New Plan Puts Scranton Deaf School Under PGH School

A plan to keep the Scranton School for the Deaf's doors open is being finalized by Governor Ed Rendell and legislative leaders, but a Scranton lawmaker says he's not happy with the details. Representative Kevin Murphy says he will keep pressing his case. The plan would essentially make the Scranton School a satellite campus for the Pittsburgh based Western Pennsylvania School for the deaf. Instead of operating as a residential school providing education for grades K through 12, it would be a K through 8-day school. Murphy says scaling back the Scranton School's operations will shift extra costs to school districts, noting deaf students in public schools would each need an individual sign language interpreter. He says, “If we have a lot of these kids that are put back into mainstream public schools or intermediate units, where we have to not only have a signer for each student-that's a must-we're going to have to have a signer. But many of these children are also going to require speech therapists. They're going to require special technical equipment.” Murphy is also concerned Scranton students transferring to the Western Pennsylvania School would have to learn a whole new language system, pointing out Scranton teaches American Sign Language, while the Pittsburgh facility uses a mix of ASL and English.