Are we listening, Andy? Kids who need propagandize for deaf quarrel for funds
Feb 12
Thursday, Mar 17th 2011, 4:00 AM
A column of yellow ponchos trudged down a stormy E. Tremont Ave. in Throgs Neck Wednesday – deaf students marching to save their schools.
More than 90 students fluttering purple pompoms and carrying signs were protesting Gov. Cuomo’s devise to condense state appropriation to 11 schools for a blind, deaf and exceedingly disabled. In a Bronx a schools embody St. Joseph’s School for a Deaf, a Lavelle School for a Blind and New York Institute for Special Education.
Advocates worry a cuts could shiver a schools, displacing 1,500 special needs children.
“I don’t wish to go to a mainstream school,” pronounced Carlos Vega, 13, of Boston Road, one of a many students from St. Joseph’s, who marched. “I wouldn’t be means to communicate.”
His classmate Agron Deski, 13, of Pelham Bay, pronounced that in a a mainstream school, “We won’t have friends. We won’t be involved. We won’t get jobs.”
Cuomo’s due bill eliminates all approach appropriation to a schools, changeable a weight to internal propagandize districts. The schools cost a state $112 million a year.
“He’s perplexing to change a bill on a backs of a children,” pronounced Patricia Martin, a former St. Joseph’s executive director.
As a students paraded along E. Tremont Ave. they were buoyed by honking automobile horns and blasts from an MTA bus.
“The school’s been partial of a area forever,” pronounced Peter Stella, a salesman during a O’Connor runner store. “To see these kids have to come out and desire is heartbreaking.”
The state Senate changed to retard Cuomo’s cuts on Monday, though a Assembly did not. The final bill is due Apr 1.
Under a governor’s proposal, internal districts would front a income to account a schools. Then a state would partly repay a districts. But a state’s annual grant would cringe by roughly $14 million.
Analleni Aguilar of Norwood marched for her 6-year-old son, who attends St. Joseph’s. He wouldn’t do good in a open school, she said.
“He’d substantially turn delayed,” pronounced Aguilar. “He wouldn’t get a therapy he gets here.”
Cuomo contends a devise would save income and allege equal diagnosis for all students. Other special preparation schools don’t accept approach state funding. But a state’s payment complement is tormented by delays, argued state Sen. Jeff Klein (D-Bronx, Westchester), blaming it for $35 million of debt.
Aguilar pronounced she will impetus all a approach to Albany if need be.
“It creates us so unhappy that a administrator is meditative of these cuts,” she said. “We wish him to know that kids like ours have rights as well.”