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Sunday March 4, 2007
KSD: Teetering on the edge of change
By TODD KLEFFMAN
tkleffman@amnews.com
Editor's note: This is the first installment in a series of stories about Kentucky School for the Deaf, its past and its future, the buildings and grounds as they exist and as they might change, those who worry about the changes and those who might benefit from them.
The view from the rarely visited cupola atop Jacobs Hall is birds-eye.
From there, the entire city of Danville unfolds in all directions, and the 160 acres of the Kentucky School for the Deaf campus comes into sharp focus.
To the south along Second Street, just below KSD's newest buildings, a wide belt of greenspace butts up against Bate-Wood Homes and spreads east all the way to Stanford Avenue.
Heading north back toward town, it rubs up to Admiral Stadium and Bate Middle School then moves west along Martin Luther King Boulevard to Third Street, where KSD's older buildings sit mostly unused and wasting away. You can see the spot where Cowan Hospital used to stand. It was razed for a parking lot last month.
Two blocks to the north is Main Street and the hubbub at the old Hub/Gilcher building and parking garage. Just across Third Street is the giant hole where the expansion of Ephraim McDowell Regional Medical Center is beginning to sprout.
"Look at this view," Paula Kilby, director of Danville-Boyle County Chamber of Commerce, exclaimed from the cupola. "Wow!"
That Kilby and Heart of Danville Director Julie Wagner, major cogs in Danville's wheel, were touring Jacobs Hall last week was a harbinger of a growing interest in KSD's future.
It was the first time that Wagner had set foot inside the building that celebrates its 150th birthday this year and is the embodiment of deaf history and culture in Kentucky.
"I'm embarrassed," Wagner admitted.
Her curiosity was sparked by a Kiwanis International luncheon earlier at which KSD operations officer Larry Conner made an appeal for greater community involvement with the campus and its students.
"We've got a lot of needs here, and we can use community support," Conner said. "I just don't think the community and the school have forged a strong relationship."
Not that Conner was pointing fingers. It's just that as KSD's stature has shrunk along with its enrollment, the campus has become almost like an island unto itself in the middle of Danville. Seen, perhaps, but not heard or thought much about.
A mere shadow of its former self
Today's KSD is a mere shadow of its former self. In the late '70s and early '80s, enrollment topped out at 440 students, most of whom lived on campus nine months a year or more and only went home once a month. The staff was 220 strong.
Current enrollment is 130 students. Most of the hearing-impaired students who used to go to KSD are now mainstreamed into public schools close to where they live.
About 75 of the current students stay in campus dorms, but only for a week at a time. They are bused in from far flung counties on Sunday evenings and bused back home on Friday afternoons.
The other 55 students are bused in daily from nearby school districts - some as far away as Bardstown and Frankfort - and return home each night. Staff numbers have dropped to 150.
That trend has long foreshadowed the need to retool KSD, but that change is only now beginning to happen. The metamorphosis will not only have a profound impact on the school and the students it serves, but also on the community it has called home since 1823.
What will become of the KSD campus isn't yet clear. The vision is muddied by a complicated mix of money, politics, a double layer of state bureaucracy, many strong opinions lacking consensus and a deaf community trying to cling to a history that is endangered.
Though KSD's history stretches back 184 years, you only have to go back to November 2004 to glimpse its future. That's when the state Department of Education, which operates KSD, approved a facilities plan that calls for the campus to shrink back to the area around its newest buildings along Second Street.
Under the plan, only five of KSD's 17 buildings are part of the downsized campus. The other 12 buildings on the upper side of Second Street and those on the Third Street side, including Jacobs Hall, are designated "transitional" with the "intent to surplus."
"Transitional means it's not part of the future campus, that it will be closed at some point," said Lisa Gross, spokeswoman for the state Department of Education.
That means that perhaps as much as 100 acres of what Kilby calls "prime real estate" near the heart of the city will become open for other uses. When and how that happens is a messy proposition that promises to be slow in its unveiling.
The facilities plan calls for new construction, add-ons and renovations to the cluster of remaining buildings. There will be a new 400-seat auditorium and outdoor athletic complex. Two entries to the campus will be redesigned to make it more secure. New, deaf-friendly technology will be added.
When the plan was completed more than two years ago, the price tag was $14 million to $15 million but since then has risen dramatically because of escalating construction costs.
Money for capital projects comes from legislature
Since KSD has no bonding authority and is state-owned, it must get money for capital projects from the legislature. When the idea was floated for funding during the 2006-07 budget cycle, it got lost in the shuffle.
"It was tossed out in the 2006 legislature, but nobody even sniffed at it," said Bill Melton, KSD's campus manager. "It was competing with the Louisville arena and projects at UK and U of L."
The project remains on the Department of Education's priority funding list that it is preparing for the 2008-09 budget cycle and Gov. Ernie Fletcher is aware of the need, Gross said.
But, so far, there is no sign that any coalition or political champion is emerging to push the matter to the forefront. And without funding, everything else is at a standstill.
"It all goes back to money. How do you get the wheels rolling without money?" Gross said. "That's not an excuse. There isn't anybody to point a finger of blame to. Money is tight everywhere."
Waiting on the powers that be in Frankfort to act is becoming increasingly frustrating for Melton and other KSD administrators who are trying to serve their students with buildings and infrastructure growing more decrepit by the day.
Since no money is going to be spent on buildings that are not part of future plans, it is a constant struggle to scavenge parts to fix heating and cooling systems and make deteriorating buildings serviceable.
It has been a constant game of musical chairs moving students and classes from one building to another while repairs or renovations are made.
"We are good at cannibalizing and recycling," said Melton, who came to KSD from Colorado School for the Deaf in 1980.
Last week, Conner watched in dismay as students in Grow Hall ate lunch with their jackets on because the heating system had conked out.
Campus is "out of sight, out of mind"
Such occurrences are par for the course at KSD, but nobody in Frankfort feels the chill when the heat goes out in Danville. The campus is "out of sight, out of mind" to the folks in Frankfort, Melton said, and KSD's plight remains "a back burner issue."
"I've been here for 27 years, and nothing has happened," he said.
To Melton's mind, tons of money and resources have been wasted over the years trying to maintain buildings and mow acres of unused property that KSD doesn't need. It's money that could have been put toward a newer, smaller campus of about 60 acres that would better serve deaf students and taxpayers.
"Why should we maintain all of this?" he wonders. "But I'm a nobody in this. I'm not a deaf person. I didn't go to school here. I'm not even a Kentuckian."
Rhonda Bodner is deaf. She grew up on farms in Parksville and Stanford and graduated from KSD in 1978. She now works in KSD's outreach department helping kids get hearing aids, ear molds and glasses. She's also vice president of the school's alumni association, so she has a good sense of the feelings held by the deaf community about KSD's future.
It is a heart-rending dilemma for those who attended KSD and love it like a familial home. It pits the needs of current and future deaf students against the storied history of the school that is so much a part of their culture and identity.
There is an understanding and desire for KSD to move forward coupled with an equally strong, almost uncompromising emotional pull to preserve the heritage, Bodner said, while acknowledging that having it both ways is not a realistic outcome.
"We have to save the old because that's what the deaf people want. Kids have been coming here since 1823, and these buildings tell their stories. There will be a lot of hurt if they are gone because they carry the memories, the traditions, the stories," she said.
"But we have to have better education for the deaf kids of the future. That's very important, more important than the past."
As campus property is surplused
The language of the 2004 facilities plan recommends that as campus property is surplused, uses be found "that would support the education and interests of deaf citizens," but does not include any funding to that end.
Several ideas have been tossed out - a transition home for graduates not ready to enter the work-a-day world, beefed up vocational training, a home for the alumni association, a social club.
But there have been no serious proposals put forward for consideration, and there is no indication at this point, absent some generous benefactor, that the deaf community will muster the consensus and funding needed to salvage any building other than Jacobs Hall, which everyone agrees will be preserved.
Further complicating matters is the fact that all of KSD is owned by the state and the Finance Cabinet must be involved in any deals involving surplus properties.
There are multiple deeds to the campus, perhaps 20 or more, and many of them are believed to restrict the use of the property to the purpose of deaf education, said Jill Midkiff, spokeswoman for the Finance Cabinet.
With so many hoops to jump through at so many levels, and so many concerns and sensitive issues in the mix, it is no wonder so little is happening so slowly. Even after the funding materializes to downsize the campus, a veritable obstacle course will still have to be negotiated before it all settles out.
"We are approaching this very cautiously," said Gross at the Department of Education. "We're open to any options. There aren't any doors that are closed. We just don't want to rush anything. You can't just go in there and make rash decisions based on economics. It's a very complicated situation."
Despite those complications, baby steps are being taken toward the future.
Ephraim McDowell positioning itself
Ephraim McDowell Health, which is positioning itself to be a key player in whatever happens at KSD, signed a three-year lease with the state for $120,000 to use campus space for parking.
Included in the deal was the demolition of the old Cowan Hospital, which McDowell also paid for.
"There wasn't a whole lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth" when Cowan was razed three weeks ago, Melton observed.
Danville Board of Education, which also has a keen eye on KSD property, recently has made overtures to the state about buying Barbee Hall on Martin Luther King Boulevard, where board offices have been located for two years. The state has yet to respond to the inquiry, Superintendent Bob Rowland said.
Add in the visit by Kilby and Wagner to Jacobs Hall and the fact that KSD was a major topic during last week's community planning forum sponsored by the Economic Development Partnership, and there is a sense that the big ball is starting to roll.
"There are any number of reasons doors could be closed because it's so much of a hassle, but I'm optimistic that, with persistence and for the right reasons, there can be a good outcome for KSD and the community as a whole," said Harry Nickens, McDowell's vice president for community relations.
Amnews.com