Education Secretary Pedro A. Rivera recently announced that Pennsylvania will receive a $1.75 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to better serve children and youth who are deaf and blind. Rivera says the funding will “ provide resources to schools, educators, and families in order to help provide equitable instruction to students who are deaf-blind.”
Pennsylvania currently educates 602 deaf and blind students, who are ages birth to 21 years old. These students have varying degrees of hearing and vision loss, and are often complicated by other disabilities.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education’s (PDE) Bureau of Special Education applied for the federal funds to implement the Pennsylvania Deaf-Blind Project – aiming to establish a system of technical assistance and resources to support schools, educators and families of deaf-blind students.
The project is designed to address the complex needs of educators and families through a multi-tiered system of assistance, providing:
* Qualified paraprofessionals and interveners with training geared toward addressing needs to deaf-blind students, and
* Facilitating family participation and engagement strategies to connect them with state and national resources.
The project will also evaluate education and employment outcomes for students who are deaf-blind. For more information: Click www.education.pa.gov.
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