La. School for the Deaf security report

I.        Overview

After the appearance of several newspaper articles highlighting inappropriate contact between students and teachers at the Louisiana School for the Deaf (“LSD”), Superintendent Paul Pastorek contacted Dr. Alan Cohen and Dr. Reginald Redding to request that they complete an independent evaluation of the situation and answer three very specific questions:

1)      Is there a systemic problem at LSD in regard to the alleged incidents?

2)      Is LSD responding adequately?

3)      Is there a mechanism in place to provide ongoing oversight?

The survey took place on the campus of LSD on June 13, 14 and 15, 2008.  Although the school was not in session, the surveyors enjoyed unfettered access to both the physical plant and available personnel. All staff members were encouraged to speak freely without fear of retribution, and all were given direct access to our private email accounts in the event they wanted to make discreet contact.  In addition, the Superintendant’s office assured us that we would have a direct reporting relationship to him, and in fact, private meetings were held with him and senior administrative staff on June 14, 2008 and again on August 12, 2008.

Of importance is fully appreciating the limited scope of a survey such as this one. Though the evaluators had complete access to all materials, it is essentially impossible to fully examine an institution of this size and complexity in a couple of days with two surveyors.  As our charge was to examine the recently reported episodes of inappropriate student interactions with both teachers and community based adults, we tended to focus our attention on the policies, procedures and institutional responses related to those events.  We are aware of the extensive past history of boundary violations between students, but our limited time at the institution made it impossible to review each of those files adequately.  We do believe, however, that we were able to successfully identify the systemic problems that are of current concern, while also highlighting the unique strengths – most notably in the passionate commitment on the part of the staff – exhibited throughout all aspects of the school program. 

Our report is divided into several separate sections.  In the initial one we provide a brief history of Deaf education so that the reader can understand the situation in context.  In the next section we respond to the specific concerns raised by the local newspaper in regard to the five distinct alleged episodes of inappropriate student – teacher and student-adult contact. This, in turn, is followed by the recommendations that address our more global findings and that we believe are critical in regard to establishing a safer and more developmentally sensitive environment for this often overlooked population.  Lastly, the final section provides a consolidated summary of the entire report.

I.         Historical Perspective