Deaf Pupils Rally in Albany (NY)
March 30, 2011
ALBANY — Not unlike many 11th-graders, Sarah Flowers boasts of her achievements in high school: the seven Regents exams she has passed, her stints as class president and yearbook editor, and her sports activities.
"That would not be available to me in a hearing school," said Flowers, a Cheektowaga resident who attends St. Mary’s School for the Deaf in Buffalo.
Flowers got up early Thursday and, instead of going to school, traveled 300 miles to Albany to speak — and sign — before several hundred students, parents and staff members from the 11 state-funded schools for deaf, blind and disabled children.
Those schools are all on the chopping block in Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s planned 2011 budget.
Cuomo’s plan shifts costs to local school districts and away from the state. Critics say he is doing it unlike any other governor since New York began funding the schools for the deaf and blind nearly 200 years ago.
"The concern is not knowing the future and what the cuts might mean," JoAnn Watson, whose daughter, Elise, is a fourth-grader at St. Mary’s, said last week during a lobbying trek to the Capitol.
Watson praised the local school district her daughter would otherwise be going to — Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda — but said they could not meet her daughter’s special education needs. "St. Mary’s gives her everything she needs right now," Watson said of a school with roots going back 158 years.
Cuomo intends to alter the way such schools are funded, placing the direct financial responsibility on local school districts, instead of Albany, and applying a formula used to fund other special schools. The plan envisions the state saving $100 million this year and $14 million annually after that.
The administration believes the 11 schools scattered around the state, known as "4201" schools for the section of law creating them, are too costly. They average $93,000 per pupil, compared with about $41,000 per pupil at more than 100 other special education schools in New York.
St. Mary’s, which has programs for infants and up to 12th grade, has 105 students and an operating budget of $10.7 million.
The schools "do amazing work" for their students, said Robert Megna, the governor’s budget director.
"But budget discussions cannot be made based on our level of inspiration," Megna wrote in an op-ed article that the administration supplied Thursday in response to questions about the planned cuts.
He said the "same dis cipline" has to be applied to the 4201 school funding as other areas of the budget, which is facing a $10 billion deficit.
Administration officials insist that the schools will not end up facing funding cutbacks and that the state will still pay a sizable portion of their expenses. But they acknowledge local school districts will see higher tabs for taking over more of what the state now pays.
Critics of the state shift to more reliance on local property taxpayers say Cuomo’s plan has not been fully laid out and, significantly, pushes costs onto districts at the same time he wants to slash education aid this year by 7 percent.
The governor also wants to take away the student referral powers the 11 schools now have to qualify students for services, giving more control to local districts; Cuomo’s critics, including school districts, say public schools don’t have the same kinds of evaluation skills as the disability experts on staff at the 4201 schools.
Backers of the 4201 schools worry that local districts — facing paying more of the tab — will decide to keep the students in less-expensive public schools that don’t offer the same kinds of programs and close-knit environment as the facilities for the deaf and blind.
"Without St. Mary’s, I wouldn’t be where I am today. St. Mary’s gets students ready for college and the working world," said David Wantuck, a 2009 graduate and now a sophomore at Medaille College.
At Thursday’s rally, a steady stream of state legislators took the microphone to bash the Cuomo plan. One called the proposal "a crime," while another said the governor was doing "an injustice" to the students.
� A;"What has been proposed is unfair and undefined — and we’re not going to stand for it," said Assemblyman Mark Schroeder, a Buffalo Democrat who worked at St. Mary’s when he was a college student.
Public school districts say they can’t afford the $100 million shift for 4201 school costs this year. "For the state to say it’s no longer going to pay the freight is unconscionable," said Timothy Kremer, executive director of the New York State School Boards Association.
The Assembly Ways and Means Committee, in its review of the Cuomo budget plan, says the governor’s budget seeks to shift $253 million in special education costs from the state to local districts, including the $100 million and about $86 million in summertime special education services for about 40,000 students.
"Our kids are not a budget line you can easily erase," said Timothy Kelly, superintendent of St. Mary’s.
Kelly said the 4201 schools already have seen funding cuts in the past year and are willing to take a percentage reduction this year to help close the state’s deficit. He disputed the Cuomo administration’s claims that the schools will not see a reduction in overall funding under the new reimbursement method.
He said Cuomo’s plan eliminates the teams of expert health and education evaluators used to place students in the schools.
St. Mary’s students come from the eight counties of Western New York. They include deaf students and those with a wide range of disabilities. The school also has a residential program for about one-third of its students. Its programs range from one of the nation’s first preschools for the deaf and in-house audio and physical therapy services to college preparatory classe s.
"I cannot say the school would close," Kelly said. "We would certainly look different. To what degree, I cannot say because I don’t have any evidence or numbers. The budget is undefined."
A major reason is that no one knows how the different school districts might react to the funding shift. Kelly said there is a shortage of interpreters and people certified to teach deaf students in the Buffalo area, and local districts have come to rely on schools like St. Mary’s.
Julie Bronneberg, a first-grader who takes the long bus ride from her home in Cattaraugus to St. Mary’s, was among the 150 people who traveled on three buses Thursday from Buffalo to Albany.
"The important thing is her future, and there isn’t an alternative. Mainstreaming is not an option," said her mother, Lauren Bronneberg.