[blindkid] Urgent: please sign this petition to help a blindkid!

Tue Oct 30 02:59:29 UTC 2012

This sounds like a bad situation and I wish only the best toward getting this child proper services. Not intending to derail this discussion at all, but I don't understand how the child is about to be too old to attend this school. Is it just for younger kids? When I think of a school for the blind, I'm thinking k-12 or something similar.

I hope this is solved quickly, but surely the are proper services available through some school for the blind for a child of ANY age there, no?

What keeps jumping at me is the apparent assumption that this child should be schooled with children with developmental delays, while it sounds like he has no diagnosis to suggest he himself is similarly delayed. I would challenge any school to produce evidence that students from the blind population with no additional diagnoses are more likely to be developmentally delayed than the population in general. That simply isn't true.

All this comes back to FAPE (free appropriate public education) under section 504, where the school will be hard pressed to justify it is "appropriate" to place a developmentally typical child in a classroom with apparently all other kids being developmentally delayed to the point of being nonverbal, or even if they were nonverbal for other reasons (perhaps they are deaf or otherwise speech impaired and the issues are not entirely cognitive). No matter what, the last thing I would want to do is surround a child who has little or no vision with a bunch of kids who cannot speak. The visually impaired child will find himself in a particularly disadvantage position do to the lack of information available to him from his classmates. Obviously, if anything, blind kids need EXTRA auditory information. 

Are we missing some information? Or are they actually claiming this is the appropriate placement without having preformed an appropriate supporting assessment and getting a proper diagnosis? If they have don't that, I suspect that they may have placed themselves in a fairly unstable position legally, if it turns out that legal action should have to be taken to resolve this.

Hopefully it will not come to that. There's one other approach that may prove useful. There's always the local TV approach. If the school is being terribly stubborn and the family wished to take this route and feels confident this is what they want to push for, it may well be that a TV crew and a bit of air time may encourage some more cooperative thought on the school's part. Simply put, it doesn't look good for a school or school district (etc.) to appear to be mistreating a little blind kid. Can they defend themselves on camera? Because if they decline to interview they will automatically appear to be in the wrong as well. No school or district wants to look bad to the community... Maybe that is worth some thought?

Good Luck!

Sent from my iPad

On Oct 29, 2012, at 7:26 PM, Beth Koenig <bethko at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://www.thepetitionsite.com/641/695/309/support-sending-nathan-to-preschool-school-for-the-blind/
> That is the direct link.
> Beth Koenig
> bethko at gmail.com
> (714) 699-DEAF (3323)
> Director of Deaf Blind Services
> Orange County Deaf Advocacy Center
> 1525 Durant Street 303
> Santa Ana, CA 92706
> http://www.deafadvocacy.org
> Health, safety, and productivity are the cornerstones of independence.
> At the Orange County Deaf Advocacy Center we provide the training and
> services necessary for the deaf and disabled to achieve equality and
> independence in all areas of life.
> 
> 
> On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 3:42 PM, melissa R green <graduate56 at juno.com> wrote:
>> the link took me to a bad URL.
>> Do you have another link?
>> 
>> 
>> Melissa and Pj
>> Facebook: Melissa R Green
>> Nobody is in charge of your happiness except you!
>> 
>> 
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Beth Koenig" <bethko at gmail.com>
>> To: "Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)"
>> <blindkid at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Monday, October 29, 2012 12:40 PM
>> Subject: Re: [blindkid] Urgent: please sign this petition to help a
>> blindkid!
>> 
>> 
>> Not spam we are just desperate. Nathan is a real actual child being
>> denied to go to Blind Children's Learning Center preschool. And yes I
>> know my writing is awful that's why I don't normally write. We are
>> using the same petition site as Care2.org uses for their petitions, in
>> fact I think we might be listed on care2. We need help.
>> Thanks,
>> Beth Koenig
>> bethko at gmail.com
>> (714) 699-DEAF (3323)
>> Director of Deaf Blind Services
>> Orange County Deaf Advocacy Center
>> 1525 Durant Street 303
>> Santa Ana, CA 92706
>> http://www.deafadvocacy.org
>> Health, safety, and productivity are the cornerstones of independence.
>> At the Orange County Deaf Advocacy Center we provide the training and
>> services necessary for the deaf and disabled to achieve equality and
>> independence in all areas of life.
>> 
>> 
>> On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 7:26 AM, Peter Donahue <pdonahue2 at satx.rr.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Good morning Beth and everyone,
>>> 
>>>    This smells like spam to me. Sign at your own risk.
>>> 
>>> Peter Donahue
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Beth Koenig" <bethko at gmail.com>
>>> To: "Beth Koenig" <bethko at gmail.com>
>>> Sent: Monday, October 29, 2012 12:11 AM
>>> Subject: [blindkid] Urgent: please sign this petition to help a blind kid!
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I am forwarding this petition at the request of the parents, please excuse
>>> the cross posting.
>>> 
>>> Click to view this email in a
>>> browser<http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/999455/fb8e0d0ade/289385751/f4b9a7f060/>
>>>  [image: whiteboard_top.jpg]   [image: spacer.gif]  [image: spacer.gif]
>>> Support Sending Nathan to the Preschool School for the Blind!
>>>     Hi Supporter,
>>> 
>>> Nathan is a blind four year old. We are working with Nathan''s family to
>>> help make sure that he receives the training that he needs to succeed in
>>> school and grow up to be a competent adult. Nathan has every hope of being
>>> able to be mainstreamed. However, in order to give him the foundation to
>>> succeed he first needs to learn the adaptive techniques of the blind. He
>>> also has to learn things like how to learn over a bowl, make friends, and
>>> so many other things that we take for granted every day.
>>> 
>>> Please go sign this
>>> petition<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?OrangeCountyDeafAdvo/fb8e0d0ade/f4b9a7f060/03005f538c>to
>>> send Nathan to the Preschool to the Blind so he can get the best
>>> foundation possible.
>>> 
>>> *Click Here to
>>> Sign<http://cts.vresp.com/c/?OrangeCountyDeafAdvo/fb8e0d0ade/f4b9a7f060/8cebc8056c>
>>> *
>>> 
>>> Thank you,
>>> 
>>> Beth Koenig
>>> Executive Director
>>> Orange County Deaf Advocacy Center
>>> 
>>>    [image: note_top.gif]
>>> [image: Picture of young Nathan]
>>>   [image: note_bottom.gif]   [image: spacer.gif]   [image:
>>> spacer.gif]  [image:
>>> spacer.gif]   [image: whiteboard_bottom.jpg]
>>> _______________________________________________
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>> 
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> 
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