Educator Signs On for a Tough Challenge : School: Expert on education of the deaf becomes principal at elementary school where a quarter of the pupils are hearing impaired.

R. Newton Hamilton will be more than just another newly appointed principal in the San Diego Unified School District when he takes over the reins at Lafayette Elementary School in Clairemont this fall.

As an academic specialist in the education of deaf students, Hamilton--an assistant professor at San Diego State University since 1988--will bring his unusual expertise to a school where almost a quarter of the students are deaf and hard of hearing. Parents of those children lobbied both school trustees and Supt. Tom Payzant earlier this year for a principal conversant in American Sign Language to communicate better with their students.

Now, for the first time in Lafayette’s 25 years of operation, there will be an expert in the field to lead the school as a result of Hamilton’s selection by the Board of Education two weeks ago.

The district had to go outside of its administrative ranks for Hamilton, making the 42-year-old educator the first person since shortly after World War II to be chosen for a principal’s post without prior experience in the San Diego system.

As such, Hamilton will call on his 21 years of teaching and administrative experience to chart his way through the politics of a school precariously balanced between deaf and non-deaf factions and a sprawling urban system ranked eighth in size in the nation.

Top district administrators harbor no doubt that Hamilton is the right person for the job.

“He’s got freshness and an eagerness to undertake something quite new for him, and his experience both in state schools for the deaf (in Virginia) as well as in the university is a plus,” said Payzant, pleased at the chance to bring new blood into the system.

“He’s a quick study and, with the right kind of support, he can learn” the system quickly, Payzant said.

Frank Antonio, a parent of a deaf child at Lafayette, led lobbying efforts to persuade Payzant to look beyond the district for applicants. He said his group “is ecstatic. The deaf community is rather small in San Diego and the reputation of Hamilton is good.”

Trustee Ann Armstrong, who has a strong interest in special education as a result of past volunteer work in several schools, said that Hamilton’s background fits the needs of Lafayette.

“I’m very pleased since we needed somebody who ‘signed’ fluently for the school,” Armstrong said. “If we can’t fill those jobs appropriately from within the district, we need to go outside, and in this case we found the person with the right qualifications.

“Institutionally, he has a tough job ahead of him.”

The soft-spoken Hamilton has no illusions about the task he faces, but also no doubts about his ability to perform.

“My professional goal, my reason for being at San Diego State, my reason for having majored in education for the deaf, is to have a real impact on these children throughout the country,” Hamilton said during an interview last week.

“I think that Lafayette has great potential to be a model site, a demonstration site if you will, for the education of deaf students, and to have an ongoing relationship with San Diego State” to call on expertise available from the university.

“Symbolically, the fact (that I know American Sign Language) is extremely important because the children will have someone to whom they can communicate directly. But even more important is the fact that I know the impact deafness has on children and their parents, that I can put the communication element into a broader picture.”

But Hamilton also takes pains to emphasize he will be principal for all students at Lafayette.

“I don’t have a motto or symbol yet” for crystallizing my intent, Hamilton said. “But I can tell people that I am an educator whose purpose is to see that every student has the opportunity to move to high levels of education as quickly as he or she can.

“I will be as responsive to the children of the general parents as I am to those of special education parents. I intend to pay close attention to the general curriculum, the changes in the new state (of California educational) frameworks, availability of new technology, all the things that are for all populations.

“I’m not going to bury my head in the sand of deafness and say the rest of the school will run itself.”

Hamilton, a native of New Jersey, received his bachelors degree at Trenton State University, his masters at New York University, and is completing his doctorate at USC. He served as assistant superintendent at the New Jersey School for the deaf and principal for the deaf at the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind. (Both are state residential schools for the deaf similar to those run by the state of California at Fremont and Riverside).

Hamilton has also taught sign language at the College of William and Mary at Williamsburg, Va., and coordinated special education for deaf students at Hampton University in Norfolk, Va.

While he chose his academic major on the basis of personal interest, Hamilton recalls several years of severe middle-ear infections as a child, when he would go for days at a stretch without being able to hear.

“An older brother remembers how he would call me and call me, but I wouldn’t respond, and he would remember the frustrations of not being able to get through to me, and how frustrated I was at not being able” to hear him.

Hamilton believes that deaf children need to be part of a school’s overall educational and recreational programs and says that Lafayette already has a strong base from which to build.

“My goal is to have everyone recognize the opportunities for socialization and educational enrichment, both for deaf students and for hearing students, through mainstreaming (placing deaf and non-deaf students in the same classrooms for certain subjects).”

Hamilton has visited Lafayette several times to “get a feel” for the campus.

“I think overall it is a fine staff, both those who work with the deaf and those with the non-handicapped, and I intend to make that clear to all of them,” he said. “There are many good models there that can be used or built upon.”

Regarding public education for the deaf, Hamilton said, “There is no way can I argue that mainstreaming a deaf child in a public school is better than placement in the California School for the Deaf at Riverside, or vice versa. There are benefits to both.

“Within the public school, you have to make sure that in (mixing) children, you don’t create additional hardships for a deaf student, so that superficially they are mainstreamed but socially and emotionally isolated.”

Antonio said that parents of deaf children would like to see fewer multi-grade classes for deaf children, as well as more after-school activities that include them.

“But we are also aware that we need to show parents of non-deaf students that this is not an ‘us-versus-them’ situation,” Antonio said. “We’re not going to overburden Hamilton with our concerns and we will be careful to allow him to address all issues at Lafayette because we know how sensitive and emotional things have been.”

As part of Lafayette’s new look, Hamilton will get a new vice principal, Paul Loringer, a former special education teacher and a 26-year veteran of San Diego city schools.

Loringer, now vice principal at Paradise Hills Elementary, will play a vital role in helping Hamilton learn the district’s political and administrative ropes, such as how to circumvent an often maze-like bureaucracy to solve matters ranging from window replacements to classroom supplies to instructional needs.

“I can appreciate that,” Hamilton said. “It’s important to me that my vice principal knows the system, knows what buttons to press.”

Loringer, who learned of his appointment only last Tuesday, said he expects to tap Hamilton’s expertise in the field of deaf education and “he’ll tap mine for information about the district, the structure of the special education department, to help him take advantage of all the resources around here.”

Assistant Supt. Beverly Foster, who oversees Lafayette, has set up a series of orientation meetings for Hamilton with parents and teachers.

“It’ll be a real crash course for him,” Foster said. “He’s going to need all his human relations skills to keep everyone at the school happy.

“But he’s obviously good,” said Foster, who was part of the unusual interview panel convened to oversee the competition between outside candidates and those from within the system.

“Otherwise we would have never hired him.”