Controversial Head of School for Deaf Removed

A state school for deaf students is in turmoil this week after Sacramento officials fired its superintendent, a move that reflects an emotional debate about how to educate deaf children--and whether deafness should even be considered a disability.

Technically, state education officials placed Rachel Stone, superintendent of the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, on 30-day paid leave. But they told her in a Monday letter that in coming weeks she will “receive formal notice . . . terminating [her] appointment.”

The action, many believe, is the inevitable conclusion to Stone’s stormy 18-month tenure, which has degenerated into competing picket lines, broken friendships, complaints of reverse discrimination against the hearing population and a widening divide between deaf and hearing faculty members.

With an enrollment of about 500, the school is one of two state-run boarding schools for the deaf in California. It draws students from 11 counties.

State officials would not discuss the basis for their decision to suspend Stone. But many parents at the school consider her something of a visionary, and they believe her struggle to reform the school’s lagging curriculum--primarily, to empower deaf students by making American Sign Language their primary form of communication--led to her ouster.

In short, Stone is deaf and proud--a combination that some believe doesn’t sit well with the school’s old guard.

“It’s OK that I am deaf,” Stone, the first deaf superintendent at the 48-year-old school, said in sign language this week at her tidy Riverside home. Before joining the Riverside school, Stone earned a doctorate from Gallaudet University in Washington, then designed deaf education curricula in Indiana and taught deaf education in Maryland.

“There are different cultures. We are all human beings, and in the past we were told that we were not. We were told that we could not be successful. That’s all I’m trying to change. For years, deaf education has been run by people who think they know what’s best for deaf people, and they have failed and failed and failed. I want to put a stop to that.”

Parents this week set up a vigil on the school’s 69-acre campus, passing around petitions, painting their cars with messages of support--”Hear us out!”--and showing copies of unchallenging homework assignments to anyone with a minute to spare.

Some clutched copies of a ninth-grade English homework assignment. The September assignment, which parents said was from a college-preparatory class, featured a cartoon of a magician and these instructions: “Draw a line from each word to what it names.” The words included bird, flower and hat.

The assignment, parents believe, is a reflection of the low expectations placed on deaf students--a problem that is only compounded, they say, if the students are forced to focus on spoken English instead of sign language.

“Do you see this?” demanded Paul Maucere, a 1979 graduate of the School for the Deaf and the father of two deaf children who are currently enrolled.

“My 6-year-old daughter did this in minutes. She asked me: ‘If I got to school here, will I be doing this? I want to go to a different school.’ And you know what? She’s right. All Rachel Stone wanted to do was raise this place up. They want to push it back down, and we don’t understand why.”

The official reason will be made clear to Stone in the next month or so, said Henry Der, the California Department of Education deputy superintendent of public instruction. Discussing Stone’s suspension would violate her rights, Der said. He did say that “the action we took in no way has any anti-deaf elements.”

The suspension has exposed a rift in the deaf community over how best to educate deaf children.

Stone is on the leading edge of a fight to empower deaf children by instructing them in American Sign Language, which she and many other educators feel is their “native” language. Stone said that when she first arrived in March 2000, she visited classrooms and watched one teacher deliver a science lecture out loud--relying on a student in the class to translate the lecture into sign language.

Stone shuffled teachers around, began hiring more people who are fluent in sign language--which is not a state requirement for faculty--and encouraged teachers not to speak, even to one another. She implemented what is described in the world of deaf education as a “voices off” policy--and many parents say they watched their deaf children swell with pride.

“This is my language,” Stone said. “Why doesn’t deaf education recognize that?”

Another camp, however, feels that hard-liners such as Stone discount the fact that many “deaf” people--including almost a third of the school’s enrollment--have some ability to hear.

Disagreement Over Medical Advances

Moreover, scientists have made substantial strides in recent years in building better hearing aids and other devices that assist the deaf. They include cochlear implants, which use computer technology to send electric sound signals to the brain. However, some factions of the deaf community consider them problematic and even dangerous.

Some consider Stone’s approach reckless, even while they admire her goals. They say that students who have a chance at hearing and speaking should be allowed to try.

“American Sign Language is a wonderful tool. But it is not English,” said John Flanders, children’s rights advocate at the Alexander Graham Bell Assn. for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Washington, D.C.

“It’s perfectly possible to have a productive life using American Sign Language. It’s equally possible to do it as a speaking, listening person. The question in our minds is whether the educators are supporting the parents’ decision. We believe it’s the educators’ responsibility to respect that decision.”

Some parents feared that their children would not receive as much speech therapy as they did before Stone arrived. Hearing teachers felt marginalized. Some felt harassed because they are not proficient in American Sign Language, and some resigned.

“It had created a hostile work environment,” said Perry Kenny, president of the California State Employees Assn., which represents the teachers. “People who had a voice felt like their jobs were being threatened. They felt a lot of pressure on them because, simply, they had a voice.”

State officials forced Stone to issue a memo clarifying that she did not ban speaking, and was only emphasizing signing over speaking. Then they stripped her of some of her powers earlier this month.

Students watched with wide eyes as faculty picketed to express opposition to Stone’s management decisions, then as Stone’s supporters--occasionally on the same day on the opposite side of the street--held their own demonstrations.

“The debate has gotten completely out of hand,” said Barbara Franklin, a professor at San Francisco State and the former coordinator of its Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program. “Children are being sacrificed for philosophy.”

“It’s not a pretty picture,” she said. “I think there should be a choice. I don’t think that hard-of-hearing children should be forced to live a life as a deaf child if it’s not necessary. And I think a little of the emotion has to come out of it. The extreme positions don’t do anyone any good.”

Many in the deaf community say they are conflicted over Stone’s firing--drawn to her struggle to improve students’ self-esteem and education, and put off by her hard-line philosophy.

“I believe that her vision of educating the deaf and hard of hearing are somewhat far-fetched, but possible,” Seymour S. Bernstein, executive director of the nonprofit Center on Deafness-Inland Empire, said through a sign language interpreter this week.

“The quick change in the philosophy, it caught people off guard. I think it just moved too fast and people were unsettled with the quick demands. Rachel was definitely the victim in that. Whether she should stay or go, I don’t know yet. No one really does.”