La. School for Deaf to be closed for review

• By SONIA SMITH
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Oct 8, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:20 a.m.

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The Louisiana School for the Deaf will close temporarily beginning today to allow administrators time to implement broad changes to ensure the school is a safe place for children, state Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek announced Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, two top officials with oversight of the school told Pastorek they will be leaving — one resigning and one retiring — effective Friday.

Pastorek said the school will close for “days, not months” and officials next week will have a better idea of when the school will reopen. Pastorek said students residing at the school will be sent home this afternoon.

Pastorek said he asked school officials at a Monday meeting one question: “Is the school as safe as an ordinary school, in its present condition and configuration?”

After three hours of conversation and “a great deal of anxiety and angst,” Pastorek said, he and the officials came to the conclusion the school was not, and made the decision to suspend classes there temporarily.

“There is a great concern in the deaf community about whether this important asset will be retained,” Pastorek said. “It is my intention that the school for the deaf will be retained. But I think that we will come out of this better than where we are today.”

The time spent out of school will be made up either at the end of the year, or by adding minutes to each school day, Pastorek said. Arrangements to educate the students in their home districts are being hammered out, he added.

“I feel I owe it to the children and their families to apply the greatest degree of caution under these circumstances,” Pastorek said.

The school’s interim director, Kenneth David, has worked there since 1978, has served as interim director since 2005, and will retire effective Friday, said René Greer, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Education.

Virginia Beridon, the interim director of the state’s Special School District that oversees the Louisiana School for the Deaf and two other special schools, is resigning effective Friday, Greer said. Beridon has worked for the agency for 29 years.

The superintendent’s announcement came 11 days after a 16-year-old male student of the school allegedly sexually molested a 6-year-old girl on a bus hired by the school that was taking students home for the weekend.

The 16-year-old involved in that incident was a problem student who had been flagged as one who could cause a “higher risk of injury to themselves or others,” Pastorek said.

Upon examination of the student body, 13 other such students — about 7 percent of the students — were identified and their parents were asked Friday afternoon to not let them return to school, Pastorek said.