Legislative blindness

Recently, Oregon legislators decided to cut funding for the School for the Blind, a school in Salem that has had a significant impact on disabled kids for a long time. Closing this school is a considerable step in a direction that will leave disabled kids in a situation where they have little-to-no chance of becoming contributing members of society.

This is not what I want for these kids. I grew up in a very small school. There was a fellow student who was legally blind and also autistic. I spent a lot of time around this boy because we were both on the same track team. I remember having a very hard time communicating with him for several years. Then, all of a sudden, I had an easier time communicating with him—he seemed more independent and he had more self-esteem, or at least I thought he did.

The reasoning behind cutting this school is the cost of running it is about $150,000 per student, per year. The plan is for students who are attending the blind school to simply attend public schools, and spend a little money to accommodate them at these public schools. Blind students have had mixed results with attending public schools. A major problem with funding public schools to accommodate blind children is that there are so few blind schools to begin with, that giving each school the money to accommodate blind children is inefficient.

This decision begs the question “What do we want for our disabled children?” Do we want them to be functioning members of society? Or do we want them to simply get through the school system, in a way that makes us feel good that we got them through. Or do we want to actually benefit them? If we want them to be functioning members of our society we would not cut this school.

The people who campaigned the hardest for the school to continue to be funded were the school’s teachers and the parents of the students, which is significant because these people are the closest to the students. They see the kids before and after, and that should tell us something about the effectiveness of the school.

I for one want them to become functioning self-sufficient members of society. This decision by our legislators shows us, the voters, the backbone of our elected officials. They are gutless and spineless and unwilling to make a hard decision. A politician who was willing to make the hard decision would refuse to cut funding.

I would propose that we don’t elect politicians like this in the future because, after all, politicians are merely extensions of a person’s will. After all, we elected these people and they represent what we the voters wanted. This is our doing. Educators who decide that it is too expensive to educate some kids should not be educators at all. We have to ask ourselves, “What kind of society do we want to be?”