The Department of Public Instruction was required by the General Assembly in this year's budget to decide to close one of the state's three K-12 day and residential schools for the deaf or blind. State schools Superintendent June Atkinson released a draft report well ahead of its Jan. 15 deadline to a legislative oversight committee.
The three schools combined teach about 200 students but have aggregate budgets of $22 million. The high per-student cost has come as more students with hearing and visual impairments — 2,900 statewide — are being served in traditional public schools.The numbers have increased since laws have passed to required local districts to provide a free education to children with disabilities.
Atkinson said the department's plan, which would save $5.5 million required in the 2012-13 state budget, would close the Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, but students would remain there as a satellite campus of the Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf in Wilson.
The North Carolina School for the Deaf in Morganton would remain. Atkinson said a large percentage of the campus of the Governor Morehead school, whose beginnings can be traced back to 1845, would be leased for other educational use. She said the Wake County public schools would be among those considering use of the space. The school now has just 47 students, compared to the hundreds it used to enroll.
Leasing underutilized space at the Wilson and Morganton campuses also would be considered to reduce operating costs, Atkinson said. "This path will create a cost saving, would preserve and protect the educational services and opportunities available to each student population and would allow us to make good use of spaces that are now sitting empty much of the time," Atkinson told reporters at a news conference.
Atkinson said she didn't envision the Wilson and Raleigh campuses changing their names to reflect the switch. The changes would begin July 1 unless the Legislature intervenes and changes what it directed the department to do. Lawmakers could question whether her plan is an actual closure since all three campuses would keep teaching students.
"For the students, there will not be any difference," she said. Atkinson said she didn't know how many faculty members, if any, would lose their jobs, saying it's too early to know. A lot would depend on how much money any lease agreement would require and probably what kind of education offerings would be provided in the space.
For example, Atkinson said blind and deaf students could attend a wider range of classes if extra space is turned into a center for science, math and technical curricula, exceptional needs children or arts programs. "The guiding principle is that we want to do what is best for the students that are attending these schools," she said.
Ricky Scott, a 1980 graduate of the Governor Morehead School, said after the announcement he was worried the consolidation would be the first step toward closing the campus for good. He argues enrollment has fallen because parents aren't being given the choice to send their child to a residential school without the input of the local school district.
"This (decision) is hollow. This is not a victory for anyone," said Gary Farmer, a Wilson County school board member and former administrator at the Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf. He said he respects the decision and work by the department, which took management of the three schools in June from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Consolidating the two schools for the deaf wasn't optimal because each was a vital part of Wilson and Morganton and their communities, the draft report said. The Morganton school began in 1894. The Wilson school started in 1964.
About 1,700 people attended public hearings put on by the department in September, while citizens could participate in an online survey.
Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat like Aktinson, criticized the Republican-led Legislature for demanding a process that she said in a prepared statement "pitted deaf children against blind children in a fight to keep their school open."
Sen. Neal Hunt, R-Wake, one of the chamber's three chief budget-writers, said Perdue's statement was "just politics." He said Atkinson's plan, particularly to open the empty space at the Governor Morehead school, was something that "makes absolute sense to me."
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