Regents terminate coordinator of Iowa Deafblind Project

VINTON - The Board of Regents this week unanimously agreed to terminate the contract of a deaf-blind consultant for the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School in Vinton, who also serves as coordinator for the Iowa Deafblind project.

Regents voted Wednesday to terminate Kelly van Dyk's 'continuing contract,” effective at the end of the 2014-2015 academic year. The decision followed a special meeting, during which the board met in closed session to 'deliberate and reach a decision in the matter of a teacher termination hearing held on April 23.”

Details of the circumstances that led to van Dyk's termination were not made public. But van Dyk told The Gazette on Thursday, 'It was definitely not because I did not fulfill my job obligations.”

'It was not because of incompetence on the job,” she said.

Van Dyk declined to share details about what did lead to her termination, saying only that it's possibly related to one incident and is 'still unraveling.”

Van Dyk has been working with the Vinton-based Iowa Educational Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired since at least last year. She coordinates the Iowa Deafblind project, which is a federally-funded effort to provide support and technical assistance to families, educators, and service providers of young people in Iowa who are deaf and blind, according to the project's website.

The project also gets support from the Iowa Department of Education, Iowa School for the Deaf, Iowa Braille School, and other education agencies in the area. Its goals include training families and service providers who work with children with multisensory deprivation; increasing families' abilities to participate in the education of their child; boosting educational achievement; and collaborating

Van Dyk told The Gazette the 'deafblind project grant under my leadership moved forward in a substantial way, and the data does show that.”

'I have been getting good feedback from all the stakeholders - really good feedback,” she said. 'People in Iowa seem to be appreciative of the level of technical assistance that they were receiving here.”

Van Dyk, who said she's been specifically trained as a deafblind specialist with additional teacher qualifications, said her termination came as a surprise.

'I hope, going forward, they can continue to offer various stakeholders in the state good quality technical assistant from deafblind specialists,” she said. 'That makes a difference.”

During Wednesday's Board of Regents meeting, President Bruce Rastetter said all the 'findings of fact and conclusions of law” will be provided to the parties involved.

Van Dyk declined to answer questions about where she worked before joining the Vinton school and when she was hired. But information provided for an 'Eastern Iowa Assistive Technology Conference” earlier this month described her as a former teacher of children who are blind, visually impaired and deafblind, and a certified deafblind specialist with a master's degree-level certification in blind/visual impairments.

She was trained with the New England and Vermont deafblind projects, according to the conference information.

According to the Iowa salary database for public employees, van Dyk made $80,552 as a deaf-blind consultant in 2014.