[Nfbf-l] Fw: [blindlaw] Update on Florida School for the Deaf and Blind
rjs059 at peoplepc.com
rjs059 at peoplepc.com
Wed Feb 25 01:34:06 UTC 2009
This disturbs me.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Philip Breeze" <pebreeze at gmail.com>
To: "NFBnet Blind Law Mailing List" <blindlaw at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 2:31 PM
Subject: [blindlaw] Update on Florida School for the Deaf and Blind
> 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
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