May 20, 2001

The Press-Enterprise Readers' Open Forum
CSDR turmoil

Your headlines read "School for deaf in turmoil." This is not news to some of us parents who for years have tried to get the services and supports that our deaf and hard of hearing children needed and weren't receiving. The teachers at that school have been able to do as they please for years while the administrators turned a "deaf ear" -- no pun intended -- to the parents' complaints. Now that Dr. Rachel Stone is trying to make it possible that the students receive an appropriate education, the "inadequate" teaching staff is complaining and wants everyone to rally around them. I removed my
child from that school because of the lack of education she was receiving.

CSDR has needed someone like Dr. Stone for years and I really hope and pray that the parents and the community will support her and her efforts to do what should have been done at that school long ago and that is to "better educate" the "unqualified" school staff and to set standards so that our children can receive the education that they so richly deserve
.
TERRI BROWN
Moreno Valley

Thank you for the article on CSDR. I was interested to read that Dr. Stone has a hearing daughter.

I am a hearing-impaired mother. My hearing daughter has been a teacher at CSDR for some years. She loved her work, her coworkers -- deaf and hearing -- and her children. Dr. Stone changed all that. My
daughter has become one of the maligned, the enemy, the hearing. I hope Dr. Stone's hearing daughter will never experience such vicious discrimination in her chosen work.

JUDY MILLARD
Riverside

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SOURCE: The Press-Enterprise (published 5/19/2001)