[Nfbf-l] Fw: [blindlaw] Update on Florida School for the Deaf and Blind
Beth
thebluesisloose at gmail.com
Wed Feb 25 03:35:00 UTC 2009
This is sad. I have several friends, one of whom is totally blind,
who wnt to FSB.
Beth
On 2/24/09, rjs059 at peoplepc.com <rjs059 at peoplepc.com> wrote:
> 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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>> blindlaw at nfbnet.org
>> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindlaw_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
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>
>
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