[nfbwatlk] Days May be Numbered for Oregon School for the Blind, NWPR, WSU, April 10, 2009

[Nightingale, Noel]

Link:
http://nwpr.org/07/HomepageArticles/Article.aspx?n=5336

Text:
Days May be Numbered for Oregon School for the Blind
Opponents of a plan to close the Oregon School for the Blind rally at the state capitol
Posted: Friday, April 10, 2009

In a year of budget cuts, nothing is sacred. The Oregon School for the Blind has weathered many financial storms in the past. But this year could be different. With every dollar under scrutiny, Oregon lawmakers today gave initial approval to a plan to shut the Oregon School for the Blind down in a matter of months. The money would serve blind students elsewhere. Oregon Salem Correspondent Chris Lehman reports.

June Kramer is legally blind and uses a cane to get around. She came to the Oregon School for the Blind because she wanted to learn something more than her local high school could provide.

Kramer: "Budgeting, banking, basically daily living skills like doing your own laundry."

And learning how to cook. That's what she's doing now behind the counter of the school's coffeeshop.

Kramer: "Order up! Burrito!"

The work is part of the school's life skills curriculum. Does your local high school have a talking cash register?

Sound from cash register: "One-Five-Zero. Department One."

Kramer is 20 years old, so regardless of what happens in the Legislature, she'll soon be leaving the Oregon School for the Blind.

Kramer: "I hope to be in my own apartment, getting a job somewhere like in a music store or whatever and basically be a successful woman in life, if possible."

Even though she's moving on, Kramer says she's worried that other visually impaired students in Oregon won't have the same opportunities she did. And she's not alone in her concerns.

Members of the blind community have been protesting at the Oregon capitol. They're here lobbying against a bill that would close down the School for the Blind. Joe Carter attended the school for three years as a teenager. He says it was a life-changing experience.

Carter: "For the first time I actually knew other blind people. For the first time, I had friends. For the first time, somebody actually suggested that I could do stuff. I could go places on my own."

Advocates for the blind say those are the kinds of things that will be lost if visually impaired students are dispersed back into their local school districts. On the other hand, the vast majority of blind students in Oregon are already educated by local public schools. Fewer than three dozen still attend the Salem campus. That's one reason the cost per-student to operate the School for the Blind exceeds 125-thousand dollars. Democratic Representative Sara Gelser says it's money that could be better spent elsewhere:

Gelser: "So what we have is a program that is much loved by the people that are there, but we are spending an extraordinary resource for 31 students, and at the same time not giving them access to K-12 curriculum, and they are not learning in an accredited environment."

In other words, students at the School for the Blind learn life skills, but they won't get a diploma there. Gelser says she acknowledges the sense of loss that students and their families are facing. But she says the goal is that they'll be better served in the end.

Gelser: "This plan does not save a dime. What it does instead is directs these resources, redeploys them for the benefit of 840 children who are blind and visually impaired. And I can go to my colleagues and say 'In a time of budget cuts, let's make a positive policy decision that's focused on how do we make the best use of resources that we already have."

Gelser chairs the House Education committee, which has now approved the plan to close the school. Republican Representative John Huffman supported the proposal, but he says he's worried that blind students won't get the services they need when they return to their home districts. Committee chair Gelser says she'll hold hearings later this year to investigate claims by blind students of mistreatment by teachers and administrators in the mainstream school system. The bill to close the School for the Blind still has to clear several Legislative hurdles before it would take effect.

Copyright 2009 OPB