Schools for the Blind and Deaf Likely to Be Combined
by Eric Duffy

When I first matriculated to the Ohio State School for the Blind (OSSB) in the early 1970's the school was almost filled to capacity. With the passage of Public Law 94-142 (now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education act, IDEA), more students than ever before began to receive an education in the local school district.  By the late 70's discussions about the need for residential schools for the blind became quite intense. In the early 80's the Michigan School for the Blind actually closed down. Even while at OSSB many of my friends and I recognized that OSSB could share the Michigan school's fate. We also knew that there was a real possibility that the schools for the deaf and blind could be combined. I had no reason to give either of these possibilities much thought until about a year ago, when Shelbi Johnson contacted me to say that she had heard that the two schools were going to be combined. I said that I had not heard anything about this and that legislative action would have to take place before this could happen. I did what I could to determine the truth about the situation and was assured that there was no plan to combine the schools. That was the last time I thought about the matter until I read the following article: 

Schools for Deaf, Blind May Share New Campus
by Simone Sebastian
The Columbus Dispatch
Thursday, February 1, 2007

Deaf students and blind ones will share a campus if state and school officials can work out a $40 million plan to create a modern complex for the Ohio State School for the Blind and the Ohio School for the Deaf. Preliminary plans call for the combined campus to be built on the School for the Deaf's 138-acre property at 500 Morse Road. The current home of the School for the Blind, at 5220 N. High Street, would be abandoned and could be made available for private development. The combination would allow the schools to replace older buildings with modern ones and share costs such as custodial, food and health services, but officials stressed that their educational programs would remain distinct. "Both schools will retain their identities," School for the Deaf Superintendent Edward E. Corbett Jr. said through an interpreter. He is deaf. "There really will be no change" for students, he said, because deaf and blind students have different needs. With deafness they deal with communication. With blindness they deal with mobility.... It's like mixing oranges and apples." School officials hope to be ready to ask the state legislature for money next spring or summer, with a goal of completing the project by 2012. The state-run schools, which serve students across Ohio, operate on adjacent campuses separated by trees and a ravine at the corner of Morse Road and N. High Street. The School for the Deaf has 142 students. The School for the Blind has 128.

The state appropriated $4 million for the schools to begin planning the consolidation under the oversight of the Ohio School Facilities Commission, an independent state agency. The commission is collecting bids from architectural firms to design the new campus. Over the next year the commission, architects, and school officials will determine what would need to be built. If the timeline continues as planned, construction could begin next summer, said Lou Mazzoli, superintendent of the School for the Blind. It is unclear how extensive the merger would be. The schools' classrooms would remain distinct, but officials are uncertain whether they would share auditoriums, cafeterias, dormitories, and other larger spaces. Whether the consolidation would affect jobs also remains to be seen, Mazzoli said. "We're going to have to evaluate that," he said. "It's not going to happen tomorrow." Mazzoli stressed that the plan is not definite and said it's possible that the blind school's campus would be used instead of the deaf school's. It's unlikely the schools would move to another site, he said. "The site that comes up the most often is the front part of the property of the Ohio School for the Deaf," he said. "But we're taking a look at all factors." The state owns both properties. The School for the Blind is in a good location for developers because of other projects in the area, said Mike Simpson, a commercial broker with NAI Ohio Equities. The Casto development company is renovating Graceland Shopping Center, which is across High Street from the school. The city is working on plans to rebuild the Northland Mall area on Morse Road, just east of the campus. However, the buildings on the School for the Blind's campus, which date from the 1950s, could have limited potential. Both schools have been struggling with deteriorating infrastructure, old electrical systems, and collapsing sewer lines. "It's a single-use building," Simpson said. "That's always a challenge when it comes to selling because it narrows the prospect list. Charter schools could be candidates for a property like that." Mazzoli said it's too early to guess what would happen to the School for the Blind campus if the project moves forward as expected. Students in both schools would benefit from technology improvements at the new campus, administrators said.

Administrators said they hope the combined campus would provide more opportunities for the students to interact. Currently the blind students' marching band performs at the deaf students' football games. Barbara Pierce and I were then contacted by a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch in mid-March. Although this subject has received considerable press coverage, we will reprint one final article: 

Campus for Deaf, Blind Opposed Alumni Fear Social, Safety Issues if State Schools Share Space 
Monday, March 19, 2007
Simone Sebastian 
The Columbus Dispatch 

Alumni are fighting a plan to create a single campus for the state schools for the deaf and the blind, saying mingling their student bodies will create safety and social problems. They fear that students' inability to communicate could lead to teasing and bullying if the Ohio State School for the Blind and Ohio School for the Deaf share facilities such as a gym and cafeteria. Forcing the students to interact will destroy the deaf school's culture, said Richard Huebner, president of its alumni association. "We will start a petition, rally, and protest," Huebner said through an interpreter. "We'll fight this to the bitter end to keep them separate." Some alumni of the blind school fear that deaf students will take advantage of their blind peers if the campuses are combined. Deaf students might beat up blind students because they can't see their abuser, said Doug Emerson, recording secretary for the blind school's alumni association. But he said the blind alumni won't impede the project. "It is a done deal. It would be a moot point to go against it," Emerson said. "It does make good economic sense to do this." The state-run schools' campuses are separated by a ravine near the intersection of High Street and Morse Road. The state has appropriated $4 million to begin planning a consolidation of their campuses on the School for the Deaf's 130-acre property to save money on operating costs. Their educational programs would remain separate. If the project goes as planned, it will cost about $40 million and will be completed by 2012, officials have said. 

Officials from both the blind and deaf schools said they haven't decided how much their students will interact but said that they will prevent violence. Officials won't decide until June, at the earliest, whether the schools will share a gym, cafeteria, and other common areas, said Eric Algoe, chief operating officer for both schools. Members of the deaf-alumni association fear that merging the campuses will compromise deaf students' self-esteem and conviction that deafness is not a handicap." I don't feel I have a disability. Many deaf people don't," Huebner said. "If you add another handicap (at the school) ... they'll have no identity, no self-esteem." That's not an issue for the blind, said Barbara Pierce, president of the National Federation of the Blind's Ohio division. "There's a deaf culture in a way that there's not a blindness culture," she said. Harlan Lane, a professor and author on deaf culture from Northeastern University in Boston, said government institutions started separating deaf people and blind people in the nineteenth century because of the stark differences in their needs. But economic constraints have reversed that trend. Now about twelve schools in the United States teach blind students and deaf students on the same campus, school officials said.  Lane said that is an affront to deaf culture. "Their deaf world has its own customs, own values," he said. "They don't see it as a disability, so to put them with a group that does see themselves as having a disability ... it cuts very deep."

School administrators say the plan makes economic sense. Buildings at both schools are deteriorating, they said, and the project will construct new ones and include state-of-the-art technology. The combined campus also will allow officials to merge services such as maintenance, food and custodians. "That is a considerable cost savings to the state," deaf-school Superintendent Edward E. Corbett Jr. said through an interpreter. He is deaf. "Our buildings are not conducive to good teaching," he said. "The new school building will afford us good planning and help us achieve the school we want for the future of our students." Community meetings about the project will be held across the state, beginning with one today in Columbus. That meeting will be held at the Ohio School for the Deaf from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

As President of the National Federation of the Blind of Ohio, Barbara Pierce was invited to serve on an advisory council for this project. For a variety of reasons she asked me to serve in her place. I agreed, and Barbara contacted Eric Algoe to discuss the change in representatives. Mr. Algoe was quite agreeable, and although I have not yet met him, our email exchanges have been both pleasant and productive. Here is one such exchange: Hello Eric, I understand that some preliminary meetings have already taken place on this subject and that a meeting or two are even scheduled over the next couple of weeks.  I want to be sure that I will have the opportunity to provide meaningful service on an advisory council. I certainly do not want my involvement to be mere window dressing. What can you tell me about the meetings that have already taken place and that are scheduled to happen before the council meets for the first time? What decisions have already been made, and are they binding? 
Cordially,
Eric

“The meetings that we have had to date involved current students, staff,
alumni, administrators from the schools, and the Ohio School Facilities
Commission, about 60 people all told. The purpose of these meetings has been
to determine a Program of Requirements (POR), which is just a list of the
types of spaces and associated square footage of each.  I suspect the end
result of these meetings (the final POR) will be hard to change later on,
but not impossible.
We are going to see a first draft of the POR on Monday, so we are all on
pins and needles right now.  We then have another meeting on Wednesday with
the group I described above to respond and adjust that first draft. A fourth
meeting is scheduled for April 23rd to try to finalize the POR, and we are
scheduled to turn it over to the architects on May 4th. Keep in mind that
the POR says nothing about how we use the spaces they give us or where they
should be located--neither the site nor the relationship to each other.  We
still have all that to figure out.
I plan to put something together for the advisory council this weekend and
send them a copy of that first draft POR. At the first meeting I hope to
have the architects give you a presentation of their vision and take your
questions.
We can't afford to have anyone involved as just window dressing.  We need
everyone's honest and heartfelt input to make sure we give the kids the best
possible school. I'm just trying to balance the time needed of the advisory
council as some of the members are from out of state. Would you like to
attend one of our planning committee meetings that I mentioned above? The
next one is April 4th from 8:30 AM to 3:00 PM in the gymnasium of the Ohio
School for the Deaf.
Eric”

Although I am glad we have been invited to the table, I feel like a dinner guest who was invited as an afterthought. I believe OSSB Superintendent Louis Mazzoli should have invited the organized blind to the table before the dinner bell sounded. We should have been a part of the discussions long before the first story ran in the media. Nonetheless we now have a seat at the table, and I plan to make the best of it for the organization. In a public meeting Dr. Mazzoli explained that the plan to combine the schools was not put forward by either administration. He said that the state controlling board told both superintendents that it was tired of both schools nickeling and diming the state to death by asking for money for repairs and improvements to each school, and that each superintendent should come to the board to request money for new facilities. He said that near the end of the Taft administration the notion of combining the schools took on a life of its own when a Taft official said there would be one budget and one school. Knowing the ways of politics and government, this is not hard to believe. We in the National Federation of the Blind, however, are purists, and we are not at all excited about combining the two schools in any way. This does not mean that we are going to oppose this effort at this point. It does mean that we are going to work to make the best lemonade out of the lemons that
have been placed before us. 

Let no one with any interest in or connection to the blindness field make the mistake of believing that we have weakened our resolve. Our resources, strengths, and convictions have not diminished. Our fighting skills are still as sharp as they have ever been. Some may be tempted to believe that we were caught off guard and that by the time we discovered the plan we were unable to mount a good fight. Nothing could be further from the truth. In  this case we have made the decision not to fight. That does not mean that we will make the same decision should our library services or rehabilitation services come under threat. 

I will conclude this article with some interesting facts about the Ohio State School for the Blind. In 1837 the state purchased a large house on Parsons Avenue to begin educating blind students. In 1838 the first school was built. This school housed sixty students.  In 1867 the second school was built. Once again the school was built on Parsons Avenue. This school housed 425 students. This is what many now refer to as the old school. 

The school now located at 5220 North High Street was built in 1953. The gymnasium was not added until after the school was occupied. The swimming pool was built in the 1970's.  Although I have been to the Parsons Avenue location, I have never really thought of it as a school for anything other than historical purposes. Paul Dressell for one has been a student at both schools. It is quite possible that he will see a third Ohio State School for the Blind during his lifetime