Short on Funding, Texas School for the Deaf Cancels Summer Program
Annual camp is regularly attended by approximately 1,000 deaf and hard of hearing students from Texas
By Ben Russell
April 4, 2017
Citing financial constraints, the Texas School for the Deaf recently announced that it has canceled its state-funded summer school programs for summer 2017.
“This was a very difficult decision that was based on financial constraints that the school is experiencing as we approach the end of this two-year biennial budget cycle,” Superintendent Claire Burgen said in a statement posted on the school’s website. “We simply do not have sufficient funds to offer summer programs.”
The camp, which has been in operation for 25 years, would have run for two weeks in June at the TSD campus in Austin.
The approximate amount of the budget shortfall, according to the school, is $500,000.
“No one is more saddened by this decision than we are,” Burgen noted.
In an email to NBC DFW, Burgen emphasized that increased enrollment and costs of operating the school, which is a residential facility, have far exceeded state funding levels for years.
“Sadly, the insufficient revenues caught up with us this school year and summer programs was the only remaining non-federally mandated expense that the school has between now and the end of the fiscal year,” Burgen said, indicating that the belief and the intention is to secure enough funding to operate the summer camp in 2018 and beyond.
A Dallas mother is among many parents of deaf children who have voiced their concern about the camp closing.
“You’re going to have these kids who are going to be home and, let’s face it, most of them go home to parents who don’t sign,” said TaNe’Shea Howell of her frustration for the students who will not attend camp this summer. “So they’re going to spend two-and-a-half months in the stress of trying to understand what’s happening in a hearing world.”
Howell’s son, Zaccheus Walker, 21, is a student at the Texas School for the Deaf and has attended the summer camp every year since he was entering the seventh grade.
“By [my son] attending the Texas School for the Deaf not only did it acclimate me and my family into a culture, a deaf culture, as well as learning the language but also now it gave him a sense of confidence, a sense of pride a sense of depth and awareness and a sense of who he is as a person,” Howell said.
A Lake Dallas father has started a GoFundMe account in an attempt to raise the estimated $500,000 needed to keep the camp in operation. As of Monday night the fund had tallied nearly $2,400. https://www.gofundme.com/savesummercamp
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SOURCE #2:
http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/budget-cuts-end-summer-camp-for-the-deaf-in-austin/425123100