Dailypress.com

Hampton school for deaf, blind closing in June

By ZINIE CHEN SAMPSON

Associated Press Writer

 RICHMOND, Va.

The Virginia School for the Deaf, Blind and Multi-Disabled in Hampton will close at the end of June, clearing the path to consolidate the state's two schools for students with visual and hearing impairments.

The state Board of Education voted Wednesday to end state-operated programs at the Hampton school, including residential and day-program services, on June 30.

Forty students are enrolled in Hampton's programs this school year, and all but 14 are graduating or moving to Staunton, according to state Department of Education spokesman Charles Pyle. School officials plan to work with those 14 families to arrange for their continued education in their home districts, Pyle said.

The decision is part of a plan approved by the General Assembly 2006 to consolidate the Hampton school and the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind in Staunton onto the Staunton campus. The estimated price for the construction and renovation project is $71 million, Pyle said.

The legislature decided during the 2008 session that no state funds would be available for construction or renovation in Staunton until the Hampton program shut down. The Hampton campus will become surplus state property on July 1, 2009.

The closing of the Hampton school will end a chapter of Virginia's educational history harking back to the days of racial segregation.

The Staunton school opened in 1839 at a site, provided by an Augusta County delegate, that had served as a Confederate hospital during the Civil War.

In 1909, the state opened the Virginia State School for Colored Deaf and Blind Children in Hampton to serve black students excluded from the other school. It enrolled its first white student in 1964 and started educating students with multiple disabilities.

The schools have educated thousands of young Virginians with impaired hearing and sight but have seen steady enrollment declines since the mid-1970s, after federal special-education law began requiring that local school districts integrate more students with disabilities into regular classrooms.

Copyright (c) 2008, Newport News, Va., Daily Press