From the third floor, teacher Kasey Hopper will take students who are blind or visually impaired down the stairs or use an elevator.
Once out the door, out on Stone Avenue in downtown Tucson, students may head to the Pima County Library or maybe across the street to a bus or the SunLink streetcar.
Navigating the world — big and small — is Hopper’s job as a certified orientation and mobility instructor.
Starting in August, he will do it at the Tucson School for the Blind, a new nonprofit private school for students who are blind or visually impaired.
The idea for the school at 149 N. Stone Ave. was born in February after the Board of Directors for the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind voted to close its west side Tucson campus — sending students who are deaf or hard of hearing 15 miles away to Oro Valley and telling blind and boarding students they must mainstream into their neighborhood schools.
The Tucson School for the Blind will serve grades K-12 beginning Aug. 3 and has about 14 students registered, nearly all former ASDB learners. The school has nine staffers so far — from speech and occupational therapists to instructional aides and full-time teachers — many of whom have worked for ASDB, which last spring also laid off about 60 employees here.
“The idea of this is very uplifting because these students need that individual instruction with the Braille, with the orientation and mobility, with the teachers of the visually impaired and to be with their peers in an environment where they feel successful and not stuck in a corner,” Hopper told Arizona Luminaria.
Hopper taught at ASDB for 14 years. The experience made him a better instructor, person and dad, he says. And while he brings that goodness with him, he also carries the experience of being a student who is blind.
“Being legally blind myself, I get it,” he said. “I get the stress, the anxiety, the fear of large populations of students and being left behind. So success for the school is ensuring these students are not left behind, that they are given a voice and given a purpose in life.”
School director Kate Scally echoes that objective.
“We feel very, very strongly about building independence in our students,” said Scally, who was a music teacher at ASDB and taught there for 15 years. “That’s the dream, right?”
That vision could eventually incorporate about 30 students and more staff, Scally says. The school currently accepts students with Empowerment Scholarship Accounts only, Scally said, and it is working to become state-certified so it can eventually take public school students who are referred there by their neighborhood school.
Scally began exploring the idea of the school in February, when it was clear ASDB would close and she was to be laid off. At that point, 15 families sued ASDB saying they the administration moved forward with plans to close programs for students who are blind or visually impaired while “maintaining or prioritizing programming for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.”
“I think we all were still hoping there was some sort of recourse at that point,” Scally told Arizona Luminaria. “That we could perhaps advocate for sustaining the opportunity for the students to stay together as a community.”
That unity and those relationships are most valuable to parent Sierra Vinson.
“As a parent, it means everything to know my child will be learning in an environment where the teachers are not only highly qualified, but genuinely passionate about helping students succeed,” said Vinson, whose daughter Elena, 11, will transfer from ASDB to the new school.
“The opening of Tucson School for the Blind gives families like ours confidence that our children will be supported, encouraged, and given every opportunity to thrive and continue to learn and grow with the peers they’ve been with,” Vinson said.
ASDB had about 30 blind or visually impaired students who needed a new school. Some could switch to schools in the Tucson Unified District. Southern Arizona’s largest school district has worked with ASDB for years. Transfer students would be incorporated into the cooperative sites of Pueblo High School and Morgan Maxwell K-8.
At a meeting in April, TUSD addressed a plan for bringing in new students — including a model, site modifications, services, providers and $815,000 in funding.
The new school’s leaders hope to preserve a community, but Hopper says the impact can be measured one student at a time.
“For me as an orientation mobility specialist, success would be just changing the life of at least one student,” he said. “And that’s the thing. If we can change the life of one student to give them a future that they couldn’t get in another learning environment that is success. Because if you can change one life, then another one will come and then another and then another. It’s a snowball effect.”
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