From: Kelly Pierce 
Subject: one woman's war
  her grave.
 
    Peterson told the Legislature: "If only 4 percent of sighted children 
could
  read print, no one would dispute the severity of the problem." Opponents of
  the Braille Bill stumbled and tripped on their way up to the podium to
  testify. Siemers had broken his glasses and couldn't read his speech. 
Those
  who were in favor of the bill walked to the podium perfectly with their
  canes, and they had their notes in Braille--nothing could stop them," says
  Darling.
 
    Few legislators missed the little irony that had been played out before
  them. The bill passed, but the bill's opponents lobbied DPI and undercut 
t.
  Only new teachers would have to pass the test. Existing teachers could take 
a
  Braille refresher course or attend a teachers' convention instead. There 
as
  one victory. Now, when a legally blind child is not taught Braille in
  Wisconsin, the school district must put the reason in writing.
 
    But Peterson had made enemies. Says Siemers, who took early retirement 
last
  year: "Bonnie Peterson and her Federation members are like dogs who bit the
  hands that feed them, the professionals who try to help them." Ironically, 
it
  was that attitude--"How dare you question me when I'm here to help 
you"--that
  Peterson had set out to eradicate.
 
                       RETURN TO THE SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND
 
 
    Even before the Braille Bill took effect in 1995, Peterson was engaged on
  another battlefront. In the all of 1994, Wisconsin's school for the blind,
  WSVH, faced the budget cuts affecting all of state government, but the
  school's staff was painting a picture of suffering blind children. In 
ruth,
  the school would only have to close one of its under-utilized cafeterias 
nd
  put younger children in the same half-used educational building with other
  students.
 
    The school had come under fire before; the preceding June, the 
egislative
  Audit Bureau pointed out that WSVH maintained a staff/student ratio of 
almost
  one to three--even when students were sleeping. The school was operating at
  less than 40 percent capacity, with a staff of 110 to care for just 80
  students. (Enrollment is now 75.)
 
    While picketers prepared signs saying the governor didn't care about poor
  blind kids, Peterson and the NFB cut through their sad refrain. "What does
  WSVH offer that's worth paying 10 times more per student than school
  districts spend?" Peterson asked. "You could hire a private tutor for each 
of
  these kids for $68,200."
 
    The Federation didn't want the school to close--parents needed options,
  Peterson said--but it had to operate more effectively. Too many of its
  graduates end up unemployed or underemployed and "socialized for 
dependency,"
  she said, describing WSVH graduates as "fodder for government-supported
  workshops."
 
    William S. Koehler, the school's superintendent, accused Peterson of 
trying
  to destroy WSVH, complaining, "She takes direct shots at the school without
  ever being here." Peterson admits she has not been at the school since
  Koehler took office in 1992. "I don't need to, I have all kinds of parents
  and children who have been there. They're my eyes and ears." Peterson 
elies
  on people like the mother of a 7-year-old boy, left with 20/2200 vision 
after
  surgery to remove a tumor, who withdrew her son because WSVH insisted he 
se
  a magnifier instead of teaching him Braille.
 
    Koehler says the school did an "extensive" telephone survey in 1993 that
  proves its graduates are successful, but when Milwaukee Magazine asked for 

  copy, repeatedly, from Koehler, his assistant and even from DPI, it was
  promised but never forthcoming. "If WSVH is doing such a great job making
  kids independent, why does the state pay tens of thousands of dollars to 
send
  so many of its graduates to programs to help them adjust to their 
blindness?"
  Peterson asks.
 
    Milwaukee Magazine's won investigation included extensive interviews with
  parents and students and a day-long visit to WSVH, which revealed some
  students learning Braille but more struggling to read, some with giant
  magnifiers. Koehler offered a score of excuses why kids can't or don't want
  to learn Braille or use a cane, but no ideas on how to get students 
motivated
  and excited about learning.
 
    He stressed that the school's goal was producing independent graduates, 
but
  subtle signs gave a different message. In classroom after classroom, 
students
  waited to be helped. In the first- to third-grade classroom, for example,
  three staff members supervised just seven students who were painting a 
rubber
  fish and pressing it onto a T-shirt to make an impression. Yet the students
  spent most of their time waiting to be helped, teacher's hand over their
  hand, instead of learning to do the project themselves.
 
    Koehler supplied the names of two graduates who, he said, would 
demonstrate
  just how well WSVH prepares its students. One was Steve Hessen, the 
chool's
  1996 valedictorian. But Hessen was hardly the model of an independent blind
  person. He had just dropped out of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
  because he couldn't manage the financial aide application process. Without
  the money, Hessen, whose vision is 20/1500, could not hire the tutor he
  needed no rent equipment like a talking Braille calculator. He had fallen
  hopelessly behind. Worse yet, the scholarship he'd won required him to 
enroll
  last fall or it would be canceled. Hessen had asked a WSVH counselor to 
argue
  that it should carry over to next year.
 
    The school's previous valedictorian was Shannon Gates, now a student at
  Northcentral Technical College in Wausau. Gates, who was born without optic
  nerves in her eyes, reads Braille at 250 words per minute, but she dropped
  courses this year because she couldn't get Braille texts.
 
    State taxpayers pay Northcentral's Visually Impaired Program (VIP) to 
elp
  students like Gates. The program supplied her with audio tapes of textbooks
  and hired tutors, but "I can't get a Braille text. It's like asking a print
  reader not to use print," she says. "I threw a fit the first year, but the
  VIP says, 'It's easier to use tapes or large print.' Maybe it's easier for
  them. . . but if I had Braille texts, I wouldn't need tutors. I could take 

  full class load."
 
    Gates was at WSVH for 10 years, under three different administrators. In
  the end, she says, "There were so many rules, you had to do what you were
  told and not ask questions. I wasn't even allowed to cross the street 
lone.
  . . . The school doesn't encourage independence, that's for sure . . . they
  were dragging me down."
 
    Twenty-year-old Brian Brown attended WSVH in 1991 and 1992, then returned
  to his local school and now runs his own business. "They say they strive to
  make the students independent, but they don't allow you to do anything 
alone.
  The bathroom stalls don't even have doors on them in the education 
uilding.
  The house parent enters your room without knocking . . . they walk right in
  to verify you're in the shower. . . .
 
    "There are two castes at WSVH," he says, "kids who still want to be
  somebody and have a life and those who've given up and would rather be told
  what to do. I was lucky. I left before that happened to me."
 
    Milwaukee Magazine talked to 10 WSVH alums. All gave anecdotes
  substantiating Peterson's claim that students are "conditioned to be even
  more dependent."
 
    Observes Peterson: "Like most of these professionals for the blind, they
  run a program into the ground, then move on. In Koehler's case, he's 
lready
  applied for the position of superintendent of the New Mexico School for the
  Blind, but he didn't get it."
 
                             BRAD DUNSE'S LIBERATION
 
 
    Peterson had a long history of dissatisfaction with the state's two post-
  high school vocational training programs for the blind: the Visually 
Impaired
  Programs (VIP) at North-central and Milwaukee Area Technical College 
MATC).
  She prompted a state audit of the Milwaukee program by leading picketers
  protesting its "low standards" and curriculum focused "on housekeeping and
  grooming skills" instead of on the skills needed to live independently, 
"like
  Braille and independent travel." (The state is currently looking for
  proposals to run that program.)
 
    In 1990, she had fought to get DVR to send a blind man named Bob Raisbeck
  to a program started by the Federation in Minneapolis called Blindness
  Learning in New Dimensions (BLIND Inc.). Newspapers there described BLIND
  Inc.--one of only three programs of its type in the country--as the 
Harvard
  of rehabilitation" and a "boot camp" where the blind learned "to believe in
  themselves and to be truly independent."
 
    Taxpayers had already sent Raisbeck to the VIP at Northcentral three 
imes
  and to MATC once, but he still had no job skills. Peterson lobbied
  legislators. The Madison Capitol Times reported on Raisbeck's story, and
  still DVR refused. Eventually, Raisbeck moved to Minnesota and that state
  sent him to BLIND Inc. He found a job and never returned.
 
    All of this was history when Peterson received a phone call in early 1995
  from Brad Dunse, who had expected to inherit his father's roofing business
  until rhetinitus pigmentosa left him legally blind. DVR helped Dunse set up 
a
  home business, but for five years, he sat in his Green Bay home, terrified 
of
  using the power woodworking equipment DVR had given him.
 
    Finally, in 1994, DVR sent Dunse to a program to help him "adjust" to his
  blindness. he moved into a motel in Wausau where his meals were prepared 
or
  him and he was bused to Northcentral's VIP. "It was like an expo where 
ou'd
  just wander around. But I didn't know what I needed. I've never been blind
  before," he says.
 
    Dunse sat in on a Braille class, but at the end of two weeks, he didn't
  even know what a slate and stylus were; the teacher in the computer class 
was
  too busy to answer his questions. Says Dunse: "He kidded one man about 
eing
  there as much as he was. . . . The VIP teaches you just enough to get by, 
but
  then this guy's vision would get worse and he'd have to come back. There 
were
  a lot of people like that."
 
    Dunse didn't want to spend the rest of his life as a repeat customer,
  dependent on the state. He called the Federation, asking, "Isn't there
  something better?" Peterson told him about BLIND Inc. Dunse and his wife,
  Brenda, went for a visit. He was impressed, he says, by the confidence of 
the
  blind travel instructor whose students were so well trained they could be
  left blindfolded (so they could not rely on any residual vision) five miles
  from the school and get back on their own.
 
    "At the VIP, they do stuff for you; at BLIND Inc., you do things for
  yourself," Dunse told a supervisor, but DVR was not convinced. Peterson
  helped Dunse petition for a special hearing. Remembers Peterson: "The DVR
  supervisor said, 'I can't understand why anyone would want to go to a 
chool
  run by the blind. That's like the mentally retarded asking the mentally
  retarded for help.' "
 
    The tone of the meeting was "very condescending," adds Dunse. "It was me
  telling them why I wanted to go, and they were telling me all the reasons I
  didn't."
 
    With his petition rejected, Peterson told Dunse he had only one option.
  Dunse kissed his wife and two young sons goodbye, gave up his Wisconsin
  residency and moved to Minneapolis for five months of training. When he
  graduated from BLIND Inc., he had higher aspirations than a home 
oodworking
  business that would never get him off of Social Security Disability Income.
  He continued his education and took over a vending machine business.
 
    The cost of BLIND Inc. is "a little more than the VIP--a few hundred
  dollars," says Joe Mileczarek, who runs Northcentral's VIP program. Tuition
  at BLIND Inc. runs $2,495 per month, plus $32.50 per day for housing in an
  apartment where students prepare their own meals, then travel to classes on
  their own. For Northcentral's program, hotel, prepared meals and
  transportation costs another $50 per day. DVR will spend an average $2,333 
in
  tuition per student sent to Northcentral this year, though many of those
  students will stay just one day. "A lot of people don't want to be away 
rom
  their families that long," says Mileczarek, noting that DVR recently signed 
a
  $280,000 contract to send up to 120 more clients to Northcentral.
 
    Peterson says Wisconsin taxpayers aren't getting their money's worth. But
  Ole Brackey, supervisor of the Milwaukee District DVR office insists, "You
  can't measure the effectiveness of VIP programs. There are so many 
variables,
  so much is going on in these people's lives." Yet Brackey insists that 
out-
  of-state programs [like BLIND Inc.] have to prove they work."
 
    In 1993, Peterson bet John Conway, director of DVR's Bureau of Sensory
  Disabilities, $100 that BLIND Inc. provided better training than either 
ATC
  or NTC's adjustment-to-blindness programs. Using a study of the Wisconsin
  programs prepared by the DVR's own Office for the Blind and another 
conducted
  by the state of Minnesota, Peterson showed that 86 percent of Blind Inc.'s
  graduates said they could "do what sighted people do." None of the MATC's
  grads answered the same question affirmatively and only three of those from
  Northcentral did. Without that kind of confidence, Peterson argues, blind
  individuals can't succeed.
 
    Still, Conway says, it's more important that 35 percent of Northcentral's
  VIP grads were employed; only 14 percent of those from BLIND Inc. (and 
ATC)
  were. Peterson argues that many of those jobs are in sheltered workshops. 
n
  contrast, graduates of the 10-year-old BLIND Inc. are more than twice as
  likely to pursue higher education than VIP graduates, she argues.
 
    Peterson fired off a searing letter when Conway refused to see her point
  and welched on the bet. It said, "Give your past record for honesty, I have
  always believed you would renege . . . In the unlikely event that you have
  acquired a conscience . . . I shall give you my terms of payment. I do not
  accept food stamps. . . ." It might have worked in grade school, but this
  time, getting someone mad did not produce the desired result. Conway 
gnored
  Peterson's offer to have an impartial investigator analyze the reports on 
the
  three programs and dropped the matter.
 
    Peterson says Northcentral's VIP doesn't get scrutinized because "the
  people advising the state on how it should allocate funds to help the blind
  are the main beneficiaries of that spending." Mileczarek is chairman of the
  Governor's Committee for People With Disabilities. Asked whether that is a
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