DHHS says school may have to close

MORGANTON --

Twenty-four years ago, in 1986, Gov. James Hunt asked a task force whether North Carolina should consolidate the state's three schools for the deaf.
The task force said yes, by 1991. Also, it said, the state should close the Western North Carolina School for the Deaf in Morganton by 2000.
Instead, the state closed the Central North Carolina School for the Deaf in 2001.
NCSD and its sister school in Wilson remain open, as does the Gov. Morehead School for the Blind.
However, the question keeps coming up: "Can the state reduce the costs of operating residential schools for students with visual or hearing impairments while at the same time improving educational outcomes for children served by these facilities?"
NCSD's friends, students and their parents, staff and Burke County community leaders fear that the cash-strapped General Assembly will close the Morganton school.
Mayor Mel Cohen, who has led several successful efforts to beat back threats to NCSD's existence, believes closing it would deprive deaf students of essential educational services. In addition, 161 staff would lose jobs in a county suffering from high unemployment. The economy would lose dollars and jobs, including those in local companies supplying NCSD. And, the mayor said, Morganton would lose a huge part of its historical and cultural identity and be left with vacant, deteriorating buildings on one of the city's most prominent sites.
There is another side to the story. A N.C. Department of Health and Human Services report, now nearing completion, tells it in detail. The report considers not only costs and savings, but also the educational needs of deaf or blind students. The report is titled, "Plans to Achieve Efficiencies of Scale and Ensure the Appropriate Education of Students With Visual and Hearing Impairments." The draft version is 65 pages long. It's on the Web.
According to DHHS, about 0.2 percent of babies are born deaf and 0.1 percent are born blind in North Carolina. While the state's population grew over the past 20 years, the numbers of deaf and blind children increased, too.
However, enrollment in the state residential schools for the deaf has declined steadily for 20 years. There were 578 students in 1990-91, 287 in 2000-01 and 188 (including 93 at NCSD) in 2009. It's the same at the Gov. Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh. If the trend continues, DHHS estimates, state residential schools will have 157 children in 2017-18.
While the schools' enrollment fell, costs per child rose. The per-pupil cost for residential students at NCSD went from $57,148 in 2001 to $91,094 in 2009. For students who attend NCSD's classes, but don't live at the school, the per-pupil cost is $66,000.
Schools in North Carolina spend, on average, $8,522 per pupil per year. No district has a higher per-pupil cost than the $16,273 in tiny Tyrrell County Public Schools.
Enrollment in the residential schools is shrinking mainly because more deaf and blind students got to public schools. Even there, per-pupil costs are higher for deaf or blind children who need special services, educational materials and qualified instructors.
What is the per-pupil cost for the public schools to serve deaf or blind students? The DHHS report doesn't say. What it does say is that the cost in a small school district, with five or fewer deaf or blind students, isn't much different from the expense at the residential schools.
Because of costs and the difficulty of hiring qualified staff, 38 of the 115 N.C. public school districts don't serve deaf or blind students. DHHS says it would be cost-effective for the state to help more of them do so.
Mayor Cohen predicts that won't solve the problem. He said the state now tries placing deaf or blind students in the public schools. Then, after those "mainstreamed" students fail to keep up with their sighted or hearing peers for three years, the state puts them in a residential school.
For its part, DHHS says many students at NCSD, ENCSD and Morehead have additional disabilities or complicating family situations. The report says 65 of the 93 students at NCSD have a disability in addition to hearing impairment, 51 percent have a mental-health diagnosis, 50 are on Medicaid and 85 qualify for family-income-based free or reduced-price lunch.
Some smaller states have ended residential programs for deaf or blind students and gone totally to mainstreaming. That's not a DHHS recommendation. It offers the legislature four options:
• One consolidated residential school for both deaf and blind students and two day programs. The state would operate three schools, but with a "substantial" savings because non-residential programs cost a third less.
• One "centrally located" consolidated residential school. Closing the other two.
• Enhancing services at all three schools to serve a much greater population of sensory-impaired children in North Carolina with diagnostic and treatment programs. The report notes: "... (This) model is likely not sustainable since the state budget is not expected to rebound to 2007 levels until 2014."
• Two consolidated residential schools serving both deaf and blind students. The third school would close.
In either scenario that involves closing one or more schools, DHHS notes the concerns about what to do with the vacated facilities.
It says Morehead in Raleigh is well-suited for government office space. The schools in Wilson and Burke counties are close to community colleges that might use the property. Burke, like Wake County, also needs housing for state agencies.
Other uses: classrooms for deaf or blind adults' education and job training, housing for "itinerant" state staff and their equipment, classrooms for public school staff professional development and warehousing teaching materials.
"These facilities could also be used for the purpose of establishing public/private partnerships to create jobs in the communities where they are located," the report says.
Also, it notes, "A recent comment made by a reader in The News Herald suggested using the Morganton campus to expand the UNC system thereby creating an addition to the UNC school."