[Nfbv-announce] Richmond Seminar Fact Sheets

[Corbbmacc O'Connor]

Our annual visit to the state legislature is quickly approaching! The pre-seminar meeting, membership seminar and Board of Directors meeting will be this Sunday, January 27th, and the legislative appointments will happen on the morning of Monday, January 28th.

This year, we will be focusing on 2 key issues: 

1. Our support for the Governor's Budget, which funds the Standards of Quality for blind students
2. Our opposition to any attempt to merge the Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired with other agencies serving people with disabilities.

I have attached the fact sheet in Microsoft Word format, and it is also available on the NFBV web site at http://www.nfbv.org/2013-richmond-seminar/

The text of the fact sheet follows.

We will have these fact sheets available in braille and in hard copy to distribute to the delegates, senators and their aides.

Please contact Tracy Soforenko, Richmond Seminar Coordinator, at potomacNFB at verizon.net with any questions.

See you in Richmond!
Corbb

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Corbbmacc O'Connor
Communications Coordinator
National Federation of the Blind of Virginia

c: (703) 309-4884 // h: (703) 549-2919
corbbo at gmail.com
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Blind Students Deserve a Quality Education Equal to Their Peers
Even though federal laws dictate that schools are to provide their blind students with high quality instruction in braille as well as orientation and mobility, we know that many Virginia schools do not have the funds to provide these services. Even when students are able to receive braille instruction, the teachers for the blind have such high numbers of students in their caseloads (over 30 students, in many cases), the students only learn to read or independently travel with a long white cane for 30 to 45 minutes one or two days per week. The lack of classroom materials available in braille or audio creates yet another significant academic barrier. Without a doubt, Virginia?s blind students are struggling to receive the high quality education that they deserve.
Problem: Virginia's blind students are excluded from the Standards of Quality, resulting in excessive caseloads and a lower quality educational environment.
For all disabilities except for blindness, the Virginia Standards of Quality (SOQ) outline teacher pupil ratios and provide partial salary support for special education teachers to school divisions to ensure that students receive a quality education. School divisions are held accountable to meet these caseload standards. However, there are no caseload standards for teachers for blind students. With no SOQ funding and no caseload standard to achieve, school divisions are incentivized to hire other teachers before hiring teachers for the blind. While some divisions fund teachers for the blind out of their own budgets, it is not uncommon for teachers for the blind to have excessive caseloads of 30-40 students. As a result, blind students? education is not equal to their peers. 
Solution: Support the Governor's proposed budget, which includes an appropriation for phasing in funding for blind students in the SOQ formula.
Since 2007, the General Assembly directed the Board of Education to include the blind in Standards of Quality, but funding has not been provided. In November 2012, the Board of Education has again recommended inclusion of Teachers for the Blind in Virginia?s SOQ formula. To effectively serve 1,200 low-vision students, the Department recommends $6,000,000 over a three-year period. Currently, the Department receives $509,000 to support these students.
The National Federation of the Blind of Virginia urges your support of the Governor's proposed budget, which will phase in funding to add visually impaired students to the Standards of Quality over 3 years. This funding would provide partial support for special education teachers who provide instruction in braille, independent travel training, and services to adapt classroom materials into an accessible format for blind students. Virginia?s blind students and their parents are eager for this support in order to have a fulfilling and successful academic experience, just like the one afforded to their sighted peers.

Blind Virginians Are Most Cost-Effectively Served by a Separate Agency Already In Existence
If you or a close family member were to go blind tomorrow, your adjustment to life would be very different from any other medical condition. Medical devices or implants are not the cure-all for blindness. Instead, intensive training in the use of non-visual techniques of cooking, using computers, traveling, and reading would ready you for professional success.
Problem: We regularly encounter proposals from delegates and senators seeking cost savings where none can be achieved by merging the Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired with other disability-related agencies.
Blind people are best served through an adequately funded agency that concentrates on the unique methods of teaching non-visual skills. This is the essence of the DBVI?s approach to serving blind Virginians. It is important to note that the DBVI?s back office administrative, procurement, and personnel functions were consolidated with other disability agencies several years ago. However, further consolidation could only dilute program service delivery to blind Virginians. 
Researchers continue to show that the minimal administrative savings achieved by consolidation of blindness agencies are offset by less effective, less well-organized and less efficient services under a generalist?s model. In the late 1990s, Cavenaugh, Giesen, and Pierce at Mississippi State University conducted an analysis of national data. They found that separate blindness agencies:
are nearly twice as likely to see their clients be self-supporting when their cases were closed than blind people served by a consolidated vocational rehabilitation agency;
serve a higher percentage of consumers with demographic/disability characteristics associated with lower labor force participation rates; and
close a higher percentage of legally blind consumers into competitive, integrated employment.
Solution: Oppose any efforts, at any level, to bring the Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired (DBVI) under a separate agency.
Training and employment opportunities for the blind are provided here in Virginia by DBVI. Blind people learn the non-visual skills of reading, using computers, traveling and living independently at residential training programs. Blind entrepreneurs have opened their own small businesses, in areas as diverse as consulting to food service, because DBVI provides technology, training and start-up capital (e.g. printers, stoves, and vending machines). Counselors help clients explore vocational opportunities, from part-time summer jobs to government contracts, so that blind people can compete in the workforce.
We recognize that, on paper, DBVI seems very similar to other agencies serving people with disabilities. We urge you, however, to maintain DBVI's separate status so that blind Virginians are better prepared to be tax-paying employees, managers, and owners of businesses here in the Commonwealth.

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