School Programs for Deaf Children Draw Fire : Education: Inadequate training in signing by teachers is the primary criticism leveled by parents.

Reflecting a nationwide controversy over education of deaf children, parents of deaf students and members of the deaf community plan to protest at the Carlsbad Unified School District’s board meeting tonight and to ask for dramatic changes in the district’s program.

Members of the deaf community complain that their concerns have gone ignored by the administrators, and they want the district board listen to them with their “good ears.”

Among their primary concerns is that the director of the program, which handles about 60 students from across North County, has virtually no background in deaf education. She cannot even hand-sign “hello,” they say.

“She is in the seat of decision-making, and she has no idea about how deaf people live, what our values are, what our problems are and what our goals are,” said Kevin McLellan, a professor and director of the American Sign Language-English interpreter training program at Palomar College, who himself is deaf.

“How can she provide leadership to a group of students that she really knows nothing about?” McLellan asked.

Some parents also are concerned that the teachers in the program may be inadequately schooled in sign language.

“My daughter knows sign better than her teacher,” said Bill Campbell, whose 7-year-old Kelly just completed first grade at Magnolia School.

Carlsbad Unified also has no deaf educators in its program and does not teach or use American Sign Language, or ASL, except as a tool for clarification. Many members of the deaf community feel that ASL is their language and that to deprive deaf students of it is tantamount to taking away part of their culture.

Nancy Woolsey, who coordinates special education, including deaf education, in the district, has a background in special education and administration.

“I am a generalist. I administer the programs. I do not feel that to administer a special education program for the whole district that I need to sign,” said Woolsey, who handles special education for 600 students in the district.

“All of our teachers are properly credentialed to be teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing, and many of them continue to take signing classes,” Woolsey said.

Michael Byrne, program manager for the North Coastal Consortium for Special Education, which coordinates special education in most of North County, said these concerns have arisen overnight and that “going to the board of education seems like an overreaction.”

Parents have said that they have tried to speak with Supt. Thomas Brierly but were referred to Woolsey.

The conflict that parents and members of the deaf community have with Carlsbad Unified is similar to the problems with which other public schools are grappling in educating deaf students.

“We had a study done several years ago at the state level that found that there were some common problems with these hearing-impaired programs, including the lack of trained managers and professionals who are familiar with the unique needs of the deaf,” said Jules Spizzirri of the state Department of Education, who acts as a liaison with local deaf education programs.

Having an administrator untrained in deaf education is not necessarily a disadvantage, however, if the administrator properly coordinates with others around them who are, Spizzirri said.

Deaf educators vehemently disagree with Woolsey.

“It is unconscionable for a person to administer a program to students without knowing at all about the adults the students will become or knowing anything at all about the community many of them are a part of or will become a part of,” said Carol Padden, a communications professor at UC San Diego.

Newton Hamilton, principal of the Marquis de Lafayette School in San Diego, where about a third of the students are deaf, had 21 years of experience in deaf education before coming to Lafayette a year ago and feels that the ability to sign is extremely important.

“If you can’t speak to the children themselves, how do you know whether they are learning? It is very difficult to verify that learning is taking place,” Hamilton said.

Parents and community members in North County complain that the teachers at the Carlsbad program do not sign at a level appropriate for teaching.

Parents also cringe at Woolsey’s use of the term “regular education children” to refer to hearing students, saying it indicates insensitivity to toward deaf children.

“What does that make my child? Irregular? Deaf children aren’t special or irregular. They are just unique,” Campbell said.

The parents and deaf community members in Carlsbad are also part of a national debate over whether deaf children should be “mainstreamed” into classes with hearing children.

Every school district in California attempts to mainstream deaf students into the hearing student population, depending on the ability level of the student, Woolsey said.

“It is a total access curriculum. The kids (who are mainstreamed) are getting exactly what the regular education kids are getting at the same pace and same grouping,” Woolsey said.

But other deaf educators say mainstreaming spreads out already inadequate resources for teaching deaf children.

Mainstreaming tends to allow administrators to apply handicapped children-type models toward deaf children, when they should be treated as children who use a different language, such as in bilingual education, Padden said.