CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — In the last couple of weeks there have been cases of threats being made against school.
But how do districts notify students or a teacher who may be hard of hearing or deaf? KRIS 6 News reporter, Tony Jaramillo spoke with the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Center (DHHC) and CCISD.
Aliza Long is the access specialist at the DHHC. and she shares soemthing in common with the deaf community.
"I am deaf I have a cochlear implant," Long said.
Jaramillo asked Long how a deaf or hard of hearing student would be able to tell if there was a lock-down or dangerous situation in a school.
"It's important to communicate. We want to make sure that we have some kind of equipment that we put up. It has to be silent. We can make sure that we alert staff and faculty and especially students," Long said.
Jaramillo also asked Kimberly Patella, Coordinator for Regional Day School Program for the Deaf at CCISD if they have safety measures put in place for those who are deaf or hard of hearing in case of a situation or drill.
"We do train our staff on campus at all 3 of our cluster sites to recognize ASL signs for those emergency situations," Patella said.
The "cluster sites" are Webb Elementary, Kaffiee Middle School and Veterans Memorial High School where most deaf or hard of hearing students funnel to. But Patella said the safety measures don't stop there.
"We implemented lights in all of our classrooms to ensure it is going to be visibly accessible," Patella said.
Patella added that the lights are not all the same.
"So if you look and go into a classroom, you'll see a light at the top of the ceiling. And so whenever there is an emergency on campus, it's different from a fire drill because fire drills have their own lighting system," Patella said.
You may think that raising the volume on alarms would help. Thomas Burnside, the Technology Specialist at the DHHC, explained why that's not an option.
"It's not all about loudness it's about the tones. So that's what we need to do. We recommend going to a visual technology than a sound technology for sound or loudness," Burnside said.
Burnside said this is crucial because 1 in 5 people in Corpus Christi suffer from some sort of hearing loss.
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