Luciana Grosu, GPJ Romania
BUCHAREST, ROMANIA – Vlad Mateoiu, 12, is a student at the Special School for Deaf Children No. 1 in Bucharest, Romania’s capital. His family lives in Dambovita, another county in Romania, so he stays at the boarding facility connected to the school.
But shaky state finances now threaten Vlad’s education. The boarding facility’s administrative staff will soon be transferred to a new nursery in the city as part of a project funded by the European Union to boost employment opportunities for parents by increasing the number of day care centers. The accommodation center for children who are deaf and hearing impaired, many who come from other counties, will close early this semester and for good if a new staff isn’t hired.
Parents and teachers strongly oppose the measure.
“If the boarding school closes, I will retire my son from Bucharest’s Special School for Deaf Children,” says M. Mateoiu, Vlad’s mother, who declined to give her full name.
Mateoiu says that the school is one of just two educational institutions for children with hearing impairments in the capital. It has drawn students from surrounding counties who need to board because they live too far to commute.
“You see, there is no special school for deaf children in Dambovita county,” she says. “The Bucharest’s school was geographically the closest.”
Mateoiu, a mother of four children, says her family won’t be able to afford to send Vlad to the school if he can’t board. High transportation costs make commuting too expensive.
The indefinite closing of this boarding facility has called attention to the challenges threatening special education throughout Romania. City authorities say that there are alternatives to share resources with other special education programs for the time being, though they admit that permanent solutions remain hazy. The issue has also drawn attention to the disconnect between the public bodies in charge of child welfare and education, as financial pressure keeps both from being able to take more action. Some educators remain optimistic, while others note a crisis in funding for special education.
The Special School for Deaf Children No. 1 opened in 1927, according to official school documents. The school offers special education to 90 children, most with hearing impairments and a small percentage with autism. Most of the children live outside Bucharest and need to live at the boarding facility during the semester in order to attend the school. The 20 students who live in Bucharest also benefit from the boarding school’s daily meal.
As there are only a few schools for children with hearing impairments in several big cities of Romania, many children who are deaf or hearing impaired from other parts of the country must board at the closest school in order to receive an education.
“Our school can’t function without the boarding school,” says Dorina Costantinescu, principal of Bucharest’s Special School for Deaf Children No. 1.
She says this is because most students live outside the capital.
“The majority of our students do not live in Bucharest,” she says. “They come from neighboring counties, such as Calarasi, Ialomita, Olt, Dambovita, Ilfov, Arges, Prahova.”
She says that commuting would be too time-consuming and costly for the students’ families.
“They only go home for holidays,” she says. “Their families will not and can’t take them home every day.”
Iulia Iftene, a teacher at the school, says that children with hearing impairments have the right to special education, free textbooks and boarding school under Romanian law.
“Nevertheless, students’ travel expenses to and from Bucharest are not covered,” she says.
Iftene says that many deaf children from outside Bucharest sometimes can’t return to school after the holidays simply because their families can’t afford the transportation costs.
“Children’[s] families are usually very poor,” she says. “Sometimes, we, the teachers, we go to the country to take the children back to Bucharest. Making sure the children make it back to school should be nevertheless the authorities’ concern.”
For most families, sending children to school is already a financial strain.
“Sending my son to Bucharest was a financial effort,” Mateoiu says. “Nevertheless, I was glad to have this option for him.”
If the boarding school closes, many families may be forced to make more sacrifices to afford the next-best option to educate their children with hearing impairments.
But leaving the school is not the only alternative for children outside the capital, according to the General Directorate of Social Assistance and Child Protection, the institution responsible for the boarding facility. The authority has proposed that students stay at another center in the city following the closure of the boarding facility next month.
Danut Ioan Fleaca, director of the General Directorate of Social Assistance and Child Protection in Bucharest’s Sector 1, says that the boarding facility at Special School No. 8 is ready to host the students from Special School No. 1.
“Our students could be transferred every day at the St. Gavril Center belonging to the Special School No. 8 in order to eat and sleep,” Constantinescu explains of this alternative.
But the accommodation center is a boarding school for mentally disabled children, which Constantinescu and Iftene stress overlooks the difference between children with mental disabilities and children with hearing impairments.
“As you can imagine, we strongly oppose this idea,” Constantinescu says. “The Special School No. 8’s staff were not trained to work with children with hearing impairment. The people working at the Special School No. 8 have no previous experience of taking care of deaf children, nor do they have knowledge of the sign language.”
She says the thought of her students being obliged to spend their afternoons and nights with instructors with whom they would not be able to communicate worries her.
“Also, the children’s study time will be wasted if they will keep being pushed to and fro between two schools the whole day,” Iftene says.
Many parents also reject this alternative.
“My son would have trouble accommodating to a new place and new people,” Mateoiu says of Vlad. “I prefer to retire him rather than allowing him to enter the Special School No. 8’s boarding school.”
Constantinescu, who specializes in psychology, explains that parents are actually afraid for their children, as their impairments could be aggravated by the interaction with mentally disabled children.
“It is not pedagogical, and it is against special education’s rules to mix children with different impairments in the same learning environment,” says Iftene, who also has a psychology background.
Fleaca says that the General Directorate of Social Assistance and Child Protection has already prepared a special space on a separate floor in the center to accommodate the students with hearing impairments. He also stresses that this would only be a temporary solution until the semester ends in June.
Beyond that, the facility’s – and therefore the school’s – futures are unclear.
The present situation is a symptom of a larger rift between two public institutions: the Bucharest School Inspectorate under the Ministry of Education and the General Directorate of Social Assistance and Child Protection under the Sector 1 Local Council.
The Special School for Deaf Children No. 1 and its boarding school are two linked buildings, built one near the other, yet separated by bureaucracy. The many reforms of the educational system have placed the school under the Bucharest School Inspectorate and the boarding facility under the General Directorate of Social Assistance and Child Protection. The inspectorate was responsible for both facilities until 2000, when the directorate took over the boarding facility.
The school’s staff first heard rumors about the boarding center’s possible closure in 2010. But Constantinescu says she couldn’t take official action until the news was confirmed in November 2011, when the General Directorate of Social Assistance and Child Protection announced its intentions to close the boarding facility in order to transfer the staff to a new nursery that will be built in the sector.
“We still don’t understand why would a staff trained to care for primary and secondary school disabled children make the best choice for a nursery dedicated to young children with no special needs,” says Constantinescu, puzzled.
She says she disapproves of this plan to move staff specifically trained in special education.
“DGASPC Sector 1 should prioritize vulnerable children,” she says, referring to the General Directorate of Social Assistance and Child Protection. “That’s what they exist for!”
Fleaca says that the directorate is only responsible for the children from the sector, not those from other counties. Moreover, the school will continue to exist, though it is not clear yet who will pay to hire new employees for the boarding facility to reopen for future semesters.
“DGASPC Sector 1 could no longer pay for the center’s maintenance costs,” says Ecaterina Strochi, the boarding facility’s director.
The General Directorate of Social Assistance and Child Protection issued an official document in January 2012 in response to the school’s complaint about the decision to close the boarding facility. It cited “budgetary constraints” and “the difficulties of recruiting new staff” as the obstacles to maintaining the center open.
Fleaca says that neither the General Directorate of Social Assistance and Child Protection nor the Bucharest School Inspectorate has the funds to hire new staff. He says the directorate has repeatedly tried to discuss the matter with the Bucharest School Inspectorate, which is supposed to reassume care of the boarding facility going forward, but with little progress.
Strochi says she is sick and tired of the Bucharest School Inspectorate’s fickleness.
“A few years ago, they wanted the boarding school back under their supervision, as it was before 2000,” she says. “Now that DGASPC Sector 1 really wants to offer it back, they pretend they have no money left.”
Marian Banu, press representative for the Bucharest School Inspectorate, says that Cristian Alexandrescu, general director, confirmed that the inspectorate has agreed to reassume control of the boarding facility. The inspectorate is looking for a solution to hire new staff to operate it.
But the government has frozen hiring in the public sector for 2012. Restrictions on staff spending mean that only one in seven vacancies will be filled.
Strochi says she is happy to have a job in the nursery, as her primary specialty is working with young children.
“Bucharest-based students could go to the other special school for children with hearing impairment, the Special School No. 2 in Sector 6 of the capital,” she says. “And I think it’s OK for children who don’t live in Bucharest to move to other schools across the country.”
Moreover, she says that Special School for Deaf Children No. 1 could be closed as well.
“There are any way too little children left,” she says.
Constantinescu acknowledges the decrease in enrollment over the years, but she says this is because of a lack of funding, not a decrease in need. The closing of the boarding school would worsen the crisis in special education that is larger than just her school’s woes.
“Actually, there are less funds for special education, so more and more deaf children are recommended to try integrate into normal schools,” she says.
Integrating disabled children in the mass education system is both a good and a bad thing, she says. But students should have the right to the special care they need and are legally entitled to.
The boarding school was initially scheduled to be closed on April 15, 2012. But the future nursery’s furniture is not yet ready, so the boarding school’s staff will not leave the center until May.
