[blindlaw] Update on Florida School for the Deaf and Blind

[Philip Breeze]

Hello everyone, a few months back I posted an entry concerning my 6 year old
sons application to The Florida School for the Blind.  I have an update on
the situation and find it extremely difficult to understand.  The facts are
as follows:

February 2008 -- I applied for my son to attend FSDB.
May 2008 -- I received a letter disqualifying my son from attending.
July 2008 -- I met with the school president and staff, non of whom
evaluated my son's records.  No person in the meeting could explain the
reason for refusing him entry other than the evaluators must have seen
something in his records to disqualify him.  They determined that he was
Trainable Mentally Handicap and could not answer the question of how they
determined this.
October 2008 -- I filed a complaint with Florida Department of Education.
FDOE determined that FSDB acted unethically and ordered FSDB to show proof
of findings.  FSDB refused such saying they no longer had his records and
that we need to reapply.  FDOE also ordered FSDB to refrain from using the
terminology Trainable Mentally Handicap as it is no longer used in the
professional world.

Here we are in February of 2009 and FSDB has yet to admit that they used
prejudice in evaluating my child and will not accept responsibility of such
even after being ordered by FDOE.  FSDB to this day has never seen my son in
person.  I contacted several attorney's and learned that FSDB is notorious
for being sued and spending millions of dollars to prevent children that are
slow learners from attending.  Yes, my son is developmentally delayed.  He
was born blind and has very low muscle tone (hypotonia).  FSDB prefers to
allow enrollment to those visually impaired children that are most easily
educated and to accept deaf children.  They *DO NOT WANT* young totally
blind children.  This could possibly impact their bragging rights to
success.

I have come to the realization the FSDB, a State of Florida public school
discriminates against young blind children.  They violate every aspect of
IDEA and No Child Left behind.  They accept federal assistance and private
donations.  They have a budget of $40 million dollars and only 700
children.  They retain a high dollar attorney from Atlanta to keep children
out.  This is most blatant case of fraud, waste and abuse I have ever seen.
They excuse themselves by saying that they do not have the money nor man
power to educate children that have multiple disabilities and those children
have other options.  My options are to stay locally and have my child
educated by a county that has few blind children and no experience with
teaching them or to leave the state to attend a school elsewhere.

I never in my mind thought that I would have to fight to get my child
accepted to a school for blind children.  These people work for the Governor
of Florida, the FSDB board is appointed by Governor Crist.  There in
something severely wrong with an organization whose primary mission is to
educate blind children and they refuse to do so.

My thoughts and prayers go out to all of you that continue to suffer this
sort of discrimination in our society.

Philip Breeze