Nebraska lawmakers heard Wednesday that students who are deaf and hard of hearing are still missing needed services nearly 30 years after the Nebraska School for the Deaf closed. At a hearing at the Nebraska Capitol, parents and advocates urged a closer look at how Nebraska schools are handling communication access, interpreters and educational support.
State Sen. Danielle Conrad introduced the interim study after a parent reached out with concerns about getting a child the education he needed. Conrad said she wants lawmakers to identify what is happening in Nebraska schools and what the best practices should be for equal access to education for students who are deaf and hard of hearing.
The testimony centered on one plain problem: Nebraska has no dedicated school for these students, and the regional programs that replaced the Nebraska School for the Deaf have not solved the gap. Linsay Darnall Jr. said the state moved to regional programs after the school closed in 1998, but said the services are still not enough.
Adam Wiblishouser gave the hearing a family face. He said his family lives in the Elkhorn school district and that his son is now a fourth grader at the Iowa School for the Deaf. Wiblishouser said Elkhorn first sent his son to Ralston for kindergarten, then pushed back after learning about the Iowa school because the district would have to cover some of the costs if his son enrolled there.
He said the problem is bigger than his own case. Wiblishouser said districts use PWNs and IEPs to deny services they do not want to pay for, or that are not convenient for them. He said he has seen it repeatedly and has heard the same story from other parents.
Interpreter shortages came up as another reason families are struggling to secure services. Elizabeth Eynon-Kokrda said Nebraska does not have enough education sign language interpreters to meet school needs, and that schools are competing for a small pool of interpreters while offering low compensation. She also said school interpreters are not subject to the same licensing requirements as independent interpreters, which makes the system even harder to navigate.
That shortage, she said, does not always hold up under scrutiny. Eynon-Kokrda said that in one case, a school official said an interpreter in ASL could not be found, but the family located five independent interpreters willing to contract with the district. Her list of fixes included a statewide roster for interpreter availability, better compensation, recognition for educational interpreters as professional technical staff and a requirement that schools document their efforts to hire qualified interpreters.
For families like Wiblishouser’s, the hearing underscored how the gap has persisted long after the old state school disappeared. Conrad’s study gives lawmakers a way to examine the breakdown, but the unanswered question is still the same one that brought parents to the Capitol: how many Nebraska children are going without the services they need right now, and what will the state do that is different from what has not worked before?
