Gallaudet Announces Three Finalists for President
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I do not know Stern and Weiner, but back in the mid-90s I dealt with Fernandes personally, and I feel she did not treat me fairly or decently at the time. Here is what happened - and bear in mind this is my own personal experience.
In the 1994-95 academic year, my child was a first grader at Kendall Demonstration Elementary School (part of the Clerc Center). In the Spring of 1995, the teacher of the first grade class got sick. Kendall brought in substitute teachers, but the substitutes were not qualified to teach deaf children. We parents accepted that and chalked it up to bad luck. We hoped things would be better in the fall. The children in the class learned little or nothing that Spring.
Fall 1995 arrived. Start of second grade. The assigned teacher never showed up. In fact, this teacher called in sick every day that entire semester. Again, Kendall brought in a series of substitute teachers, none of them qualified. The last one was a very sweet young recent Gallaudet graduate, with a degree in Communication Arts (but not qualified to teach deaf children!) Meanwhile, the children including my child, learned little or nothing.
By November 1995, we had had it. We parents met with the then-principal, Nancy Rarus, and got nowhere. The next step was to go higher up, and that was Jane Fernandes, who was then the Vice President for the Clerc Center. One child's parents made an appointment with her, and invited the rest of us along to "share" the appointment.
At the appointment, Fernandes saw all of us, and demanded that everyone leave except the parents of the child who had made the appointment. By then, I was furious that my child had missed out on so much important educational time, and I refused to leave. Fernandes and I got into a shouting match: when I demanded the school provide my child's class with a real teacher or at least combine the class with another class in the same grade that had a real teacher, Fernandes said angrily that if I did not like it, then I was welcome to take my child out and transfer back to my county public school system!
Unfortunately, that's just what we had to do. Fernandes would not give in, and no real teacher was hired. We pulled our child out of that school and transferred back to the county public school system. One by one, most of the other parents transferred along with us. The few remaining children were moved to that other class that had a real teacher.
My child and all of the classmates that transferred back to the county school, was forced to repeat an entire grade because they had missed so much learning time. The children had been cheated out of the equivalent of an entire year of quality deaf education, at a very critical time in their learning. It took years to recover from the damage that was done.
Is this the kind of person we want for the next president of Gallaudet University?
Many positive and negative comments about her were posted on the GallyPresWatch.com site, and you can also talk about it on the forum.
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