RMDS Students: Greta Wolcott, Colleen Gunst, Renee Gunst

--Golden, Colorado. Rocky Mountain Deaf School is a K-8 bilingual and cultural immersion school like few others. The charter school was founded with the mission: To inspire every deaf student to think, to learn, to achieve, and to care.

Rocky Mountain Deaf School boasts a theme of excellence in research based academics, with a firm footing in best practices in deaf education.  The two immersion languages at RMDS are spoken English and American Sign Language (ASL).

Rocky Mountain Deaf School is a charter school—a public school—hence there is not a tuition.

Who does RMDS serve? Some of the kids at Rocky Mountain Deaf School are deaf with hearing parents, others are hearing with deaf parents, while some of the students are deaf with deaf families.

Regardless of the family make-up of deaf versus hearing, effective communication with both worlds is key. Many of the deaf students impress with rich vocabularies in either or both ASL and spoken English upon entry to RMDS. Others are years behind appropriate language development. RMDS therefore has a very individualized approach to teaching, and continuously seek to explore new research and techniques in educating each child.

“How do you explain the word government to a child who has no prior experience with the word?” asks Rocky Mountain Deaf School director Janet Dickinson, Ph.D. “At the same time, this child may be in the same class as another who has a developed vocabulary and global perspective. Early intervention makes all the difference.”

This may easily happen at home in a family where one of the adults is also deaf, it could be trickier for parents who both are hearing.

Just like many other families, preschool is a valued component of a child’s education journey.
Rocky Mountain Deaf School offers a private preschool program for children as young as two years old to meet this demand, and to provide kids with the best opportunity possible in early childhood education.

Current facility for Rocky Mountain Deaf School

What RMDS is in dire need of right now is a proper facility.
Tucked between a dog-wash and a dollar store in an older shopping mall strip, the charter school does not have many amenities, or necessities that other public schools have. The facility is void of a grassy field for recess or a gymnasium for Physical Education and Physical Therapy. Instead there is a vast black-top parking lot, complete with ominous cracks and potholes.
The current school location is also missing key components that are nothing short of requirements for deaf individuals. The wrinkled and worn carpet builds up static and can zap out the information in the hearing aids worn by both adults and children in the building. The pale yellow walls are the remnants of the previous tenant—a Montessori school—but can interfere with the visual elements deaf kids are very dependent on. The hallways are too narrow for providing optimal space between the person who is signing and the individual receiving the incoming ASL message.

RMDS also has a program it adapted specifically for autistic children that had enrolled in the charter school. Separate space within the strip mall school was quickly set aside for the program, but with several levels of facility-induced compromise in serving these unique needs.

Transportation for some of the students has also been difficult. The enrolled children arrive each morning from commutes that many of us would not imagine. The Majority of the surrounding school districts are easy to work with and provide transportation for the children who attend the deaf school, others are less accommodating.

“I just want to go to a school where my teachers understand me and I understand them,” an eight year old RMDS student pleaded to her school district’s Board of Education last week.

The eight year old wants to join the van carpool twenty minutes away from her home, where it is currently picking up another RMDS student. She has been prevented from doing so because her parents enrolled her in the out-of-district Rocky Mountain Deaf School by free will, instead of a recommendation from an in-district school. The school district otherwise offers a deaf student to be shadowed by an adult interpreter within the district schools. Although that works great for some, others feel it not only prevents their children from communicating at optimal effectiveness with their surroundings, but also interferes with child-to-child interaction as an adult would always be present.
Until resolve, the eight year old RMS student's parents need to continue to driving her to and from school--which is an hour’s drive in each direction.

Rendering of proposed future RM Deaf School building

RMDS relies heavily on visual technologies as teaching tools. There are computers, visual telephones and intercoms, and light systems in place. Yet the technology wish list is topped with 6 LCD projectors and 6 ELMO Digital Visual Presenters.

Jefferson County School District (CO) has a good reputation in supporting charter schools, and has been one of the districts that used creative measures in order of including its authorized charter schools in local bond elections. However, the facility funding formula, like state and federal funding has been on a per-pupil basis. At little more than 50 students, Rocky Mountain Deaf School is too small for such a system to provide adequate funding to build a suitable school building. The 2008 bond election in Jeffco failed.

Rocky Mountain Deaf School is an asset to the community as it serves a specific group of children with identifiable needs. It is exemplary in how charter schools as a concept can be used in reaching kids outside the boundaries of traditional learning. We need more schools throughout our country with missions centered on specific needs and more adults willing to provide it. Whether it is the deaf community, blind, autistic, gifted and talented, or children with different learning styles—all kids have special needs.

If you want to see a group of smiling faces who are experiencing such bliss in American public education, look no further than Rocky Mountain Deaf School.

September is National Deaf Awareness Month.

 For more info: