Deaf school on track

• By SONIA SMITH
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Oct 24, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek, speaking Thursday morning alongside seven experts tasked with studying the problems at the Louisiana School for the Deaf, reiterated his pledge to reopen the school on the tentative date of Nov. 3. 

The consultants spent Wednesday and Thursday with Pastorek, with the aim of finding concrete ways to implement the 14 recommendations outlined in the report of Dr. Alan Cohen, a psychiatrist at the National Deaf Academy, and Reginald Redding, of the Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf.

Cohen and Redding were hired by the department in June after five people — three of them current or former employees of the school — were arrested between November 2007 and April for alleged sexual misconduct with juvenile students.

Pastorek ordered the school closed Oct. 8 after reports of a 16-year-old male student sexually assaulting a 6-year-old girl on a bus chartered by the school. The male student was arrested on a count of aggravated rape in Franklin Parish on Oct. 17.

Pastorek said Thursday he will give parents a chart early next week showing how Cohen and Redding’s suggestions will be put into practice.

Pastorek said the school may be able to open sooner than Nov. 3, but he could make no guarantees. The department is leaning toward allowing day students back first, followed by residential students, Pastorek said.

Joseph Fischgrund, former headmaster of the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf and one of three consultants the department brought in to conduct an academic review of the school in May, said he was confident the reforms would lead to an improved educational experience at the school.

“Obviously this is not a very wonderful time for the school,” Fischgrund said. “But I think what we have started … is a process that will improve the school.”

Fischgrund maintained that, while other residential schools do see some problems with sexual misconduct, these problems appear to be more widespread at the Louisiana School for the Deaf.

“Yes, things happen, but not to the sort of extent that is reported to be happening here at LSD,” he said.

When the school reopens, staff members at the school —whether they are deaf or hearing — will be required to use American Sign Language throughout the day, Pastorek said. The 20 to 25 percent of staff who are not proficient in the language will attend immersion classes until they are.

Additionally, the protocol for transporting students to school is being overhauled, Pastorek said, and students and chaperones will be assigned seats on buses based on their needs.

Both Cohen and Redding stressed the importance of state schools for the deaf as places for deaf culture to develop.