Governor Doug Ducey unveiled last week his proposal to provide the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind with the resources it needs to fully staff its Early Childhood and Family Education program. The program provides intervention and education services, like pre-literacy skills development, for infants and toddlers who are deaf or hard of hearing and/or visually impaired from birth to age three.
While the number of families in Arizona participating in the Early Childhood and Family Education (ECFE) program has rapidly grown by over 70% from 2011 to 2017, its funding level has remained the same.
According to Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind (ASDB) Superintendent Annette Reichman, “Inadequate funding has resulted in teachers overburdened with the challenge of needing to provide services to 70%+ more children and families (from 257 families in 2011 to nearly 450 families in 2017). Compounding this problem is the fact that these 17 teachers travel far and wide across the state to provide individualized services directly within families’ homes. Simply put, 17 teachers are required to cover 113,998 square miles between them. The result is that infants and toddlers who are blind, deaf or deaf-blind are receiving sub-optimal levels of service, averaging only one or two visits a month from ECFE teachers. In fact, only three percent (3%) of the infants and toddlers supported by ECFE currently receive optimal intervention service levels of once per week.”
Superintendent Reichman continued, “Without adequate early intervention and support, without developing the pre-literacy skills necessary to read fluently, these children will not successfully transition to preschool, kindergarten and beyond.”