Deaf school closes to implement security plan

• By SONIA SMITH AND CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writers
• Published: Oct 9, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Clutching hand-lettered cardboard signs, more than 50 students of the Louisiana School of the Deaf gathered at the school’s security gate Wednesday to block buses from leaving in protest of the temporary closure of the school.

“You’re making us miss out on our education,” said 19-year-old senior Brittney Lynch. “They’re forcing us to go home. That’s not fair. This is like our home.”

Lynch, who said she has flourished at the school since enrolling three years ago from a mainstream school in Deridder, was one of five students who signed a passionate letter in support of the school.

The students wrote that even a temporary suspension of classes would cause harm.

“We feel that you are punishing us by suspending our school and making us go home and putting us in a place where we will face bigger problems,” the letter says.

State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek announced Tuesday that the school would close temporarily at the close of classes Wednesday. Pastorek said he wants to give administrators time to implement changes to ensure the school is a safe place for children after a string of incidents of inappropriate behavior was reported at the school.

Pastorek made the announcement 11 days after a 16-year-old boy at the school allegedly sexually molested a 6-year-old girl on a bus hired by the school to take students home for the weekend.

The Advocate has reported that five people — three of them current or former school employees — were arrested between November 2007 and April for alleged sexual misconduct with juvenile students. Three of those people have pleaded guilty to lesser felonies this fall.

Dr. Alan Cohen, a psychiatrist and the author of a report released Tuesday that recommended the school overhaul its mission and implement new safeguards, will be on hand to help with changes next week, Pastorek said.

Ryan Commerson, a leader of the 2006 protests at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., against the selection of a president who is not fluent in American Sign Language, was on hand to help with Wednesday’s protest.

Local law enforcement authorities helped to maintain order.

Commerson, a graduate of the Model Secondary School for the Deaf in Washington, D.C., said the school’s problems are in part caused by hiring staff not fluent in ASL.

“A hiring policy that brings in staff who don’t sign — this is creating an unsafe environment due to the lack of communication,” he wrote.