More than 100 Oregon students with both vision and hearing impairments are anticipating a decline in services in schools, as the federal government has suddenly cut a five-year grant for the Oregon DeafBlind Project.
The program serves deafblind Oregonians from birth up until the age of 21 at no cost to families or school districts. The goal of the program is to provide training to local teachers and school staff to support students with deafblindness.
Lisa McConachie is the director of the project. She joins us to share more on what these cuts will mean for students.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. More than 100 Oregon students with both vision and hearing challenges are anticipating a decline in services in schools, as the federal government has suddenly cut a five-year grant for the Oregon DeafBlind Project. The program provides training to local teachers and school staff to support students with deafblindness. Lisa McConachie is the director of the project. She joins us now. It’s great to have you on the show.
Lisa McConachie: Thank you for having me.
Miller: What is the Oregon DeafBlind Project?
McConachie: So the Oregon DeafBlind Project has been in Oregon for several years, over decades. It’s a project funded by the Office of Special Education Programs from the federal government to address a very low-incidence disability. So deafblindness is the rarest form of a disability in the United States that we work with under IDEA. So for example, in Oregon, we have 114 students and families impacted by deafblindness. So the Oregon DeafBlind Project is able to gather expertise that school districts and families and children, when they are young adults, can come to, that they know that the people in the project have a background and expertise in deafblindness. It’s extremely rare to have that expertise without the support of the DeafBlind Project.
Miller: Can you give us a sense for the kinds of services that you provide specialized training for?
McConachie: So we provide what’s called technical assistance. I’ll talk about school districts first. For example, school districts receive services from teachers of the visually impaired, from teachers of the deaf-hard of hearing, but it’s that combined disability. It’s that combined difference and loss of those sensory impairments – those two senses combined, creates its own unique set of challenges and a set of research-based and evidence-based strategies that are needed to support students who are deafblind.
We work with evaluation and eligibility to determine if a student is eligible for those services. Sometimes we have students who, for example, experience a sudden loss of their vision, so they’re born deaf and then as they age, they suddenly realize that they’re also blind. So their vision is deteriorating. So we can come in and help those teachers and educate and support those students in the classroom.
Miller: So somebody who gets this training would be more helpful to people who are deafblind than say two people who are trained solely on people who are dealing specifically with hearing or visual issues?
McConachie: We’re training those two together. So those two professionals alone don’t have the expertise. We come in and help train them together. So together as a team, they can collaborate. It really is a team approach when you’re working with students who are deafblind.
Miller: What happens if students don’t get these specialized services?
McConachie: For example, the DeafBlind Project entering our third year, we had plans in Southern Oregon with two students entering kindergarten – they are both deafblind – to train their classified staff and their whole educational team as a group around strategies to support those students as they enter their public school kindergarten classroom. Those trainings are really individualized. That’s what’s so unique about deafblindness is that it is highly individualized. Some of the skills and strategies that we work with are orientation, mobility, communication, sometimes behavior. Sometimes we have kids that are maybe exhibiting a new behavior and it’s not because it’s intentional, it’s because of the impact of their deafblindness.
You can imagine there’s a frustration level for children as they enter a new environment, how to familiarize a student with that environment, and again, how to create those relationships and support in their local school community and their peers. So kids are kids, they want to develop relationships with their peers. The technical assistance that we provide creates that environment so they can be successful.
Miller: I want to turn to the administration’s letter. They singled out some language from your grant application. It had this language from your grant: “Columbia Regional Inclusive Services and Portland Public Schools are committed to working to improve strategies, interventions, processes to address inequities, racism, bias and system marginalization of culturally, linguistically or disability groups. Oregon DeafBlind Project strategic framework will have a foundation of equity grounded in established strategic plans from PPS and CRIS.”
The administration’s letter then went on to take issue with those strategic plans. We can talk about that language in a bit. But just to understand this first, what’s the relationship between your project and the Portland Public School District, and this other nonprofit, the Columbia Regional Inclusive Services?
McConachie: So for both Columbia Regional Inclusive Services and the Oregon DeafBlind Project, Portland Public Schools is the fiscal agent. So when public grants come out, requests for applications, it’s either a school district or a university that’s allowed to apply for those grants or an ESD in Oregon,
Miller: Education services district?
McConachie: Right, right. So in this instance, Portland Public Schools, as the fiscal agent, supported the application for the Oregon DeafBlind Project. I should say around 35 of the 114 students are in this Portland metro area. The vast majority of them are out in rural parts of our state. So the DeafBlind Project is unique in that we’re based out of Portland Public Schools, but we cover the entire state.
The other thing that I would note is we are new to this grant – we applied in 2023. The grant, historically, was at Western Oregon University. In 2023, they decided not to apply and so we applied in their place. We received the grant. At the time, the Biden administration in the grant application required language to address inequities and equity. So that was a requirement to get the grant. And then at this point, we didn’t receive any information from the administration in terms of updating our language or explanation about our language.
I would also say that I absolutely support equity and that is our goal, because if you are a child who’s deafblind, your chances of being excluded from your school, your chances of not being successful are very high. And disability knows no race, socioeconomic, right? It impacts everybody. So we serve whoever comes through our door to help them be successful in their own communities.
Miller: Well, it is fascinating – maybe not surprising but still notable – as you outlined, that the previous administration, the Biden administration said, if you want this money, tell us your equity plan. And the Trump administration says, because you said that this is your equity plan, we’re going to rescind this money.
McConachie: Right.
Miller: So the same exact language was first required and then the reason for the denial. The Trump administration took issue with some particular language from Portland Public Schools that you referenced in the appendix of your grant application. I want to read it for our audience and then get your take on it. Again, this is not your organization, but it is something that you referenced from the district.
“As a community,” PPS wrote, “We have an urgency to intentionally disrupt systems of oppression because they are closely tied to disparities of access and educational outcomes, especially among our Black and Native American students. We have to attack racism and long-standing structural inequities in our system. We have to remove barriers to teaching and learning. We have to create a sense of belonging for everyone.”
To the best of my understanding, reading the letter that the administration sent to you and saying this is why we’re canceling your grant, this language that was central to their reasoning. I’m curious just to get a direct answer, do you support this PPS objective? Do you share it?
McConachie: So the Oregon DeafBlind Project really has nothing to do with the Portland Public Schools’ Black Student Center for Excellence. Now, as a general Portland Public Schools employee, I absolutely support our equity and the work that we’re doing to address inequities of access and marginalization of populations. But as I said, the Oregon DeafBlind Project serves the entire state. We don’t just serve Portland Public Schools. In fact, there are very few students that are actually in Portland Public Schools and many of those students are impacted by deafblindness, by racial inequities and by all of those things that are the marginalization that happens.
So I think what I would also say is that students in special education are included in that group. They are often marginalized in their school systems. They are often excluded in their home schools and in their home classroom. They often don’t get the opportunity to access the general education content and curriculum. So, absolutely, we are in alignment with PPS and the Oregon DeafBlind Project to address those inequities, and that includes for students who are deafblind.
The other thing I would mention is that every year you have to submit an annual progress report regarding the grant. And that language … none of the data that we’re collecting, in terms of the technical assistance, in terms of the supports for teams, in terms of the large trainings that we’re doing, have anything to do with the equity stances and those structures in terms of Black racism, all of those things. Those are very focused on specific information for kids who are deafblind. So for example, we had the Helen Keller International come out and do a training for Haptics, which is a communication system for communicating with children who are deafblind.
Miller: Based on touch?
McConachie: Based on touch, right. Different than Protactile, but it’s also a communication means that we can help support right away kids, students, their teachers and their families in their schools and in their lives.
Miller: What percentage of your overall budget was supposed to come from that grant?
McConachie: So this was a five-year grant. The total of the five years was around $650,000. Each year, we were anticipating $133,000. So it’s a very small amount of money, but it also had a very big impact on that small number of kids and families in our state.
For example, I want to mention our families. So in October, we had a family weekend planned, a parent retreat. And that has historically been part of the projects. We bring families together to learn from each other. Families feel very isolated. You have a baby or a toddler who’s deafblind, you’ve never met anybody in your neighborhood who’s a parent of a child who’s deafblind. You rely on those other parents to learn from, to help support you through this process. And we had to cancel that weekend for those families. It’s devastating for them. We had families attending who had babies, 20-month-olds all the way up to families who had a 20-year-old. And they are missing out on the opportunity to learn from each other and to support each other.
Miller: What have you heard from those families, and maybe their older kids who you’ve supported over the years, about this recent denial?
McConachie: That it’s devastating, that is absolutely devastating. Some of the words are like, what more can they take away from us? Children who are deafblind, on average, have significant and complex needs. They have significant medical needs. Families need somebody that they can go to that can give them the correct information, that can help them communicate to their educational teams, that can help them communicate to their medical teams. So all of those supports now are going to be gone.
Miller: All of those supports. So is this the end of the program or a reduction of this program to some degree?
McConachie: This is the end of the program. This is the end of the program. I would also mention that they stopped the funding for four states: the state of Washington, state of Oregon, Wisconsin and the New England Consortium, which was multiple states.
Miller: And all, as I understand it, for similar reasons, for seeing some version of diversity, equity and inclusion language in those states’ stated goals or priorities?
McConachie: For our 2023 applications.
Miller: My understanding is that you had a chance to appeal and have appealed. What arguments did you make?
McConachie: Again, talking about, clarifying what we mean by diversity, equity and inclusion from the project’s perspective, asking for an opportunity. In fact, we did revise our narrative and clarified some of the language in the grant narrative.
Miller: Can you do that in a way … You were also saying earlier, you have this very particular situation where you’re different from Portland Public Schools, but as you were saying, you actually do agree broadly with the DI goals and stance that PPS has put forward. So how much can you say to get the money you want from the feds, while being true to the way you see the world right now? [Laughter] You have 45 seconds to answer that big question.
McConachie: Because again, diversity, equity inclusion includes kids who are deafblind. And kids who are deafblind are Black and Brown, and from all sorts of socioeconomic environments. We serve all those kids, so they all deserve to have the services that they need. And they were promised this five-year grant, and we weren’t given an opportunity to clarify just that question.
Miller: Lisa McConachie, thanks very much. Lisa McConachie is the director of the Oregon DeafBlind Project, which recently got word that its five-year federal grant has been canceled after only two years.
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