Parent Info

The Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind (CSDB) is a Colorado funded, state operating program, serving children from age birth – 21.  There is no tuition to attend CSDB for Colorado residents.  Children who qualify for special education services in the areas of hearing and/or vision loss, may be considered for enrollment.  To be eligible for placement, your child must meet enrollment guidelines as stated in CSDB policy #JF. 

The enrollment process is a coordinated effort between the parents/guardians and child, CSDB staff, and if requested, a representative from the child’s home school district (LEA).  Every parent/guardian seeking possible admission to CSDB must meet with the Director of Special Education, Ms. Kathy Emter, before enrollment can be offered.  Pre-enrollment procedures include a personal interview, review of current IEP and assessments, and a campus tour.

If your student is placed at CSDB, your local school district will also remain involved with your child.  The LEA will continue to be invited to attend all IEP meetings and any other significant decisions related to your child.

Upon enrollment, it will be necessary for all parents/guardians to coordinate with your local school district (LEA) to arrange transportation directly with them.  If your home school district supports placement at CSDB, they will assume responsibility for providing or arranging for bus transportation to and from CSDB.  If your home school district does not support placement of your son/daughter at CSDB, transportation responsibility falls back onto the parent/guardian.  CSDB, as a State Operated Program, does not provide transportation to/from CSDB.

For Colorado Springs area residents, please keep in mind that it may take a week or two for school districts to set up bus transportation so it is very important to notify and work with your home school district as soon as possible.  Parents who live outside of the Colorado Springs area will need to coordinate with their LEA regarding transportation to/from CSDB. 

The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (Buckley Amendment) states that a parent signature is not required for transfer of records between schools; however, we do require that all requests for student records be submitted in writing, preferably via fax.  Third party requests will require an official authorization to release records, signed by either the student (if 18 or older) or by the parent/guardian. 

You may FAX your record requests to: Registrar, (719) 578-2241

In order to reduce paperwork, we will start the process of purging some of the records in the student files five years after the student exits.  This pertains to records that are no longer needed for educational services.  Please know that all essential academic, psychological records and most recent IEP’s will be kept permanently on file at CSDB.  In order to maintain confidentiality, any records not being retained will be shredded.  If you wish to claim any non-essential records, please contact us before the record retention deadline.

Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind- Plan for Utilization of Esser III Funds

At CSDB, all students are served with an IEP and are Deaf/Hard of Hearing and/or Blind/VI and in some cases, have Multiple Impairments. The school closure for the COVID pandemic has had a significant impact on student’s mental health, social emotional development, and academic skill advancement especially for students with disabilities that rely on alternative means of accessing their instructional materials such as literacy and math.  The interventions proposed for ESSER funds will address the social emotional needs of our students as well as gaps in academic achievement. Measurement of the effectiveness of these interventions will include a review of academic and social emotional growth of identified students at CSDB.  As students participate in targeted academic instruction and tutoring to close the gap in academic performance, subsequently we will see an impact in student overall academic achievement. Due to the nature of access to literacy for students who are Blind/Visually Impaired, online learning during covid closures impacted literacy instruction for our Blind/Visually Impaired students. In addition, students who are blind/VI have unique social emotional/mental health needs due to lack of incidental, visual learning opportunities, and often isolation that occurs without access to peers and a social group.  The second intervention recommended is increased social emotional support at a school-based level to increase the amount of classroom learning time that is interrupted by addressing mental health and social emotional needs. The covid closure impacted our students significantly in terms of isolation and continued learning of appropriate pro- social skills.  The success of the added social emotional intervention will be measured by school wide screening tools and formal/informal measures of student progress in this area.  Data used to determine the needs of the population included statewide and district level assessments, including reading assessments required for READ plans.  To determine social emotional needs, the BASC-BESS screening tool is instrumental to measure baseline social emotional functioning as well as progress monitoring the progress of students who are participating in social emotional learning opportunities, as well as more targeted mental health interventions. Tutoring and summer programs will be provided to help address any remedial needs necessary to help address academic progress.   Some of the ESSER funds will be utilized to purchase additional technology necessary for learning programs and interventions.  In addition, an additional preschool support will be added in the form of a teacher to support the listening and spoken language skills of some of our students.  

Strategies for the use of ESSER III funds:

Literacy Interventionist- School for the Blind- This position will provide literacy interventions for students who blind/VI to address lost learning.

School Counselor- School for the Blind- This position will provide one on one, group support for students experiencing a need for increased social emotional support.  The counselor will be responsible for working with students, teachers, families, and within the MTSS structure of interventions for students. Tutoring- Stipends will be provided for after school tutoring programs and/or summer learning programs. Technology- Student devices to enhance learning programs and for intervention/tutoring.

Preschool teacher- A preschool teacher will be added to the preschool program to support the needs of our Deaf/HH students who benefit from listening and spoken language skills.

For more information regarding the ESSER III plan for the utilization of Esser III funds, please contact Kathy Emter at kemter@csdb.org. or 719-578-2177