Hearing impaired girl banned from using sign language on the bus

[Akasa]

This pisses me off as much as people messing with my blind best friend and denying her guide dog entrance to places. She communicates using sign language, take that away from her and you are denying her her right to communication. It's a violation of ADA, and the parents are rightly sueing the district.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93...1#.UcKsGpwm3bh

[Racket_Man]

WTF?????

how is this a "safety" issue in any universe?????

What do they think she is doing -- Flashing gang signs or something?????

again what fucking safety issue is there in this zero tolerance world we live in????

[Kheldarson]

Wait.

They're banning her from using sign language, after she started suffering from the hearing loss thanks to an incident at the school?

Somebody's just begging for trouble.

[HYHYBT]

Something's missing here. They wouldn't just say "no signing" out of the blue, nor does it make any sense that they would order her to stop because *other* kids were misbehaving. Now, of course, that they would do something that makes no sense is entirely possible, but it sounds very much like there's a significant piece missing here. Not necessarily one that would put the school in the right, but one which at least would make the story make some sense.

I really hate stories like these. As usual, the school can't talk, and almost certainly there will never be a follow-up report filling in the necessary answers.

The thing is, I can think of potential rational reasons to prohibit sign language on a bus, even for people who cannot otherwise communicate. They might not be legally permissible reasons, but they at least make some sort of sense. Yet the school won't, apparently, give anything more specific than saying it's a safety issue.

[SongsOfDragons]

How exactly are they proposing to stop her, physically, from signing?

Handcuff her? Cut her arms off?

Mind boggles.

[Rageaholic]

I cannot think of any reasons why they would forbid her from using sign language (unless we're talking about the one finger salute, but that's different).

[Andara Bledin]

They're punishing her because it's easier to do that than to actually, you know, hold the kids who are actually causing the disturbances on the bus accountable for their actions.

They're effectively not only marginalizing her, but they're sending the message to the kids to teased her about having to sign that what they did is ok and acceptable to them.

Idiots and assholes, the whole lot of them. I hope they get hit with the same sort of judgement that a former coworker got for her kid. When the school failed to do anything to keep him safe while in transit, the judge ordered that until he graduated, the district was required to provide and pay for door to door transport for him.

[Rageaholic]

So instead of punishing the kids who are teasing her, they punish the victim and demand she change? This should surprise me, but considering some of the stuff I've seen and heard about at schools, it really doesn't. Typical teacher bullshit.

[Gravekeeper]

Well, that was fast.

Backpedal faster, assholes~

[Andara Bledin]

"The district's policy and the principal's intention is not to ban signing," said Superintendent Lois Capabianco. "Everyone needs to know that signing is allowed on the bus."

Earlier reports stated that:

The March 30 letter sent home from Danica’s principal said she was “doing sign language after being told it wasn’t allowed on the bus.”

I call bullshit on the new statement. If she wasn't being told not to sign, they wouldn't have told her not to sign, they'd have told her not to do the thing that they claimed was causing problems. But since she wasn't the one doing something that she shouldn't have been doing, they couldn't tell her to stop.

[s_stabeler]

well, I can at least see the idiotic line of logic thye were using. ( she signs- people start teasing her, causing disrupton- if she didn't sign, there would be no disruption- she's causing the disruption- stop her signing)

It's bullshit, of course ( hint- the kids causing the disruption are probably looking for an excuse to cause disruption. Also check if the classmate who shot off the bottle rocket that caused this is one of the ones bullying her (YES, it IS bullying))

[Panacea]

Well, even if there were a legit issue on the part of the school (and I'm not convinced there was), banning sign language is completely indefensible per the ADA, which requires reasonable accommodation. Unless the school system planned to shit the money for a cochlear implant, it's hard to provide reasonable accommodation. It's her primary means of communication now; and you can't keep kids from talking on the bus.

Unless, of course, you're stopping ALL kids from talking on the bus.

Yeah, right.

[Skunkle]

I'm glad they made a stink about this.

I had a fit when one of my bus drivers told some Indian girls to speak English or, "if you want to speak your own language, go back to India." (She was fired) Any time stuff like this pops up, it's important to make sure everybody knows bigotry/discrimination is occurring. Make it a big issue. Force them to have to do something.