All 20 teachers for visually impaired on 10-month contracts would all be laid off; 50 teachers on 12-month contracts would keep positions
TRENTON — Teresa Cerutti has taught the blind for more than 25 years. She has helped hundreds learn Braille. She works with toddlers and adults, teaching them to shave when they can’t see their face and navigate their neighborhood when they can’t read street signs.
She works with public school teachers, helping them integrate their blind students, reminding them it is not enough to point to the blackboard.
At the end of June, she is slated to be fired.
Cerutti, who has a caseload of 27 visually impaired students, is one of 20 teachers from the New Jersey Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired who will be let go if proposed budget cuts are enacted.
"How are they going to service all of these children?" Cerutti asked last week.
Stephen Cavallo, a 14-year-old who attends Mountain View Middle School in Mendham Borough, asked the same of the Assembly’s budget committee on Tuesday.
Cavallo has a genetic, progressive eye disease. He has had 19 surgeries, the last of which removed his right eye. He is legally blind in his left eye.
He said he knew the state was facing tough times and understood the need to cut back. His own family has cut vacations and dinners out, but they don’t cut the essentials, he said.
"We haven’t cut spending money for trips to the doctor when someone is sick, or for the prescription medicine that a doctor orders," Cavallo told the committee. "The teachers at the commission for the blind are the doctors appointments and prescription medicine. Please don’t let them be taken away."
For nine of the last 11 years, Cavallo has worked with Dawn Kosman, a certified teacher for the blind who is contracted through the Morris County district and paid for by the state.
"She has taught me so much more than how to read Braille," Cavallo said. "Without her, my schoolteachers would not have known how to teach me."
Kosman, like Cerutti, is one of 20 teachers who work on a 10-month contract. Another 50 teachers in the state work on 12-month contracts. The cuts, which would save $1.53 million, would eliminate all 10-month teachers.
"It seems shortsighted," Assemblyman Gary Schaer (D-Passaic) said. "Budgets are not simply numbers, but represent people behind them."
Most of the state’s 2,500 visually impaired children attend public schools. Depending on the level of need, teachers from the commission meet with students anywhere from four hours per year to four hours per week.
Nicole Brossoie, a spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services, said children will receive the same quality education as before.
"Students will receive instruction through a reallocation of caseloads with the 12-month teachers," she said via e-mail. "The children served in this program also are being served through the Department of Health and Senior Services’ Early Intervention Program and/or our Division of Developmental Disabilities. We will continue to make services available to students in the summer months — a separate education program, utilizing the 12-month teachers for Braille lessons."
The state insists children will not see a decrease in service, but Alison Stephens, a Ridgewood resident, asked the committee how fewer teachers can mean anything else.
"Can you imagine having a school and cutting one-third of the teachers?" asked Stephens, whose voice cracked as she spoke of her 2-year-old visually impaired son, Nate, and her worries about what level of service he will receive.
Several committee members were moved by the pleas and promised to look further into the cuts, and ensure that children do receive an appropriate education.
"That’s what days like this are for," Assemblyman Anthony Bucco (R-Morris) said. "These days are designed to hear from people who are in these programs."