growing 
number of parents are proving that homeschooling blind children is extremely 
doable, more and more parents are bypassing the Russian Rolette of public 
school education and taking charge of their own child's future.
After all, folks tend to forget that public school education is only a 
200-year-old experiment, an even shorter experiment for blind children. 
Before that, parents and tutors educated children. I take issue with the 
idea that learning orientation and mobility/cane skills is hard. I, and I 
know others who are the same as me, have never had a formal orientation and 
mobility lesson in my life and I travel internationally without assistance 
if I choose. Contrary to what professionals would have us believe, it really 
isn't that complicated to take a long stick and systematically move it in 
front of you as you make your way through the world. children who get enough 
experience "orienting" themselves in the world as they move and grow will 
not need a special instructor to teach them to do it. I submit that 
homeschool children get much more chance to go out and about in the world on 
a daily basis than those children in public school. As to the reason why 
there are so few braille reading students in your county, you will probably 
find that it is because so many children who should be using braille are 
being forced to use their vision and use technology such as cctvs. This is 
much cheaper for the school district and it feeds into the stereotypes that 
reject braille as representing blindness and all that dreaded word "blind" 
represents in the psyche of even trained teachers.

When mainstreaming became law back in the 1970s congress promised to fund it 
to the tune of paying 80% of the cost. To date, the best estimates I've read 
put the amount of funding at about 17%. It's expensive to educate a blind 
child and budgets are tight and getting tighter. for many children with 
visual impairment, it's not about what best for their education it's about 
what works financially for the school district and the poor harried, 
overworked itinerant vision teacher. Just think of how Hank Miller's parents 
had to fight for two years of their child's life to get him taught braille 
and given braille resources. Imagine seeing your very bright child struggle 
just to get his homework done because of the obstacle to achievement that 
using limited vision to read print created.
So, the education of functionally blind children, which includes all those 
very low vision children who should be using braille, in much of this 
country, but particularly in rural areas, is in a terrible condition. If it 
comes to fighting an unwilling, underfunded, unresponsive, even antagonistic 
school district, or homeschooling a blind child, I am encouraging parents to 
give homeschooling their best shot and I'm supporting them in doing it.

Warmly,
Heather





-----Original Message----- 
From: Richard Holloway
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2012 10:37 PM
To: Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children) ; 
nataejones at hotmail.com
Subject: Re: [blindkid] Question about Student Loan Forgiveness for Parent

I don't want to jump into the middle of this discussion on the other aspects 
of the post. I don't have anything useful to offer there, but this one 
comment below made me take pause:

> When it comes to homeschooling, I live in a very rural area, and I have 
> heard nothing great about our local school systems and their education of 
> the visually impaired.

I would submit that most people on this listserv, and indeed most parents of 
blind children in all areas (rural or urban) could make a similar statement. 
(Most, not all.) Especially if there are few, if any similar situations in 
your area, one never knows what can be done through the school system based 
only on word of mouth or various anecdotes.

I do confess that i wonder if you have heard bad things about how the 
schools deal with blind students, or just assume their lack of experience 
will spell disaster. It sounds as if you are still pretty early in the 
process of determining your son's education plan. Try and be patient and 
explore your options.

I don't know your child's situation, but if he is going to be a Braille 
reader, for example, there is a great deal involved in teaching Braille 
proficiency. I assume he will need to learn cane travel skills. This takes a 
great deal of work too. My point is you will likely need services from your 
school system or through some state agency, no matter if you ultimately home 
school or use public education. Ultimately some parents find this is all 
more than one can manage alone. If possible, check with others in your local 
area through the NOPBC or your state division, if one exists and/or your 
state or local chapter of the NFB. Apologies for not remembering your 
specific state if posted already.

Speaking of state agencies, programs such as Babies Can't Wait (here in 
Georgia) can also provide some useful services and support until your child 
reaches school age. Have you looked into a similar program for your state?

As kids get older, many (perhaps most) also need many thousands of dollars 
in equipment to be able to have reasonable access to brailling equipment, 
embossers, computers, etc. If this equipment is required under the concept 
of FAPE (Free Appropriate Public Education), your school system will have to 
supply it. It doesn't matter if they have it already or not, they will have 
to find a way to get certain required equipment for you, and generally the 
are funds available, or ways to have equipment loaned through other means to 
the school also exist. Can you gain access to this through other means? 
Possibly so, but you will likely have more support in the teaching of the 
use through a school as well. It isn't like picking up a conventional laptop 
to use these machines in many cases... There is a learning curve. Likewise 
with adaptive software for conventional computers. (Screen readers, like 
JAWS, for example.)

There will be need for other things too-- including nearly countless Braille 
books, including text books, tactile maps... All manor of supplies. Almost 
certainly you will need lots of braille transcription services. Some books 
you can order through certain libraries and services, but some may prove 
rather difficult to acquire without the right system in place. .Save to say 
this is a very complicated business. I find it overwhelming sometimes just 
from the standpoint of a parent trying to properly support a blind student 
attending public school.

May I suggest a couple of things to you?

If you have not, research what is available through various means as far as 
Braille support, orientation and mobility, etc., and also (if you have not 
done so) find out what the school can actually do for you. If this is a very 
rural setting with few if any other blind students and they have no 
qualified staff, they may simply be compelled to hire out needed services 
through qualified specialists. They might partner with other school systems 
or perhaps a state school for the blind or other state agency.

It may seem like a lot to consider, to try and find a way to make public 
schools offer a way to educate your child, but long-term home schooling is a 
big thing to attempt as well, and what concerns me most with that is the 
Braille and O&M aspects of doing so.

I'm not suggesting you cannot do it yourself. I'm sure others here have 
managed just what you appear to be thinking of, but if I were in your place, 
I would want to explore all options before I were committed to that path.

I remember when our daughter was born. I felt like I was going to have to 
adapt the entire world for my child personally. It took me several years to 
realize most things were already adapted. As parents, my wife and I realized 
that our job was to find these existing solutions and tweak them to our 
needs. Reinventing the wheel was generally not needed. It took me several 
years to figure this out. It took several more years to begin to feel like 
we had a working system in place. Now we know to try and adjust/adapt 
existing solutions before we start from scratch.

Does your state have a school for the blind? If so, plan a trip there. Many 
schools offer resident placement for students of many ages, but I'm not 
suggesting you need that option. What the school almost certainly can do is 
give you an idea of the process to educating a blind student through a tour 
and some discussion. You might learn you live within bussing range. (About 
60 miles in our state.) They may have much information to share and many 
suggestions to make even if you don't want to consider that school as an 
option. We looked at many public and private schools before we found a good 
fit.

In our case, we have a daughter with no light perception whom we started off 
in a private school. After a couple of years in a great learning 
environment, the situation began to change-- decline actually, as the needs 
for Braille and O&M also began to become more pronounced. We soon realized 
that only a well managed plan in a public school setting was going to work 
for our needs.

We live in a large metro area. Our county has nearly 700,000 residents and 
we are in a part of the largest metro area in our state (Atlanta, Georgia). 
I assumed there were many Braille-reading students in our county. Imagine my 
surprise when we learned recently there are only three Braille-reading 
students in our entire school system. (All grades, all schools.) We get good 
services, but not because the schools here have a vast number of Braille 
students to support. Now in fourth grade, our daughter has been the only 
blind student in her school since pre-k, so rural or not, being the only 
blind-, or at least the only Braill- reading student is a pretty common 
issue for our kids. Fact of the matter is, there aren't a lot of blind 
people in the general population in most areas. Blindness is a fairly 
uncommon thing, especially for children. Once grown, our kids end up living 
in a mostly sighted population as well.

Again, this is no reflection on you personally. I just hope ANY parent of a 
blind child trying to find the right educational path will explore all 
possibilities as thoroughly as possible before they rule any of them out. 
Your local public schools have a legal obligation to proved your child with 
a Free Appropriate Public Education. Why not talk to them and learn what you 
are planning to decline before you turn it down?

I expect there are also homeschool support sources and maybe some of those 
can help with blindness adaptations to consider, but it sounds like you have 
much time to weigh out your options before you commit yourself long-term to 
a path, and in fact one can even change paths as we did (from private to 
public school, in our case, around age 5). We have made many unexpected 
adjustments since our blind child was born. The best news I can offer about 
that is it seems to get easier over time.

Sorry for the long post but hopefully it will present some options to 
explore further.

Best of luck to you,

Richard
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