Ames, Ia. - A plan to close the state's residential school for the blind to focus entirely on providing local services to its students was approved Thursday by the Iowa Board of Regents.
The Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School will save $2.2 million by closing its 148-year-old Vinton campus. It will use the money to hire seven more teachers, two special-education consultants and other staff. It will also partner with agencies to provide long-term care and intensive short-term programs.
The campus will provide some services and house the administration for a statewide education system renamed the Iowa Educational Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
Regent Rose Vasquez said some parents skeptical of the plan backed it once everyone realized the school did not have to exist in a single place to best serve its students. "We needed to have a fluid system where there were perhaps some administrative functions, but where they could also fan out and reach the populations and serve them there," she said.
School enrollment fell from 119 students in 1972 to nine students last year, as changes in federal law have steered disabled children to traditional public schools.
The cost of educating each student rose from about $53,000 in 1993 to about $246,000 last year.
School Superintendent Patrick Clancy said the old model didn't meet the needs of students today.
"This isn't about how to reduce costs," he said. "This is about how we meet those needs in a different way."
The regents will send the plan to a legislative council by the end of the month. The changes could be fully implemented by fall 2012
