The Student Body Is Deaf and Diverse. The School’s Leadership Is Neither.
The New York Times
More than 30 years after a groundbreaking protest at Gallaudet University in Washington, questions about leadership at a school for the deaf in Atlanta have been further compounded by race.
Student protests over the hiring of a white hearing superintendent have roiled a school for the deaf that serves mostly Black and Hispanic students in the Atlanta area and have focused attention on whether school leaders should better reflect the identities of their students.
The Atlanta Area School for the Deaf, run by the Georgia Department of Education, is one of two public schools for the deaf in Georgia and serves roughly 180 students from kindergarten to 12th grade, about 80 percent of whom are Black and Hispanic.
Students protested the hiring, accusing the school and the Education Department of racism and disability-based discrimination against the deaf community known as audism. They noted that the school’s top leadership included no people of color or deaf people.
