Some students at the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind are protesting a new policy that requires child care workers at the school to have an associate degree.
Ten students conducted a protest against the change Monday morning outside the school in Romney
Fifteen-year-old Brooklyn Phares says the workers are like parents to the students.
The employees work during non-instructional hours with students who live in the school’s dorms. Beginning July 1, 2015, the jobs will be changed to residential care specialist positions, with higher salaries.
Workers who don’t have degrees must obtain them within three years.
The school’s superintendent, Lynn Boyer, says some parts of the process haven’t yet been decided.
Boyer says school officials anticipate many current workers will apply for the new positions.
Over the past two days, 18 counties presented their facility needs to the state School Building Authority in Charleston. The requests totaled more than $100 million, but the agency only has about $45 million to give. That means some tough choices between deserving projects across the state.
Here is a list of those projects and their estimated costs.
Doddridge County:
$898,128 for two new classrooms at Doddridge County Elementary School
$398,128 in SBA funds
Gilmer County:
$15,496,818 to construct a consolidated Gilmer Elementary School
$13,618, 671 in SBA funds
Greenbrier County:
$6,671,958 for an addition to Frankford Elementary School
$6,327,898 in SBA funds
Jackson County:
$17,816,041 to construct a new Ravenswood Middle School
$17,066,041 in SBA funds
Kanawha County:
$2,791,352 to add on to and renovate Andrew Heights Elementary School
$2,091,352 in SBA funds
Mercer County:
$11,136,000 to construct a new Green Valley Elementary School, consolidating a portion of students from three schools
$8,908,800 in SBA funds
Mineral County:
$4,000,000 in renovations for Keyser Elementary/Middle School
$3,500,000 in SBA funds
Mingo County:
$10,108,879 for additions and renovations at Burch Middle School in order to consolidate and close Burch Elementary School
$9,108.879 in SBA funds
Monongalia County:
$15,952,803 to consolidate students from two schools and build a new Suncrest Elementary School
$10,952,803 in SBA funds
Ohio County:
$6,772,932 for renovations at Ritchie Elementary School
$5,892,451 in SBA funds
Pocahontas County:
$8,892,426 for renovations at five schools
$8,817,426 in SBA funds
Preston County:
$2,169,000 to replace the roofs at six schools
$2,060,550 in SBA funds
Randolph County:
$3,959, 749 for renovations to Tygart Valley Middle-High School
$3,709,749 in SBA funds
Ritchie County:
$6,641,016 in renovations and an addition to Collins Ferry Elementary School
$6,391,016 in SBA funds
Wayne County:
$42,200,000 to build two new elementary schools and an addition and renovations to Wayne County High School
$18,000,000 in SBA funds
Webster County:
$2,357,713 for renovations at Webster County High School
$2,257,713 in SBA funds
Wirt County:
$2,395,038 for renovations at Wirt County High School
$2,270,038 in SBA funds
Schools for the Deaf and Blind:
$7,800,000 for three new residential facilities and the demolition of a dilapidated cafeteria
Some members of the West Virginia Board of Education took a tour of the Schools for the Deaf and Blind in Romney, W.Va., Wednesday. The Board’s monthly…
Some members of the West Virginia Board of Education took a tour of the Schools for the Deaf and Blind in Romney, W.Va., Wednesday. The Board’s monthly meeting took place on the campus and prior to the
Show Slide Show meeting members walked through the facility to see how students are educated there and what kind of renovations are needed.
Credit Cecelia Mason
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WV Board of Education Chairwoman Gayle Manchin smiles as she looks at a stuffed animal on a bed in a dorm room at the state Schools for the Deaf and Blind.
Gayle Manchin, board president, was impressed with some of the rooms she saw during the tour, commenting on how cozy they looked.
One recently renovated dorm room for younger girls in the School for the Deaf has two rows of pretty white beds lining the bright room, each draped in a hot pink spread. The tour guide was Chief Financial Officer Mark Gandolfi.
“Downstairs was renovated in the last 12 months or so, this room some new furniture and we are still looking to make cosmetic upgrades in terms of carpet, you know small things, but you can see that it’s well kept,” Gandolfi said.
“Seeing the coziness of this would have to be comforting to a parent because to leave a child that young is very a very difficult choice to make,” Manchin said. “But to kind of get that feeling of just sort of how pretty everything was for their children, that has to be very encouraging and helpful for a parent trying to make that decision.”
“It’s a very nurturing environment actually,” replied Patsy Shank, School for the Deaf principal.
“For the children and our child care staff and our teachers and all of us are very nurturing people that love these children,” Shank said. “We get to know them very well over the years, there are children they come at three and you have them until they’re 21 and they take real places in our hearts.”
Shank described how everyone on the staff helps and how, whether they are teachers, aids, cooks or janitors, they enjoy working with the children.
“And if somebody sees a child that needs something on a personal level and maybe we know there are financial difficulties, it happens, the tooth fairy has left a lot of things on beds for children over the years,” Shank said.
Shank was one of several administrators who pointed out the benefits for children who attend the schools. Benefits like learning sign language and Braille, learning to navigate with a cane, or count money when they can’t see, and being around others who are like them.
“When you’re the only deaf child in a classroom in a public school and you have no peers to associate with and to be friends with and you miss those socializations that we really have isolated that child,” Shank said.
The school board members also saw some rooms that weren’t so cozy, that can’t be used because they need renovations. The ceiling in one wing of the Deaf School is leaking and Gandolfi pointed out this section of the building needs a new roof.
The area where multi-sensory education takes place however, is bright and new looking. Three children working in one of the classrooms have impaired hearing or sight as well as cognitive delays or other developmental issues. Three adults were working with the children as they learned the difference between circles and squares by holding and feeling the shapes.
The tour continued as the group crossed the campus to look at the dining hall, gymnasium and Seton Hall, which houses the cafeteria and dorm for older students. They also saw several buildings that are slated to be torn down; including one surrounded by orange security fencing that dates to the 1850’s and served as a Civil War hospital. For years the cafeteria was in this building but the brick work and foundation are deteriorated and it’s been deemed unsafe.
Blind students take classes in a building that’s separate from the Deaf School. A local artist volunteered to decorate the walls in the School for the Blind with tactile artwork, large paintings with various textures that blind students, and state school board presidents, can touch.
“Isn’t that wonderful,” Manchin said as she ran her hand over one of the murals. “That would be wonderful for any school population.”
Manchin expressed an interest in learning more about the technology used in the schools, so the group visited Donna Brown’s classroom where three students, one from Inwood, W.Va., one from Fairmont, W.Va. and one from Cabell County, W.Va., were learning to use a computer called a Braille Note. It’s a portable device that allows students to read printed material in Braille.
While some board members had visited the campus before, this was the first time they’d taken a comprehensive tour.
Later during the school board meeting Superintendent Lynn Boyer gave an update on the report she’s working on that will help the Board determine whether to keep the schools in Romney or move them to a more central location. Boyer expects the final report will lay out three options.
“One would be to remain here, the other would be to relocate but not name a location, and the third would be to disperse the services across the state,” Boyer said.
Boyer plans to present the final report during the Board of Education’s January meeting.
