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http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/06/11tsdq_a.html
The Texas School for the Deaf is celebrating the 150th anniversary of its founding this year. But the school that sits on a sparkling South Congress Avenue campus today is completely transformed from the one that educated the state's deaf students just a generation ago, Superintendent Claire Buge said.
Bugen has been superintendent at the Texas School for the Deaf since 1998. She arrived in Austin in 1975 and began at the school that year as a substitute teacher. The next year, she was appointed supervisor of the middle school and later worked as a principal, director of instruction and assistant superintendent.
During her time as superintendent, Bugen has overseen the 2002 sale of TSD's East Austin campus to the City of Austin for $3.7 million and the overhaul of the school's South Congress Avenue grounds, which expanded and modernized school facilities and consolidated all grades onto one campus. Texas School for the Deaf enrolled 477 students in the 2005-06 school year. The school has also increased its presence throughout the state, sending more staff to work with traditional public school districts with deaf students.
In 2004, Bugen was elected president of the Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools and Programs for the Deaf, a national organization of professional educators working to improve schools and educational programs for the deaf or hard of hearing.
Here, Bugen discusses a generation of changes at Texas School for the Deaf and what's in store for the future:
What advice do you have for parents who have just found out their child is deaf?
Claire Bugen: My first piece of advice would be, this is a child first and don't forget that. Sometimes the best-intentioned professionals will overwhelm you. I used to do a little talk to our parents at our family weekend retreat, and I titled it, "Your child is not a hearing aid." Because they're there and they're like, 'I don't know if I'm doing the right thing with the hearing aid, and I don't know if this is the right kind of battery, and I don't know this,' and I'd say, 'It's OK. That's the simple stuff. Deal with your child as a child first.'
Second, I would say talk to a lot of people. Don't depend on one source for your information. And the final piece of advice I would give is talk to a deaf adult. For a lot of hearing parents, their child is their first experience with the deaf community. You should see some of these families when they meet a young deaf professional, and they see them energetic and happy and bright. I've seen parents literally breathe a sigh of relief, like they could not envision (that) outcome for their child.
And give them early access to language and communication: early, early, early. Don't be so afraid of what communication or methodology you use, just get the kid access. That's the important thing.
What was the Texas School for the Deaf like when you arrived in 1975?
The school had a huge number of students back in those days, maybe 750 students, because the primary option for education (of a) deaf child was at the School for the Deaf, prior to a lot of the legislation regarding mainstreaming options.
Also, we had a huge population of students from the rubella epidemic (of the early to mid-1960s). Vision, hearing and learning problems were the primary . . . disabilities as a result of mothers having German measles during the first trimester of pregnancy. All schools for the deaf had what was called the "rubella bulge," so that made enrollment soar and also introduced, I think, a different kind of deaf student with some additional disabilities or learning problems.
In those days you probably wouldn't have seen students with multiple disabilities. Probably because those students were never referred to the school. They weren't considered "to meet the criteria" for a school for the deaf. A lot of them would have been referred to state (institutions). . . . We certainly know a lot more about serving students like that (now).
I think schools for the deaf had more specialized curriculums. We used to have life skills classes and basic skills classes. Now you would give the kids access to the regular curriculum — English, math, science, language, those kinds of things. And probably more kids were in vocational education. Today, we have career and technical education, which has a very different look than traditional vocational education, largely because of the introduction of technology.
Generally, the whole thrust of all federal legislation that relates to special education students is (to) give them to the maximum extent of their abilities the same access to achieve as a non-disabled child so (the school's evolution is) a recognition of that.
How has the school changed since you took over?
In the past 10 years, we have increased our statewide presence. We've developed our educational resource center on deafness, but not nearly to where I'd like to see it go. (We've developed) the whole concept of sharing Texas School for the Deaf's resources with the state of Texas. The addition of our summer programs has been a big benefit to all deaf children across the state.
(We have) communication skills workshops where we're training interpreters. We're running 350 interpreters through here every summer, trying to get their skills up to a level where they can make a difference for deaf children in (traditional) public schools.
How have the recent remodeling projects helped the school for the deaf?
I think the master facility implementation plan has done huge things for the school imagewise. . . . (Among students) I think there's a sense of pride in the campus — we don't have nearly the graffiti problem you used to see. It's (also) really improved community partnerships, particularly with South Congress merchants. This school been their neighbor for 150 years, and we are many people's entrée into SoCo.
The second big thing is parents. When you saw the older facilities, it was sometimes really hard to leave your child. Now, they see a bright, educationally alive place, and they feel a lot better about this being the place their child lives during the week. And the fact that we've been able to consolidate campuses, you're going to have better flow of curriculum, better teamwork, centralized services.
How is Texas School for the Deaf funded?
We're a state agency. We are not a school district; we're not funded like a school district. We don't have a local tax base (and) don't have a locally elected school board. Our students don't always live in our geographic area. We're a line item on the legislative appropriation.
Having said that, there are a small amount of funds that flow through the Texas Education Agency called independent school district funds. When a student comes to our school . . . that student's per-capita share of what he would have generated as a student at (their home) district, that share is transferred to (Texas School for the Deaf).
Is Austin deaf-friendly?
I would rate it high on deaf-friendly cities for one simple reason: It has a critical mass of a deaf community.
Services respond to a level of demand. If you have high enough demand (from) a community of people, you're going to have services available — theaters that are willing to show captioned movies, several different interpreting services so that deaf people have access to interpreters, a deaf social network, enough deaf professionals, you have your deaf blue-collar workers, you have the bass fishing club for the deaf — so there's a community here.
How can Austin improve its deaf friendliness?
Offer more career opportunities for deaf people. (Austinites should) be willing to hire deaf people in their businesses, in their companies, in their government offices and probably learn more about sign language and learn more about encouraging employees to learn sign language and encourage a broader access for people.
Deaf people are still underemployed. It's improving, but it's still not where it should be. I think communication access is a big issue. If you're an employer and you don't have experience with deaf people or don't have any experience with the deaf community, and someone comes to interview bringing somebody else that they're speaking through — I don't think employers are intentionally discriminating, but I think we need to increase awareness of the promise of deaf people in the workplace.
What immediate challenges does the school face?
The challenges are to grow some real capacity to do some innovative programming in light of what I call "level-budget funding." It sometimes is a little discouraging to put so much effort in the legislative process without getting a lot of additional capacity.
I'd love to have three more curriculum staff to work with teachers, to work on presenting more challenging grade-level content. I'd love to have one or two people being able to work on technology integration into the curriculum. I could use three or four more counselors.
I don't have any other mechanism besides state funding. So the challenge is to find the capacity to grow. . . . We've got to get some more more federal grants, more money from foundations. We've got to build some capacity in something other than state dollars if we want to keep cutting-edge.
If I could, tomorrow I'd triple the number of (outreach) staff I have. I'd send people down to the Valley to work with parents (and) out to West Texas to help teachers with technology, offer more distance learning classes. There's just a lot more we could do.
The Texas School for the Deaf is celebrating the 150th anniversary of its founding this year. But the school that sits on a sparkling South Congress Avenue campus today is completely transformed from the one that educated the state's deaf students just a generation ago, Superintendent Claire Buge said.
Bugen has been superintendent at the Texas School for the Deaf since 1998. She arrived in Austin in 1975 and began at the school that year as a substitute teacher. The next year, she was appointed supervisor of the middle school and later worked as a principal, director of instruction and assistant superintendent.
During her time as superintendent, Bugen has overseen the 2002 sale of TSD's East Austin campus to the City of Austin for $3.7 million and the overhaul of the school's South Congress Avenue grounds, which expanded and modernized school facilities and consolidated all grades onto one campus. Texas School for the Deaf enrolled 477 students in the 2005-06 school year. The school has also increased its presence throughout the state, sending more staff to work with traditional public school districts with deaf students.
In 2004, Bugen was elected president of the Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools and Programs for the Deaf, a national organization of professional educators working to improve schools and educational programs for the deaf or hard of hearing.
Here, Bugen discusses a generation of changes at Texas School for the Deaf and what's in store for the future:
What advice do you have for parents who have just found out their child is deaf?
Claire Bugen: My first piece of advice would be, this is a child first and don't forget that. Sometimes the best-intentioned professionals will overwhelm you. I used to do a little talk to our parents at our family weekend retreat, and I titled it, "Your child is not a hearing aid." Because they're there and they're like, 'I don't know if I'm doing the right thing with the hearing aid, and I don't know if this is the right kind of battery, and I don't know this,' and I'd say, 'It's OK. That's the simple stuff. Deal with your child as a child first.'
Second, I would say talk to a lot of people. Don't depend on one source for your information. And the final piece of advice I would give is talk to a deaf adult. For a lot of hearing parents, their child is their first experience with the deaf community. You should see some of these families when they meet a young deaf professional, and they see them energetic and happy and bright. I've seen parents literally breathe a sigh of relief, like they could not envision (that) outcome for their child.
And give them early access to language and communication: early, early, early. Don't be so afraid of what communication or methodology you use, just get the kid access. That's the important thing.
What was the Texas School for the Deaf like when you arrived in 1975?
The school had a huge number of students back in those days, maybe 750 students, because the primary option for education (of a) deaf child was at the School for the Deaf, prior to a lot of the legislation regarding mainstreaming options.
Also, we had a huge population of students from the rubella epidemic (of the early to mid-1960s). Vision, hearing and learning problems were the primary . . . disabilities as a result of mothers having German measles during the first trimester of pregnancy. All schools for the deaf had what was called the "rubella bulge," so that made enrollment soar and also introduced, I think, a different kind of deaf student with some additional disabilities or learning problems.
In those days you probably wouldn't have seen students with multiple disabilities. Probably because those students were never referred to the school. They weren't considered "to meet the criteria" for a school for the deaf. A lot of them would have been referred to state (institutions). . . . We certainly know a lot more about serving students like that (now).
I think schools for the deaf had more specialized curriculums. We used to have life skills classes and basic skills classes. Now you would give the kids access to the regular curriculum — English, math, science, language, those kinds of things. And probably more kids were in vocational education. Today, we have career and technical education, which has a very different look than traditional vocational education, largely because of the introduction of technology.
Generally, the whole thrust of all federal legislation that relates to special education students is (to) give them to the maximum extent of their abilities the same access to achieve as a non-disabled child so (the school's evolution is) a recognition of that.
How has the school changed since you took over?
In the past 10 years, we have increased our statewide presence. We've developed our educational resource center on deafness, but not nearly to where I'd like to see it go. (We've developed) the whole concept of sharing Texas School for the Deaf's resources with the state of Texas. The addition of our summer programs has been a big benefit to all deaf children across the state.
(We have) communication skills workshops where we're training interpreters. We're running 350 interpreters through here every summer, trying to get their skills up to a level where they can make a difference for deaf children in (traditional) public schools.
How have the recent remodeling projects helped the school for the deaf?
I think the master facility implementation plan has done huge things for the school imagewise. . . . (Among students) I think there's a sense of pride in the campus — we don't have nearly the graffiti problem you used to see. It's (also) really improved community partnerships, particularly with South Congress merchants. This school been their neighbor for 150 years, and we are many people's entrée into SoCo.
The second big thing is parents. When you saw the older facilities, it was sometimes really hard to leave your child. Now, they see a bright, educationally alive place, and they feel a lot better about this being the place their child lives during the week. And the fact that we've been able to consolidate campuses, you're going to have better flow of curriculum, better teamwork, centralized services.
How is Texas School for the Deaf funded?
We're a state agency. We are not a school district; we're not funded like a school district. We don't have a local tax base (and) don't have a locally elected school board. Our students don't always live in our geographic area. We're a line item on the legislative appropriation.
Having said that, there are a small amount of funds that flow through the Texas Education Agency called independent school district funds. When a student comes to our school . . . that student's per-capita share of what he would have generated as a student at (their home) district, that share is transferred to (Texas School for the Deaf).
Is Austin deaf-friendly?
I would rate it high on deaf-friendly cities for one simple reason: It has a critical mass of a deaf community.
Services respond to a level of demand. If you have high enough demand (from) a community of people, you're going to have services available — theaters that are willing to show captioned movies, several different interpreting services so that deaf people have access to interpreters, a deaf social network, enough deaf professionals, you have your deaf blue-collar workers, you have the bass fishing club for the deaf — so there's a community here.
How can Austin improve its deaf friendliness?
Offer more career opportunities for deaf people. (Austinites should) be willing to hire deaf people in their businesses, in their companies, in their government offices and probably learn more about sign language and learn more about encouraging employees to learn sign language and encourage a broader access for people.
Deaf people are still underemployed. It's improving, but it's still not where it should be. I think communication access is a big issue. If you're an employer and you don't have experience with deaf people or don't have any experience with the deaf community, and someone comes to interview bringing somebody else that they're speaking through — I don't think employers are intentionally discriminating, but I think we need to increase awareness of the promise of deaf people in the workplace.
What immediate challenges does the school face?
The challenges are to grow some real capacity to do some innovative programming in light of what I call "level-budget funding." It sometimes is a little discouraging to put so much effort in the legislative process without getting a lot of additional capacity.
I'd love to have three more curriculum staff to work with teachers, to work on presenting more challenging grade-level content. I'd love to have one or two people being able to work on technology integration into the curriculum. I could use three or four more counselors.
I don't have any other mechanism besides state funding. So the challenge is to find the capacity to grow. . . . We've got to get some more more federal grants, more money from foundations. We've got to build some capacity in something other than state dollars if we want to keep cutting-edge.
If I could, tomorrow I'd triple the number of (outreach) staff I have. I'd send people down to the Valley to work with parents (and) out to West Texas to help teachers with technology, offer more distance learning classes. There's just a lot more we could do.