Nevada’s first school exclusively for deaf and hard-of-hearing students is opening this fall in Las Vegas. The school will offer a bicultural/bilingual environment, with all teachers fluent in American Sign Language.
The school plans to start small, according to the article, and is opening only for kindergarten through 3rd grades. The school founders hope to improve graduation rates for students with hearing impairments.
Late last year, I wrote an article about a school for the deaf in California and a student who is deaf and also has severe additional disabilities. In the course of my reporting, I learned that schools for the deaf nationwide have been struggling with low enrollment. Parents have more options in the public school system, or they may choose to have their children use devices like cochlear implants that they believe make education in specialized schools unnecessary. It’ll be interesting to see if this charter school manages to buck that trend.