kids in the class!”
The Detroit Day School for the Deaf was one of the few schools of its kind in the state. Parents came into
Detroit from all over the metro area forming another close community which the deaf children benefitted
from. However, Roberts didn’t just close the school, and move them to a smaller building
Detroit Day School for the Deaf offered direct teaching, "wrap around services" for students with additional
needs other than deafness, and "full communication access" meaning they were able to practice their
language skills and talk to everyone in the entire building. Did Roberts act in the best interest of the child?
No.
Robert’s took another step to break the deaf families up. Children lost friends and were thrust into an
environment where there were fewer young people to communicate with. He also achieved whittling away
at the disabled parent advocate community.
Aaron Foley’s MLive.com article “Parents of Deaf Students Unsure of Future as Detroit School Plans to
Close” on March 12, 2012 reads:
Roberts' plan is to move the 36 DPS students to Schulze, Davison, Bunche and Munger
schools, something parents fear will be detrimental to their education.
"I don't know why they're trying to close our school," said Khadija Anderson, whose 8-yearold daughter is a student there. "I visited the schools where they have mainstreamed deaf
kids. They can't talk to people because they can't sign. The principals can't sign, the teachers
can't sign."
Deaf and hard-of-hearing kids in larger schools often are placed in classrooms where an
interpreter assists a teacher with lessons. But "there's such a shortage of qualified
interpreters," Clark says, and students can still feel isolated.
Robert’s leadership draws a distinct line between the period of organic parent participation and student
advocate retaliation. Roberts did not have parents arrested, like Ken Burnley advocated, instead, he broke up
the organic parent community. He sent the children that had always had one another to communicate with,
to four different schools. Not only did the Emergency Manager seek to break up the disabled student’s
parent community, but also PTA’s all together.
The parent was informed by a member of the Coalition that her special education parent group was
“irrelevant and debunked”, and she specifically she stated that from that point forward, PACSA would be
the only parent advocacy group recognized by DPS. (This did not affect DPN who many report includes
participants who do not even live in Detroit).
52