Educational Services for Children Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired (2000)

Under state and federal law, children with disabilities including blindness and visual impairment are entitled to special education services from birth through high school graduation or up to age 21. Local school districts have primary responsibility for providing special education to children with disabilities. In Connecticut, a state agency, the Board of Education and Services for the Blind (BESB), also has a major role in identifying children who are visually impaired (TVIs) and providing technical assistance, consultation, financial subsidies, and, in some cases, direct instructional services for such children. BESB provides free teachers of the visually impaired to some school districts and between about $6.5 million and $7.5 million a year in special education aid for children with vision-related disabilities.

During 2000, the program review committee conducted a study of the state's system for providing educational services to children who are blind or visually impaired. The review resulted in the following major findings:

• Leadership for vision education in the state is lacking and roles are confused.
• Strong leadership is impeded by unclear statutes and the lack of a mechanism to coordinate vision education efforts throughout the state.
• The distribution of BESB teachers is unfair; free personnel cannot be supplied to every district and current assignments are based on historic practice rather than need.
• The agency cannot meet current demand for teaching services; it has few resources and little funding flexibility to support its statewide technical assistance, training, and advocacy functions
• A substantial portion of the vision education aid provided to school districts through BESB - 80 percent during the 1999-2000 school year - appears to subsidize special education expenses unrelated to the students' blindness or visual impairment.

The program review committee recommended a series of statutory and administrative changes aimed at creating the supportive structure and effective central resource Connecticut needs to provide quality educational services to children who are blind or visually impaired. Specifically, committee recommendations were intended to: make access to BESB teaching services fair to all districts; permit expansion of centralized services that benefit all children with vision-related disabilities; simplify the BESB funding process; and redirect state vision education funding toward the special services children require because of blindness or visual impairment.

Two bills based on the program review study were introduced in the 2001 regular session of the General Assembly. The provisions of one (HB 6664) clarified the education role of the Board of Education and Services for the Blind, strengthened leadership for vision education, and promoted collaboration between BESB and the state Department of Education (SDE) by: 1) articulating BESB's education mission in statute; 2) removing the misleading term "board of education" from the agency's name; and 3) adding a representative from the education department as an ex officio member of the agency's advisory board. It also expanded the mission and membership of the Braille Literacy Advisory Council to encompass the full array of education services available to children with vision-related disabilities.

The second bill (HB 6663) authorized BESB to operate like a regional education service center and provide its teachers of the visually impaired to local districts on a fee-for-service basis in order to address inequities and inefficiencies in the way specialized teacher services are currently supplied throughout the state. It also replaced BESB's cumbersome and ineffective funding mechanism with a new, more flexible vision education grant program.

Both bills passed the House unanimously but failed to be acted upon in the Senate before the end of the session. They were reintroduced for consideration during the 2002 regular session. In addition, the Board of Education and Services for the Blind and the State Department of Education took a number of corrective actions during 2001 to address deficiencies cited in the committee report. Compliance efforts of both agencies are summarized in the following table.