001I'm Senator Prius and the I represent ld8 here in Tucson uh which is the Foothills and part of Tucson I'm so grateful to be joined today um by some of my colleagues Senator Rosana Gabaldon represents ld21 here part of Tucson as well um and representative Betty viegas who represents ld2 uh here in downtown Tucson as well so I'm so honored and grateful to be here here um we are in ld20 um and so unfortunately my colleague Senator Gonzalez couldn't be here but she really wanted to as well um so I'm also so grateful for the work that the Arizona schools for the deaf and blind have has done to host us today and to the members who are able to join us I'm especially grateful to my 13 seate Senate Democratic Sen Senate Democratic colleagues
002um the entire Senate Democratic caucus who co-sponsored Senate Bill 10001 for the 2024 session this is the very first bill for the 2024 session and it shows the priority that we all face uh and feel for ensuring that the schools are continued before I discuss the bill we are all here for today I want to make it clear that Arizona Democrats believe that every deaf and blind Arizona deserves the care attention resources needed to succeed and asdb plays such a huge role in ensuring this their work is critical to Arizona and their contribution can never be overstated this past session HB 2456 which was the asdb continuation bill was passed out of the house with unanimous support for the full eight-year continuation process community members asdb leadership and subject mattered experts all stood in support
003of this continuation length of eight years it cannot be overstated how meaningful it is to have a bipartisan vote of 60 house members in full agreement on this issue from 2014 to 2022 there have been 122 agency continuations and only seven of them have been for less than four years three of the seven were at the request of the agency itself board or the commission HB 2456 from last year was placed on the Senate government committee on the last week of committee hearings with the intention of adopting the Hoffman amendment that cut the continuation from eight to two years and that's how it ended up going out of committee however the Republican caucus did negotiate amongst themselves and then they cut the continuation to four this outrageous attack on asdb implies that a school run
004by individuals with disabilities for those with disabilities is not capable of operating legally and in the best interests of its students this is a type of protectionism the disabled Community has seen and dealt with before and in the past it was this thinking that allowed the disabled to be stripped of their autonomy and their fundamental rights until finally reasonable individuals finally saw these harmful stereotypes for what they were discrimination disability does not equate to incompetence and Reviving this history of bias and Prejudice is not only discriminatory it's dangerous and it's wrong the Arizona school for the deaf and blind has a board of directors a superintendent and hardworking employees that serve their 2,000 blind visually impaired deaf heart of hearing or deaf blind students from birth to grade 12 it helps to give its students
005the means of being as independent as possible it provides the deaf and blind the means to communicate and learn empowering these in individuals with the educational opportunities necessary to succeed in life and we saw this during the committee hearings last year when the community came out in support of the school because of all of the services that it has provided for them the prejudicial bias displayed by those willing to vote to slash asb's continuation should be protested out loud discrimination like this should never go unchecked and unchallenged we are here to stand with the deaf and blind community and we remain dedicated to the promise we made last session to continue supporting and fighting for asdb to ensure they receive the full continuation and legislative support that they deserve I've proudly sponsored sb1001 the very
006first bill of the session for 2024 which will extend asb's continuation for a full 10 years I strongly encourage anyone who has felt the impacts or whose Community has been affected by this choice to call your representatives and your Senator and tell them to vote Yes on Senate Bill 10001 thank you and now I will turn it over to asdb school superintendent Annette briman thank you Senator San really appreciate your support and the rest of you who are here appreciate your support in the entire Senate Democrat Caucus um I'm Anette Reich I'm the superintendent of the Arizona State schools for the de and blind I really appreciate also all of you coming out to have this discussion about the continuation of asdb ASB has been around since 1912 the education of those who are de
007hard appearing blind low vision and de blind was so critical in the state of Arizona that if you go back and look at the state Hood Charter we're in there there's a paragraph that says there will be a school for the deaf and for the blind in 1912 and that's what we have been doing ever since is providing high quality education and support to students who are deaf and who are blind and de blind not only here on the Tucson campus but also on the Phoenix campus campus the Phoenix Day School for the da also through our Early Learning Program we have early intervention services 0 to three we have teachers that literally all over the state go into the homes work with parents of infants and toddlers who have Vision impairments hearing impairments to
008work with the parents on how to create a language Rich environment onment that's accessible to the child who is Def or hard appearing and to create access to the environment that's tactile and accessible to the child with low vision and or is blind and then we have itinerate teachers all over the state that go into the public schools the charter schools we provide supports to those students right death line and DEP line all over the state we have agreements with more than half of the school districts in the state we actually serve right around 85% of all students who are deaf and or are blind in the state who who have individualized education programs that's over 2,000 students so the continuation of ASB matters not to me as the superintendent not to Paul Saunders the
009principal of the Tucson campus not to the leadership team it matters to the students and the families that we serve that if we were not to be continued as a state agency the impacts on the quality of education and support to those students and those families I don't even want to think about it so I don't um so we truly appreciate the efforts by the Senate Democrat Caucus by other state legislators there are others in the Republican party as well who have come and said we are supportive of ch changing the continuation from 4 years to 10 years so overall our state legislative body is supportive of ASB and the work we do it's just certain individuals who have chosen a different path so to speak so thank you for your support thank you for
010taking this important message and sharing out with others I hope you reach out to your state legislators and talk with them about supporting Senate Bill one01 correct all right thank you I suppose if you have any questions now with be the time to ask all right then thank you very much take for