Solon Schools Refused To Help Deaf Student, Father Says

SOLON, OH — The father of a 3-year-old girl is accusing the Solon Schools of failing to provide help for his daughter.

Nick Szucs' daughter was born deaf. She uses American Sign Language to communicate. Despite repeated requests for a sign language interpreter to join her teacher in the classroom at Solon Early Learning Center, Szucs said, the Solon Schools have failed to help the girl learn.

"We asked the Solon Schools to provide my daughter with an American Sign Language interpreter. To my surprise, your administrator said no and that the interpreter might be disruptive to the other students' education," Szucs told the Board of Education this week. "They might pay more attention to my daughter's interpreter than the teacher."

The family continued to request an interpreter in the classroom but were repeatedly denied. Szucs said his daughter continued to attend school even as the district refused to provide her an interpreter. This often led to confusion because there were no adults capable of explaining the situation or the lessons to her, he said.

Szucs' family, along with a group of activists, pressured the district until the school system posted a job opening for an ASL interpreter. When no one applied, the Szucs family offered alternatives: busing their daughter to a different district that was equipped to help her, using a qualified substitute, or even placement at the Ohio School for the Deaf in Columbus. All of these requests were denied, he said.

"Solon's plan for my deaf child was to continue to go to school with no interpreter," he told the Board of Education.

Szucs meanwhile was learning ASL himself and he and his daughter now sign educational stories together.

"The epilogue to this story is that my address will no longer be in Solon because we are moving out," he said. "Your discrimination against this diverse learner, your attorneys that you brought to the meetings that you brought to fight back against our requests, our plea for an ASL interpreter, got us to the point where we felt it was better to move out."

"Ivy will grow up in a world with sign language, despite your best efforts to shut her out at the Solon Schools," Szucs said.

The Solon Schools provided the following statement to Patch:

We cannot speak directly about individual students’ needs or educational programs due to student confidentiality. We empathize with the family and their needs.

However, we do want to emphasize that the information as presented during the Board meeting was not complete and was not accurate.

It is important to underscore that the district has not and does not deny students the necessary supports they need to access language, learning and the curriculum regardless of their age.

The Solon Schools fully supports ASL learning for students and ASL interpreters currently serve students in our district.