The board of directors for the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind voted Thursday to relocate the school’s Tucson campus to Oro Valley this summer due to budget and enrollment shortfalls.
A five-year leasing agreement with the Amphitheater School District will move ASDB to Copper Creek, an elementary school that the Amphi governing board voted to close last month. ASDB Superintendent Annette Reichman said the district can no longer sustain funds for maintenance and full staffing at its current location. About 70 employees will be laid off in the move.
Reichman and board members were met with resistance from families at the Thursday meeting in Phoenix.
Shouts from the audience called them cowards. “You guys are disgusting!” one person said.
A major point of contention was the separation of blind students from their deaf peers in the relocation.
The 25 blind and visually impaired students expected to be enrolled next school year will attend “cluster sites” in the Tucson Unified School District while their deaf peers move on to the Copper Creek site in Oro Valley. Reichman said that blind students will still have the option to attend Copper Creek if it best fits their individualized learning plan.
Other community members argued the closure process lacked timeliness and transparency. The board vote came less than one month after Reichman announced the Tucson campus relocation. Parents pointed out, however, that school officials said talks of the leasing agreement with the Amphi district began in October.
One parent, Randal Kidd, called for more honesty with families. He spoke in American Sign Language through an interpreter.
“If you make decisions on your own, how then do you expect the community to stand up and support you when you say that you’re going to be transparent yet the community has no communication or access? Please be transparent, communicate and work with us,” he said.
Kidd was one of many who spoke at the meeting frustrated with the district’s swift action to relocate.
Donna Lambert is a social worker for ASDB and has been employed there for 25 years. She said financial issues are an agency issue, not something to burden students with.
She also made the case for blind students to be included on the Oro Valley campus.
“ASDB is not simply a school placement. For many students, it is the first place they have felt safe, understood and able to truly learn. Many arrived after experiencing bullying, isolation, academic failure and lack of access to vision-specific instruction in public schools,” Lambert said. “On this campus, they are not surviving. They’re thriving.”
An agreement with TUSD has not been made on which specific cluster sites blind and visually impaired students will attend, according to the superintendent.
The Amphi district told AZPM Friday afternoon that a lease has not yet been signed by ASDB.
