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Seeking a better plan for special ed kids
March 17, 2005 Judith Johanson The governor's plan to transfer responsibility for the state's youngest deaf and blind children may seem like just a bureaucratic shift, but teachers at specialized 4201 Schools worry it may eliminate vital services for these infants, toddlers and their parents. "We are uniquely qualified to offer services and support," said Judith Johanson, a speech therapist at Mill Neck Manor School for the Deaf, one of several publicly funded 4201 Schools, chartered by the state to serve the blind and deaf. "We offer a team of specialists for the child and we're also there for the parents, who need a great deal of support — especially when they first learn they have a deaf or blind child." Responding to concerns voiced by union members who teach in the 4201 Schools (named for a section of state education law), New York State United Teachers is opposed to transferring the responsibility for the state's birth-to-age-3 deaf and blind children from the State Education Department to the Department of Health's early intervention program. Moving responsibility to the state DOH would essentially shift the cost to county governments and cut 4201 Schools out of the process, Johanson said. Her Long Island school has launched a letter-writing campaign to state lawmakers and the governor. NYSUT, in turn, will post a letter of opposition on its Web site's political action page, www.nysut.org, to fax messages of opposition to lawmakers. "The infant-toddler programs in the 4201 Schools serve a unique purpose. This is especially true for newly diagnosed babies," Johanson said. "There is so much information to share with the parents and to educate them in hearing loss so they can begin to learn how to advocate for their child. While the parent is being supported and educated, the baby is receiving audiological evaluations, cochlear implant information, as well as therapeutic services." Johanson noted that a Colorado study found that those hearing-impaired children most successful at being mainstreamed in educational settings were those who had 100 percent hearing aid use by the age of six months. "That's the most important criterion for success — even greater than socioeconomic status," Johanson said. "You want the child exposed to all the sound they can get." Similarly, she said, parents of newly diagnosed hearing-impaired children often stop talking to their child, but experts at the 4201 Schools advise parents the opposite. "Professional early education is essential," Johanson said. "It has been my experience that while early intervention coordinators may make visits to the home, they are not always educated in hearing loss and don't have easy access to the expertise of the teachers, therapists, audiologists, social workers and counselors that are a part of the coordinated 4201 School team." The agency- and cost-shifting for serving children with special needs is not new. In the early 1990s, when the responsibility for serving special needs pre-schoolers shifted to the Department of Health and a fee-for-service system, "it created an immediate and negative impact for disabled infants and toddlers that continues today," said Phil Cleary, a pre-school special ed teacher and member of the North Syracuse Education Association. "Today these children are dreadfully underserved by independent providers who are not appropriately trained or supervised," said Cleary. "The result is vast numbers of children showing up at school needing a greater number of expensive special ed services that they wouldn't have needed if they only had received the coordinated services of center-based providers, like BOCES, during that birth-to-age-2 critical period." NYSUT's Representative Assembly has directed NYSUT's Legislative Department to seek legislation to create a birth to age 5 unified early intervention service system under the State Education Department with funding on the same basis as public schools. — Sylvia Saunders |
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