(The facts of this story are from the NY Times. The commentary is mine.)
Casey and Leah Garner dreamed of a big family. But infertility thwarted their ambition. They turned to adoption. And welcomed Annie, now 3, to their home. Their daughter had been born deaf with flaps of skin where her ears should be. As their first few months together passed, the new parents discovered that Annie was also severely vision impaired, with weak muscles and a developmental disability.
Nature is a lottery. No parent can predict which gifts or challenges nature will bestow on their child. The Garners had Annie, but lacked a map to guide them through their adversity. As Casey, a civil engineer, now 34, said,
“I was out there looking for anything and everything that could help us.”
Then he discovered the Wisconsin Deafblind Project, a state program for the families of children with combined vision and hearing loss.
The NYT reports:
It made a tremendous difference as they learned to parent Annie, the Garners said.
They met other families experiencing the same thing. A mentor taught them sign language. Annie got sensory toys and Braille books. And she even made a best friend with a similar condition.
But this happy state of affairs did not last.
Then in September, the Trump administration canceled the five-year, $918,000 grant for the program, which supports about 170 children in Wisconsin like Annie. It also ended a $10.5 million grant used to recruit and retain special education teachers in the state.
Why did the Trump administration cut the program? A clue lies in where the administration has taken similar actions. The NYT adds:
The moves came at the same time that the administration cut similar programs for deafblind children across seven other states — all of which lean Democratic. In each case, the federal officials cited language in the programs’ grant applications related to goals for diversity, equity and inclusion.
I have no idea how the Garners voted. But I know Annie has no political leanings. She is just a little kid who fate has dealt some tough cards. Now she and her parents have been cut adrift by an administration that wields “family values” rhetoric as an opportunistic vote getter. But whose actions make a mockery of their pro-family platitudes.
It isn’t only the deafblind community the administration is ganging up on. Trump had promised to leave special education funding alone. But his people came up with a workaround to target other disabled kids. The NYT adds:
By targeting diversity language, however, the administration has been able to make cuts to programs that benefit children with disabilities without specifically rolling back special education. In addition to the deafblind initiatives, the Education Department said it had slashed money for more than two dozen similar programs, including a school for the blind.
For the hell of it, let’s say there is some merit to removing DEI initiatives from the federal funding stream. Why couldn’t the administration simply tell the recipients to change the nature of their programs? If the problem is the process, then change the process — don’t defeat the purpose.
In a letter, the administration admitted it penalized the Wisconsin Deafblind Project for prioritizing “applicants from underrepresented and historically marginalized groups,” as well as its efforts to contract with women and minority business owners or disabled veterans. Couldn’t those heartless bastards have instead told the Deafblind Project to change its rules?
And, by the way, let’s note that Annie is white. So her only ‘diversity’ is disability. And if the administration thinks that disability is a diversity that merits no funding, then they should stop being mealy-mouthed and just say so. Instead, we are insulted by claptrap like this offering by Savannah Newhouse, an Education Department spokeswoman,
“Many of these use overt race preferences or perpetuate divisive concepts and stereotypes, which no student should be exposed to.”
Dear God, doesn't this woman have the empathy to understand that these programs exist because they help children who are limited in what they are “exposed to”? I am sure that 3-year-old Annie has zero awareness of “overt race preferences” or “divisive concepts and stereotypes.” Who or what made these people so callous?
Mr. Garner summed it up well. “Taking away help from deafblind kids? I don’t understand.”
The NYT gets to the humanity of it:
For Annie Garner, the program has provided something her parents feared she might not find, because of her communication issues and other disabilities: A best friend.
The Garners met another family through the program with a deafblind daughter, Emma, who was born just nine days apart from Annie. At their first meeting, the two sat together for hours, and now have regular play dates.
On a recent afternoon, Annie’s parents set up her feeding tube as she sat on the floor of her home in Reedsburg, a small town in a rural part of the state about an hour’s drive northwest of Madison.
A colorful headband held a hearing aid in place as Annie fiddled around with the electronic tablet that helps her to communicate — something she was taught to use by employees of the deafblind program.
She tapped several letters and symbols, until her message played: “I am a beautiful person who is the best.”
An administration that does this to children like Annie has lost the moral right to talk about values.
