Miss-Delectable

Highview parents raise funds to help deaf, blind children in class | courier-journal.com | The Courier-Journal

The parents of Maddie Garvue, a 6-year-old Highview girl who has profound vision and hearing losses, are raising money for a new program to help her and other children who are deaf and blind.

Debbie and Bryce Garvue hope to raise about $200,000 to start a pilot program at the Heuser Hearing & Language Academy, formerly the Louisville Deaf Oral School. It would be the first program in the state to focus specifically on children who are deaf and blind.

The first coin-collection boxes for the fundraising campaign, called "Change is in Sight," were placed at The Red Pepper Deli in La Grange recently and The Downtown Diner and Coffee House in New Albany, Ind. The family plans to place 18 more boxes in Louisville-area businesses soon.

Maddie has a rare inherited disease called Lebers Congential Amaurosis. She is a student at Hauser, which offers classes for the deaf and hard of hearing through age seven. The next school year would be Maddie's last at the school unless it can raise enough money for the pilot program.

She is able to hear with the help of a cochlear implant she received at nine months. Her mother says she learns best through stimulation of her auditory pathways. She enjoys playing her piano and can say "up," "Mama," "Ay-ee" (Daddy), "Ha-ee" (for her 11-year-old sister Hallie), and a few other words.

And her parents say Maddie has made much progress since coming to Heuser last year and they don't want it to end.

The new program would be geared for about four students ages 5 to 8 in a single classroom the first year and a second class could be added afterward, Debbie Garvue said.

She taught third- and fourth-grade students for 15 years before the family moved to Louisville from Georgia a year ago. She now wants to get a graduate degree in education to teach children who are deaf and blind. Her husband, Bryce, works as an aircraft maintenance supervisor at UPS.

Mona McCubbin, Heuser's executive director, called Debbie Garvue's determination "a blessing."

"Maddie is going to make progress, despite her disabilities. And her mom's going to make sure of it," McCubbin said.

McCubbin said educating children who are deaf and blind is a costly endeavor. While the school already has space in its building at First and Kentucky streets, it would need to pay a teacher and an intervener, or personal tutor.

A donation of $200,000 would allow Heuser to start the program, but it would need more donations to keep it going in subsequent years, she said.

Lisa Gross, spokeswoman for the Kentucky Department of Education, said there are 23 students the state's public schools who are deaf and blind.

But the Kentucky Deaf-Blind Project, which keeps a count of the state's deaf and blind population through age 22, said the number is at least 185.

Project coordinator Diane Haynes said there is a strong need for a program that focuses solely on students who are deaf and blind because such students now must choose between blind schools, deaf schools or public schools, where they are placed in special-needs classes with students who have an array of disabilities.

"Deafblindness is its own disability," Haynes said.



I'm sorry, but I cannot help but think Maddie would have done better through sign language, which could help aid her speech progress. Besides, she's deaf and blind therefore she should have full communication access rather than the singular method she's exposed to.

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