A Long, Dark Ride to School: Some Blind Ohio Children Spend Hours on Buses Every Day to Reach Scarce Special Teachers

By Story By Barbara Carmen, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Jan. 28–Jocee is snuggled in her soft sheets printed with purple and orange daisies. Frost has painted her bedroom window as moonlight glimmers outside in Duncan Falls.

It’s 5:36 a.m. when Julie Janicki-Dayton tiptoes in and kisses her 7-year-old awake.

“Time to go to school, Jocee.”

Three years ago, Jocee could have slept a couple more hours and then taken a 10-minute bus ride to her Muskingum County school.

But Jocee is blind, and the county’s only full-time teacher for the visually impaired retired two years ago.

So the little girl rides 2½ hours each weekday morning to the Ohio State School for the Blind in Columbus, and 2½ hours home. It’s always dark when she leaves and, in winter, it’s dark when she gets home.

Jocee’s mother said her daughter’s world would be far darker without the sacrifices they’re making for her to get an education 72 miles away, a trip lengthened because it requires several stops to pick up other students and a transfer to a second bus.

Nationwide, school districts need 5,000 teachers of the visually impaired, and educators say nowhere is the shortage worse than in rural areas — especially in southeastern Ohio where Jocee lives.

Many teachers of the blind were hired up to 40 years ago when new laws mandated equal education for handicapped children and federal grants paid for their education. Those teachers are now retiring, but there are few replacements.

Jocee squinches her eyes shut as she raises her tiny rump in the air and inches out of bed backward, letting her feet hit the floor first.

Her mother pulls off Jocee’s PJs, and the girl steps into her jeans and raises her arms. It’s a well-practiced choreography that gets her dressed in two minutes.

At 5:39 a.m., the groggy secondgrader sits at her kitchen table, none too thrilled to have her hair tugged into a ponytail.

Her mother notices the headlights of the bus. She tucks Jocee’s small hand in hers and they walk outside, a traveling blanket stuffed into the child’s backpack. Dayton waves as the bus pulls away.

Jocee is among 11 students from outlying Ohio counties who commute to the School for the Blind every day. Her friend Crayton Benner, 8, comes almost as far from Washington Court House.

Most of the students who commute daily have much shorter rides; they come from Franklin or contiguous counties. The school has 126 students, about half of whom live at the school Sunday through Friday.

Crayton’s mother, Kelli Pratt, tried sending him to the Hillsboro school district in neighboring Highland County, where she said her older sons were getting a fine education.

But Hillsboro has one teacher who goes from building to building, working with each blind student, she said. While Crayton’s sighted friends were learning letters and reading skills, he had only one hour a week of intensive Braille reading instruction.

“He was falling behind. I could see it,” Pratt said.

At the Columbus school, Crayton’s mind and fingers have flown. He reads, joyously.

Steve Rogaski, director of educational services for the Cuyahoga County Educational Services Center, said districts are trying to provide teachers for their blind students but can’t find them.

It took him two years and trips to three states to recruit two additional full-time teachers. He shares the five teachers he has with neighboring Summit County. They teach about 100 visually impaired children in more than 30 school districts.

“The shortage has always been there,” said Dr. Louis Mazzoli, superintendent of the Ohio State School for the Blind. “The last 20 years, it’s gotten worse because the teachers are of the age to retire and there’s no backfill. It’s not that the local districts don’t want to provide; the trained staff isn’t out there.”

Mazzoli said almost half of his 24 teachers entered the classroom at least 20 years ago. Mazzoli has 44 years in the field.

Training programs are offered at only 14 U.S. universities. Ohio has two, at Ohio State University and the University of Toledo.

College students must complete a master’s degree with an emphasis on visual disabilities. Practicing teachers must take an additional academic year of schooling to become familiar with Braille and understand blindness and the techniques for teaching the blind.

Compounding the teacher shortage is that blindness has become a less common disability, and the need is less visible to teachers in training. With the availability in 1969 of the vaccine against rubella, or German measles, fewer pregnant women contracted the virus that causes blindness in unborn babies.

Still, school districts are required to provide instruction by qualified teachers.

That’s difficult in rural districts that might have only a single blind child.

“When you say you’re a V-I teacher, people go, ‘Huh? What is that?’ ” said Kay Clarke, who serves visually impaired students in Dublin schools.

She has, in the past, commuted 90 minutes from her Worthington office to teach children in outlying districts. She is concerned that, even if students learn Braille, it won’t become enough a part of their daily coursework to make it functional.

Also, there’s no additional pay for the special training.

“You’re not going to get rich doing this,” said Angela Petro, who contracts with districts that don’t hire their own teacher.

She took over in Muskingum County when the full-time teacher in Zanesville retired, just before Jocee was to start kindergarten. She lives in Newark and visits students each week in Zanesville, Maysville, Nashport, Cambridge, Newcomerstown and West Lafayette.

Jocee needed a full-time teacher because she was just learning to read and is totally blind. “The district and parent agreed it worked better to send her to Columbus,” Petro said.

The Maysville school district pays $35,000 to $45,000 a year to drive Jocee and four other students to Columbus daily. A beginning teacher would earn about $40,000, including benefits, school district Treasurer Chris Miller said.

Three older kids from Muskingum County stay at the School for the Blind, on N. High Street in Clintonville, during the week in cottages and go home on weekends.

The same is true for the six students from Cuyahoga County who attend the Columbus school. Older students prefer being close to the services, sports and social life offered in a school for the blind.

But even the School for the Blind, which offers teachers comparatively good pay, no travel and the latest in technology and equipment, has a difficult time replacing its retirees.

“It’s a week before classes start, and we still don’t have a social-studies teacher,” Mazzoli recalled telling the school’s principal, Jerry Marcom, in August.

Their last social-studies teacher retired.

Columbus Public Schools had just laid off 27 social-studies teachers, but none applied at the School for the Blind, even though the state Department of Education earmarked federal grants to help pay for the additional training.

Kerry Nixon, fresh from teachers’ college, had just moved to Columbus from St. Louis. The 24-year-old had one year of experience as a substitute teacher working with autistic and specialeducation students.

“A friend showed me the ad in the newspaper, and I e-mailed a copy of my resume to Dr. Mazzoli. He phoned me within five minutes of my hitting ‘send,’ ” he recalled.

That was a Friday afternoon. He was hired the following Monday.

“I don’t know why other teachers don’t apply,” said Nixon, who is teaching while attending Ohio State to earn a certificate to instruct the visually impaired. “I feel some may be intimidated by a lack of knowledge. But kids are kids, and these kids continue to amaze me.”

Ohio State enrolled 11 teachers in the specialized post-graduate training; two have graduated. The rest are expected to be certified to teach visually impaired children by this fall. Five others dropped out, citing the pressure of working and attending classes.

Technology makes it easier for Nixon to teach his middle- and highschool students without knowing Braille yet. A $700 computer program allows his students to type their lessons in Braille, which is translated into print for Nixon, who reads it and sends it to the students, translated back into Braille.

While school districts struggle to find qualified teachers, many experienced teachers postpone retirement knowing there are few replacements.

Jocee and Crayton’s teacher, Mary Butler, started teaching at the Ohio State School for the Blind 47 years ago and plans to return next school year.

She loves her students, Butler explained, and helping them learn.

“He’s blossomed,” Kelli Pratt said of her son. “Pretty soon, he started reading even short sentences, and it was thrilling for him.

“I don’t know how he can do it, the drive, day in and day out.”

Indeed, by 3 p.m., Jocee is tired and settles into her bus seat for the ride back to Duncan Falls.

She sings to herself. She plays with her Polly Pocket Dolls. And she reads from her favorite book, Ramona Quimby, Age 8.

bcarmen@dispatch.com

trevell@dispatch.com

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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