KIM: Hello, I’m Kim Bianco-Majeri, I’m the State Legislative Affairs Coordinator for the NAD. Hello, too! I’m Tawny Holmes and I’m the Education Policy Counsel for the NAD. This video is to update you on the 2016-2018 NAD priority #4: Campaign to End Language and Cultural Deprivation. That priority has many subparts and was a very complex motion which was assigned to us. It has six subparts so we will take turns updating you on our work and updates on each subpart in the past two years. We know you want to know what has been achieved!
KIM: Now for the subpart 1A: NAD shall support the nationwide initiative of ending language, cultural, and physical/emotional deprivation by providing legislative training to a minimum of 5 states a year. Well that has definitely happened! We have provided 10 legislative trainings the past two years plus providing it at three national conferences. We also have been involved with LEAD-K’s national training group. It has been really effective. Most trainings focused on preparation for LEAD-K work.
TAWNY: 1B- it says NAD shall convene a national coalition that consists of a minimum of three select organizations committed to the inclusion and preservation of ASL as a human right and a language. After doing checking with different organizations, as well as universities, we established a new event last April 4th– titled LASER- what does that stand for? Language Accountability, Support, and Empowerment Roundtable (LASER). Why LASER? Because it can chisel away and completely remove challenges, like we need to do with removing language deprivation for deaf and hard of hearing children ages 0-5! What did that event look like? Over 24 organizations and universities were invited and we met together with some joining virtually. It was such a wonderful event. Each organization shared updates on what type of work they were doing for deaf and hard of hearing children ages 0-5. With these updates, we were able to share more information with each other, and better understanding what some organizations already did, and agreeing to join efforts. After that was done, we took the time to share strategies on how we would work together. We decided to officially become a coalition which met the NAD priority. We will touch base before the NAD conference and continue our work afterwards, too!
TAWNY: #2 asks that NAD disseminate e-booklets with research and testimonies on ASL/English benefits. This priority made us think of Clerc Center which has developed this kind of material with the American Society for Deaf Children, a national parents organization few years ago. It is a very nice brochure that outlined the benefits of signing for deaf and hard of hearing children. Since that already exists, we thought it would be good to disseminate that again and asked Clerc Center if they would be willing- they said yes. They will print a stack of copies and hand out at the 2018 NAD conference for delegates to bring home. We are happy to be getting you a copy and we can all use these brochures going forward.
TAWNY: #3 asked that NAD and LEAD-K work together to develop a collaborative strategy and campaign to make sure deaf community members could alert parents and family members to the importance of providing language acquisition to deaf and hard of hearing children. NAD staff and board members, after much discussion, decided to establish a new campaign, “The Gift of Language”. This campaign involves over 20 collaborating organizations, and focused on producing and disseminating videos, as well as creating a web page. We also made a toolkit to be used by community members to provide ideas on how to support the campaign and family members by providing them information and encouragement on their journey of giving language to their deaf and hard of hearing child. We look forward to the videos being circulated among family organizations and social media pages. We hope those videos will help parents/family members understand the value of providing their deaf and hard of hearing child the gift of language. That campaign, videos, web page, and toolkit are all online right now on the NAD website. We encourage you to review it before the NAD conference.
TAWNY: #4 aims for the NAD to work on recognition of ASL as a language and Deaf people as a protected minority class. Upon review, we realized that was a challenge because the U.S. government does not recognize any language, so we figured out several strategies, including legislation. There’s two main strategies. One was through the federal EHDI bill. EHDI stands for Early Hearing Detection and Intervention, and the bill is responsible for ensuring hospitals do newborn hearing screenings for all babies to figure out their hearing status. The bill also requires federal funds, after screenings, to help states provide services to deaf and hard of hearing babies and their families who have just found out that their baby is deaf. That bill has been a law since 1999 and was up for reauthorization in 2015. The NAD quickly got involved in a back and forth discussion on including ASL and English as the deaf community wanted. Resistance was still there, because again, the U.S. government does not recognize any language. But wow, through that process, including a lot of contact from the deaf community (which we thank you for!), Senators and House Representatives were overwhelmed and realized that the deaf community has a lot of thoughts on the EHDI bill. Senators recognized the importance of adding some items to the bill that would benefit deaf and hard of hearing children. The bill now requires language acquisition assessments to be given to all deaf and hard of hearing children to make sure their language develops appropriately and timely. It also requires every state to provide both visual language and spoken language resources. Wow, that’s a step forward. It’s not perfect, but still a step. Also, it also now requires states to provide deaf mentor support and family to family support to all families. Those are the four new things in the bill, which is now law. Time will tell how it will impact services in your states. We encourage you to keep an eye on that and get involved to remind them to do those things. That’s one big legislative strategy. Now for the 2ndone: one legislator from Washington state, Representative Larsen, has ambitiously decided to move for a federal bill amending the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which now is known as “Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)”. That law focuses on different things like standardized tests and qualifications for teachers and has a lot of rules for public schools. One rule recognizes native language users, but only from other countries who have moved here. The catch with ASL is that users often aren’t from other countries. The representative from Washington felt that it was still important because of CODAs, and deaf and hard of hearing children who need support as English Language Learners. This is a chance to get the federal government to recognize ASL as a language for English Language Learners. As a bonus, ELL approaches are very similar to bilingual methods. That is a unique concept and we thank Rep. Larsen from Washington State for standing up for us and introducing this bill. Since then, it has been quiet. We will keep an eye and we hope that bill will become law. That’s one way to crack the door open. We will continue to explore different strategies to get ASL recognized. It will be an uphill battle. But what’s important- state-level recognition- 46, now 47 states have recognized ASL as a language. If you are curious about that list of states, check out the link with this video to find out which states have recognized ASL as a language. Now with that status and update on recognition of ASL, let’s discuss deaf people as a protected minority class. How would we do that? There is another lawyer here at NAD that focuses on policy work- she is in contact with the Small Business Administration – they have a law that orders them to protect and recognize certain minority or underrepresented groups by providing business opportunities. Again that is a way to crack the door open for recognition of deaf people as a minority class. The SBA’s response was to “contact Congress” to amend the federal law. So, we are now exploring ways to do that in the near future. That is really an important issue and we will continue to work on it.
KIM: #5A and B: NAD will collaborate with the national LEAD-K team on what to do with federal and state legislation. For federal legislation, Tawny has already pursued EHDI act changes, and we will continue to provide support for the Cogswell-Macy act, which is on the federal level. As for the state level, there is a lot of strategies on how to face challenges in different states with different laws. We did a presentation at the LEAD-K summit. We provided training and discussed a lot of strategies there, and distributed information to state representatives who were there. We will do that training again in the future and recognize it as ongoing work. We also are involved with Basecamp which focuses on strategies for each and every state. If your state has one, great. If your state is interested in doing that, let us know. Now for 5B and 6 – which are focused on NLTC training. We successfully had an-all day legislative training track at the NLTC with various presenters related to strategies, to what is currently happening out there, and how to change and/or approach those scenarios. We also provided a toolkit to all of whom showed up. Information via PPTs have already been distributed electronically to all. That was really successful. People learned a lot and if you need more training, you can show up at the next LEAD-K summit or ask us to provide a specific training for your community.
KIM: All that work, does that mean we are finished? No, we will continue this important work.
TAWNY: Yes, that’s right, because language deprivation is serious- impacts many people in our community and many children, too. That topic will continue be in our mission, work and focus as NAD staff and board. We will not never be satisfied until we make sure until EVERY deaf and hard of hearing child have access to language at home, family, community and in life in general.