Proposal expected today on ending residential program at Iowa Braille School

A study committee today is fine-tuning a proposal that recommends ending the residential program at the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School in Vinton.

Six graduates of the Braille School are at today's meeting, wearing red and white shirts that read “I support IBSSS.”  Several of them spoke about their experience at the school, saying it shaped them into the people they are. They said a public school setting would not have served them as well, for socialization and support reasons.

“I just hope that in the end, the good comes out of it,” 1990 Braille School graduate Perry Lester, of Des Moines, said. “While I agree with the fact that the residential program isn't right for every student, I would hate to see it eliminated because it is right for some students. It should be available to them.”

Graduates said it seems the study committee has made up its mind on closing the residential program in Vinton, but the alumni said they wanted to have their say today.

“I don't know that there's anything we could say in favor of a residential program that would change anything,” 1982 graduate Julie Piper, of Vinton, told reporters. “But I do not believe that public school is always the least restrictive environment for the blind student of today.”

The plan, which still needs a final vote today of the Braille School study committee, will go to the state Board of Regents in August. The draft proposal being discussed by the committee recommends ending the residential program in Vinton, and instead says the Statewide System for Vision Services should focus on providing educational services as near to a student's home as possible.

The proposal also recommends that nine more teachers be hired to provide those vision services around the state and the development of magnet regional opportunities to provide expanded curriculum and short term programs for blind students.

The statewide system will remain headquartered at the Braille School, and the Vinton campus will continue to hold short-term and summer educational programs for blind students under the draft proposal.

The draft recommendation also says the name of the statewide system and the Braille School should be merged and changed to Iowa Educational Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

It's the fourth and final meeting of the study committee, charged by the regents with looking at the future of the residential program. The final recommendations reached by the committee today will go to state regents for discussion in August, and eventually on to the Legislative Council by Aug. 31.

The cost-per-student of the residential program at the Braille School was $53,485 in 1993, when 57 students were enrolled. The cost-per-student in 2009-10, for nine students, was about $246,000.

Seven students are projected to attend for 2010-11. The Statewide System for Vision Services serves about 400 blind and visually impaired students around the state, in their home schools and communities.

Of the about $5 million state appropriation to the statewide system last year, about 45 percent of it went to the residential program at the Braille School.