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Education and Safety Issues at the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind
September 2003

FOLLOW-UP (PDF)     REPORT (PDF)     SUMMARY (PDF)

Members of the General Assembly requested that we conduct an audit of the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind (SCSDB). The school, located in Spartanburg, S.C., provides instruction and a residential program to deaf, blind, and multi-handicapped children. Because the audit requesters were primarily concerned with students’ educational outcomes and issues of student safety, we established our audit objectives in those areas. Our findings include the following.

  • We conducted a statistical sample of 105 student individualized education programs (IEPs). We found no significant areas of non-compliance, although some weaknesses were identified. Areas where documentation could be improved include transition plans for students over age 16, behavior intervention plans, and assistive technology assessments.
  • SCSDB must develop plans to help students transition from the school to work or post-secondary education. All of the transition plans in our review were vague and not individualized. However, the school has recognized the problems in the program and has taken steps to improve transition services.
  • The federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires that, if a child’s behavior is interfering with his or her education, the school must deal with the behavior in order for the child to learn. During our review of student IEPs, we did not find documentation of any functional behavior assessments and found only two behavior intervention plans. To comply with the IDEA, the school has recently begun expanding its behavior program.
  • We reviewed the curriculum and practices at the multi-handicapped school to determine if they supported the goal of independent living for these students. We concluded that all goals in the IEPs in the multi-handicapped school are geared toward getting students ready to transition from the school back into their own communities.
  • We reviewed SCSDB’s graduation rates and school report card results and found that many SCSDB students do not attain a high school diploma. In FY 01-02, 26% of the seniors graduating from the deaf school and 78% of the seniors graduating from the blind school received a state high school diploma. Many students have significant academic delays because of their hearing or vision problems.
  • We reviewed the procedures used to shut down a program for deaf students whose behavior restricted them from learning in the regular special education classroom. We determined that the local school districts were not always invited to the placement meetings at least 7 days prior to the meeting date, as required. Although each student had multiple meetings to determine the correct placement, there was insufficient documentation to show whether representatives of the local school districts came to the placement meetings.
  • We reviewed a sample of student safety and health (student advocacy) files, including accident/injury reports, internal investigations, and cases that were referred to the Department of Social Services, and found that these cases were handled properly and documented according to policy.
  • We reviewed a sample of residential advisor personnel and training files to determine if this staff was properly trained and found that only 5 of 12 residential advisors in our sample had all of the required training.
  • The school has made progress in recent years in addressing safety issues on campus. The school has also complied with an Office for Civil Rights (OCR) requirement to report its safety findings every 45 days.
  • One of the issues raised in the 1999 complaint to the Office for Civil Rights was the condition and safety of the buildings on the SCSDB campus. After the school had begun a $12 million renovation to Walker Hall, the school’s oldest building and "focal point" of the campus in 2000, SCSDB obtained a master facilities plan which showed that key buildings used or occupied by students had problems meeting safety and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements. The estimated cost to renovate or replace six of these buildings was $23 million. As of spring 2003, SCSDB had received $1.5 million in funding for one of the buildings.