Group Homes and Assisted Living       July 2005                

A citizen in our town started a personal campaign to limit or reduce the number of our assisted living group homes.  She spoke to the Town Council and it was covered by our local paper. I sent in a letter to the editor and read the following to the Town Council at the next meeting.  

I was very disheartened to read the tone and direction of the comments at the last town council meeting regarding group homes for individuals with Mental Retardation

One resident’s complaint that there are too many group homes was filled with short sighted distortions and exaggerations. To suggest that Windsor is “doing our fair share” because we have 20 or 30 group homes and other  surrounding towns have only 10 or 20   rings with not-in-my-backyard self interest.  In truth there is a crisis of insufficient homes for adults with mental retardation.  Bear in mind that more than 1% of the population has mental retardation.  In Connecticut there are currently more than 2,100 individuals with Mental Retardation awaiting placement in supportive home-like settings.  Clearly more needs to be done than even Windsor’s “fair share”.  I hope all are grateful that we have moved beyond the horrific and inhuman days of assigning individuals with Mental Retardation to a life in an institution. My wife, Cheryl did a rotation in such an institution as a nursing student and is still troubled by the memories.  There is no intention to go back to those dark days but Connecticut is not moving ahead fast enough.   The recent settlement of the class action lawsuit of ARC of CT vs. O’Meara calls for much more to be done much sooner. Of critical concern is the need for our state and our towns to find homes for individuals living with aged parents. This is a real human issue and needs to be handled with compassion and understanding, not prejudice and ignorance.

 The fact that group homes receive some tax credit should be considered a small and well spent contribution to this effort.  If the Town of Windsor is really that desperate for revenue as some would suggest I would suggest taxing the 20 or 30 “group homes” for faculty and staff on the Loomis Chaffee campus first. Or should we consider if Windsor has too many tax-free churches?    Taken to the extreme, are we going to do a cost benefit analysis on everybody to decide which group of people is or isn’t welcome in our town?

 To infer that Windsor Police have incurred extra expensive for training to handle individuals with Mental Retardation is wrong.  In fact, as stated in the Windsor Journal article, police training was obtained to handle issues with people mental health issues which is occurs in more than 40% of the general adult population.   In Windsor this would be thousands of people. Certainly updating the Police department’s skills to handle the related nuances is a thoughtful and well spent effort. . 

 If somebody has a problem with their neighbor it’s a personal matter and should be handled in a respectful manner. That does not mean that someone should have an issue with all individuals that lives in a group home or all people with mental retardation.  The inference that individuals with mental retardation are more violent than anyone else is an outdated and hurtful prejudice. Everybody deserves to be treated as an individual.  Just because your neighbor looks or acts or speaks differently than you is something to be accepted and celebrated. Not feared.  When we think we are justified to exclude certain groups of people from our neighborhoods we take a very sad step back in history. I would suggest that we take a step forward and remember that in this country we don’t choose our neighbors, our neighbors choose us.

  Windsor is a wonderfully diverse community because so many people have been accepting and supportive of differences.  These differences are more than just black or white.  I see them everywhere in Windsor .  I see them in the girl born in India that became friends with my oldest daughter in her Girl Scout troop. I see them in the PTA moms with their rich Jamaican accents, in the folks from WILA dancing on the green at the summer concerts, in the 3^rd grade teacher playing along with the Suzuki performance, blending in and standing out.  I see these differences in the fragile newborn that grew up to be a Shad Derby princess and I see them in the long time Windsor residents like our Mayor, a not too recent graduate of Windsor High School .  And I see them in my youngest daughter’s eyes.  These are our people.  This is our Windsor .

A few days camping and two fun pictures to show for it ...

Another year and another round of denials. No matter what your political leanings may be, the annual reporting required by the No Child Left Behind has brought an unavoidable sharp focus on the ability of our public schools to successfully educate every student.  During this season of denial, school officials across Connecticut react by taking turns defending their district’s performance claiming the success of the majority somehow validates the exclusion of the minority.  Their messages are painfully clear, their schools are succeeding just fine except for those few subgroups, ‘special education’ and ‘English as a second language’, and any other that can be singled out for blame without violating political correctness.  I hope educators stop offering these denials and communities stop accepting them.  I hope we will come to understand that successful, meaningful education for all students is an undeniable moral imperative. The true denial is that while we hold the means to bridge these gaps we hesitate. Delays risk student’s immediate and future quality of life, the freedom to choose higher education, employment opportunities, and the happiness of a life’s potential realized.  A true sense of urgency is long overdue.

My own life changed almost six years ago in more thought-provoking ways than I could have ever imagined when my youngest daughter, Rose, was born with Down syndrome.  My perceptions of what is and isn’t possible have been torn down and pieced back together time and time again as she has grown from a fragile newborn into a vivacious and curious student. Now on an exciting First Grade adventure, Rose is making her way.  The birthday party invitations have come.  The friendships are being made in our neighborhood, on her soccer and T-ball teams, at dance class and swim lessons. First words are being read and her first soccer goal had been scored.  What she can do is not defined by predetermined low expectations and limited opportunities.  Rose is not ‘mild’ or ‘high-functioning’; she is not an ‘exception’ or an ‘angel’. She’s a kid.  She’s her own person. She’s a capable and successful individual because she has been given the opportunity to thrive and succeed in our family and our schools, in a community that welcomes, supports and encourages her, just as anyone would hope for any child.  These opportunities and successes are not only possible but what should happen in a fair-minded world. 

Rose’s success should be no surprise. Numerous studies over the past twenty years have shown conclusively that students with disabilities can succeed. When taught in an inclusive, regular classroom students with disabilities will benefit academically, behaviorally and socially, as well as having significantly higher post-school employment rate than their peers taught in segregated programs.  The list of supporting studies is countless but the resistance to school progress has been so ingrained in our schools that the initiation of real progress has only come with the settlement of the PJ et al. vs. State of CT Board of Education class action lawsuit. Fortunately the checks and balances of a democratic government do finally move towards correcting our most grievous social injustices.  The parallel to racial integration and Brown vs. the Board of Ed, is a telling precedent, the painfully slow implementation “with all deliberate speed” is a firm warning that.the willingness of all involved to embrace change is the final step in realizing true justice.

Students with disabilities are often different learners that benefit from different teaching strategies and an inclusive school environment.  Studies have shown again and again that these same teaching strategies benefit all students in academic areas as well as leading to a more positive appreciation of diversity that makes us all better citizens. Teachers prepared with a wider range of strategies can respond to more students learning needs. Specifically, the May 2000 Indiana Inclusion Study investigated the benefits of an Inclusive Heterogeneous classroom with particular attention on the academic benefits for students without disabilities.  This major study concluded that those students significantly out performed their peers in segregated, tracked classrooms in math and reading.  Clearly, the teaching practices used to benefit students with disabilities benefits all children.

Some of those different learners are students of color; their academic Achievement Gap has been studied and documented since the 1970’s when racial integration finally started to because wide spread in nation’s schools. Unfortunately too much time is spent focusing on the negative results and too little attention given to the clear successes.  Connecticut ’s own Amistad Academy , a magnet school in the New Haven public school district, is one of those shining successes.  Amistad takes in a random sample of their typical struggling sixth grade students, mostly economically challenged students of color. Within two years with a persistent focus on individual success, CMT scores show that the entire class is performing as well as many of the best towns in the state. Many of Amistad’s top students are sought after by Southern New England ’s exclusive prep schools.  Undoubtedly students of color are able and willing to close the Achievement Gap if schools are willing to close the opportunity gap.  This is a vivid example of having the means to succeed but not the willingness to change. This resistance to progress maintains a status quo that steals more and more opportunities from students’ everyday

The consequence of clinging to today’s status quo extends far beyond low grades and lost employment opportunities.  The stigma of learning disabilities has a strong negative influence on how people choose to live their lives.  What is the starkest measure of this?  Try to look past the top level of the conflict-ridden issue of abortion, whether you are Pro-Life, Pro-Choice or ambivalent this needs to be discussed.  Beyond the vast majority of abortions that are chosen solely because the mother feels, for whatever, reason unprepared to bring a child into her life, approximately 1 % of abortions are chosen because a late-term prenatal diagnosis has indicated a fetal health anomaly.  Only  1% of abortions and yet this adds up to over 10,000 times every year in this country that a quality of life is judged and denied on the most deeply personal terms. A choice is made with a disturbing consistency and the results ultimately define us as a society.

Often this diagnosis is the genetic disorder Trisomy 21 or Down syndrome, a condition that is strongly associated with learning disabilities. When my wife, Cheryl and I faced our own amniocenteses results somehow we chose Rose; possibly because of our years of struggling with infertility, possibly our Catholic up bringing.  There is no certain path to trace back to the complex choice made beyond our dim memories of a difficult time, made with a considerable amount of grief counseling in preparation of termination and only the vaguest assurances of a life together. Still, somehow, a choice we made and live with joyfully today. 

However, more than nine out of ten parents-to-be given a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome choose abortion. These are couples that have knowingly invested themselves emotional and physically with all the efforts necessary to bring this possible life to the midpoint between conception and birth, this is a child that already lives in their hopes and dreams. And yet with the news of Down syndrome their future child’s life is perceived to be too different, too painful to be considered possible and fear of the unknown drives a vital decision.  With no personal positive experiences to guide and assure them a choice is made to not have a ‘different’ child rather than risk having a child that won’t belong in the lives they can imagine for themselves.  I propose that their imagination is limited by their own narrow experiences of school years that rewarded the successful learners and alienated those that struggled.  The powerful need to belong and succeed and the fear brought on by ignorance is so far from what should be possible.

It is not my place to judge an individual’s decision but I do find fault with a society that perpetuates so much heartache based upon inaccurate information.  In our rush to provide the parents-to-be with all the technical advantages modern medicine has to offer we most often deny them the benefit of the knowledge and comfort of real human experience. While the latest screening technology is sought, dates are paid close attention to, and pending test results are agonized over parents-to-be hover in a state of acute ignorance, without the critical knowledge of the growing number of success stories made possible by our increasingly fair-minded world.  We learn from examples.  We find comfort in the examples that reassure our sameness despite our perceived differences.  Parents-to-be need the knowledge offered by these examples with at least the same sense of urgency the Solomon-type choices are pushed upon them by the capabilities of modern medicine.

The truth is that different learners, even those with learning disabilities, will succeed if schools are willing to apply known successful practices.  The ground has already been broken; the discoveries have been made, the precedents have been set. All that is missing is willingness and a humble commitment to change. Every student deserves no less.  As a parent of school age children, as a taxpayer, and as a citizen, I would say that even doing a poor job implementing the morally correct is infinitely preferred to an outstanding job of a morally indefensible action.

The responsibility of public schools in our democratic society is to have a vital sense of urgency, striving to educate all learners. We have the means. We have the moral imperative. We dearly need the commitment and the time is now.  Children in school today are struggling when they need not.  Life-long learners are being lost, career opportunities are being shut off and prejudices about what type of child will be allowed into our lives are being firmly cemented into young minds.  Children’s future should not suffer because of a failure of educators’ imagination or a lack of a communities’ courage..  This is an urgent call right now for educators to find their own personal epiphany and lead this change as those lives depend on them. They should know with certainty that they do.