The new Tucson School for the Blind welcomed volunteers last week to help clean, organize and unpack classrooms before the school's opening in early August.
Director Kate Scally Howell is preparing a new home for blind and visually impaired students after the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind closed its Tucson campus in May. Scally Howell was laid off in the relocation after serving as ASDB's music director for 15 years.
She received the keys to the School for the Blind’s downtown location in mid-June and has been working daily to get the 4,000-square-foot space ready for students.
"We’d love to have people who are excited about this cause and then also maybe people who are a part of the blind and VI (visually impaired) community would be great,” she said three days before volunteer day. “We really want to build those connections for our students so they can have peer role models as well in the community."
Volunteers signed up for two-hour shifts between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. through an online registration form. Many were ASDB alumni offering to support the new school.
Inside the building, volunteers unpacked boxes, organized donated furniture and sorted classroom supplies.
Among them was Isaac Zwinger-Nathanson, who volunteered to organize the school's Braille library. "The older you get—it's not impossible to learn—but it's a lot harder because you have built calluses and sensation in your fingers,” Zwinger-Nathanson said while reading children's Braille books with his fingers. “If you don't train your hand and your fingers to read it at a young age, you kind of lose that molding time period.”
Teacher Laura Prelsnik Aragon worked alongside him, sorting books into Grade 1 Braille, which spells out every letter, and Grade 2 Braille, which uses contractions to improve reading efficiency.
Prelsnik Aragon said the community's willingness to help has been especially meaningful following ASDB's Tucson campus closure.
“Just seeing that people are willing to come and actually put in some blood, sweat and tears into the space is really special," Prelsnik Aragon said.
Zwinger-Nathanson, a former ASDB student, also reflected on the closure of the Tucson campus and superintendent Annette Reichman’s decision to educate blind students separately from their deaf peers at Copper Creek Elementary.
“I've not ever seen [Annette Reichman] in a capacity that has favored the blind community,” Zwinger-Nathanson said.
In recent months, ASDB struck an agreement that would move blind students to the Tucson Unified School District. Reichman had said there were not enough students in the blind program to keep it running at the new ASDB location.
Despite those concerns, Zwinger-Nathanson expressed confidence in the new school and in Scally Howell, who taught him at ASDB about a decade ago.
He also donated a Brailler, which is a Braille typewriter that embosses raised dots. Five volunteers participated in Friday's cleanup effort, helping move the school one step closer to opening day.
Scally Howell said the school plans to host another volunteer day before classes begin on Aug. 3.
