Columnist Susan Snyder: Handling of student is puzzling

Friday, Dec. 8, 2000 | 9:45 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Friday, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Ray Curnan is a very small piece of a very big puzzle.

A recent U.S. Department of Education report says that more than half of the nation's special education pupils are mainstreamed into general classrooms and are earning standard diplomas. But in Clark County's district that number is 45 percent.

In the wake of that report, Clark County School District officials said part of the problem is that they have 80 vacancies for special education teachers. It's a frustrating situation that makes for a big puzzle with a lot of holes.

Holes big enough to swallow such children as 5-year-old Ray Curnan.

Debbie Curnan says her son was born with hip and spine problems and a double hernia. Surgeries, braces and therapy helped correct those maladies, but the ordeal put Ray a little behind.

He didn't start walking until a couple months after he turned 2. So she says she tried not to worry too much that he also hadn't started talking.

Still, the talking never seemed to come at all. Not so much as a "juice" or "doggy" or "Mommy" emerged from her tot's lips. Tests showed his hearing was normal, so she waited and hoped.

Ray tried to talk, but words just wouldn't come out, Curnan said. He was 4 when she enrolled him in a special pre-kindergarten class at Richard Bryan Elementary School. His teacher said he had something called developmental apraxia of speech. It's a rare condition that hinders Ray's ability to use his tongue and lips to form words.

"His fine motor skills aren't good enough," Curnan said. "It's all approximations. We could understand what he was was saying, but if he went out into the world he would be totally misunderstood."

Even the teacher who diagnosed him misunderstood, Curnan said. She had heard of apraxia but never had treated it. Meanwhile Ray sat in a classroom with children who had attention deficit disorder, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy.

"He belonged in a speech program," Curnan said.

At the beginning of this school year Ray's mother enrolled him in a special kindergarten class at Patricia Bendorf Elementary. That teacher decided Ray should learn to speak through sign language, as if he were hearing impaired. Curnan said it wasn't appropriate. Her son wanted to talk and could be taught. He just needed a speech pathologist who could do it.

She lobbied school district officials for a month and finally was allowed to enroll Ray in a "phonology" program at Frank Kim Elementary. Her persistence worked. Ray couldn't say 10 words when he started school. He now speaks in short sentences.

Curnan can ask her son, "How was school today?" And he can tell her.

It is a grand beginning, but it took three schools and a year to get there. Curnan wonders what's next. His current teacher is terrific, but she says she worries there won't be enough of them as he progresses.

Ray can do first-grade work. But Curnan is considering holding him back a year so he can stay in the phonology program. She says she hasn't found one for first graders.

"What happens next year and the year after?" Curnan said.

Good question. Eighty vacancies make a mighty big hole -- big enough to swallow such little kids as Ray without anyone noticing.