Saturday, July 5, 2008

Part 3: USDB Admission Process


USDB Admission Process: Who should USDB serve?

During the process of revising the Utah Code regulating USDB, the Writing Committee (including Utah State Office of Education) originally planned to amend the California Admission Process to our proposal. However during one of the meetings of the Legislative Task Force, a concern was discussed about who could be admitted to USDB.

Do we want primarily deaf and blind and deaf-blind students to attend USDB? Or do we want USDB to mainly serve students with multi-disabilities? Right now, the primarily deaf/blind/deaf-blind students are often mainstreamed while the multi-disabled students are served at USDB campuses or buildings. Because of old eligibility requirements, USDB has limit resource/service for deaf & hard of hearing students without additional disabilities. CA’s Admission law can provide schooling for all deaf children through primarily deaf education.

We tried to incorporate the language that is found in the California Code for CSD and CSB to focus USDB service towards students who were primarily deaf and blind, but due to disagreements in the USDB Legislative Task Force, we reached a compromise regarding the language in our proposal. Instead of putting our admission goals into law, the compromised proposal states that USDB “may” develop policies and guidelines regarding admission requirements; this is not as strong as the California code. See the proposed Admission section below:

Section 7 USDB Entrance Policies and Procedures

(1) Under the direction of the Board, the USDB Superintendent, in conjunction with the Utah School for the Deaf and the Utah School for the Blind, may establish policies and procedures that IEP and Section 504 teams are to consider in making placement recommendations at USDB. http://www.uad.org/DeafEd/utah_code/usdblegrec.pdf


Information on Section 7 (above) and the Admission Process for the California School for the Deaf and the California School for the Blind can be found in the UAD website for those of you who want to read the law for yourself. Refer to the UAD website link www.UAD.org and enter Utah Code, you will find California Code. http://www.uad.org/DeafEd/utah_code/Calif%20admission.pdf


We ask for your support for incorporating the California Code regarding admission into our proposed revision of the Utah Code for USDB and replacing “USDB Entrance Policies and Procedures” with “Admission law.” It will define better who USDB is and help us go back to what USDB used to be more than 30 years ago.

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