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Akceptejo / Fotaroj / Etikedo Debbie Tracy 5
ADAPT (71)
[Headline] Disabled Persons Back Debbie By Fred Gillies Denver Post Staff Writer About 30 seriously disabled persons participated Wednesday in a demonstration on behalf of a cerebral palsy victim who has been told she cannot continue her education in a special education facility operated by Denver Public Schools. The demonstration at the schools' administration building, 900 Grant St, was on behalf of Debbie Tracy, 21, whose first chance at an education was provided two years ago when she was enrolled in special-education classes at Denver's Boettcher School. Recently, Denver Public Schools officials indicated that Debbie wouldn't be permitted to return to the school this fall because she is over age 20. Under Colorado's handicapped Children's Act, the state's public schools are obliged to provide an appropriate education for disabled persons aged 5 through 20 only, the school officials noted. Main Speaker at the demonstration Wednesday was Mrs. Elaine Jacoby, Debbie's mother. Mrs. Jacoby insisted that Denver public schools have a moral, if not a legal, obligation to provide an education for Debbie until she acquires the basic skills needed to take care of herself. Mrs. Jacoby also pointed out that Debbie had proved her potential for an education after 15 years of deprivation. "For the past two months," Mrs. Jacoby said, "I have been in contact with the Denver Public School Administration and the School Board in an attempt to keep Debbie in the system. Their response has consistently been that they have no legal obligation to her even though they provide 15 years of education to other children and even through a law was passed in Colorado in 1975 making clear the schools' obligation to disabled children between the ages of 5 and 20". Existing laws, Mrs. Jacoby emphasized, "reflect an acknowledgment of past wrongdoing and a willingness to correct the situation." She also noted that she isn't asking for the taxpayers to finance Debbie until she is prepared for college. "However, I feel that the Denver Public Schools owe Debbie more than two years of very basic education before they throw her out into society," Mrs. Jacoby said. After Mrs. Jacoby presented her statement, John Rankin, coordinator of instruction for Denver Public Schools, told her that he would do his best to arrange for her to meet with Dr. Joseph E. Brzeinski, Denver school superintendent. Also speaking informally Wednesday with Mrs. Jacoby was Theodore White Jr., director of the schools' department of special education.
ADAPT (69)
Denver Post Fri. Aug. 19, 1977 [This article is in ADAPT 69 and ADAPT 71, but is all included here for easier reading.] [Headline] Debbie Wins School Board Vote: She'll Stay at Boettcher School By Art Branscombe Denver Post Education Editor A compassionate majority of the Denver Board of Education voted Thursday night to let Debbie Tracy, a cerebral palsy victim, continue to attend the Boettcher School she loves, even though she is over the age of 21. The vote came after a stormy interlude in which Board President Omar Blair shouted down Miss Tracy’s attorney, Nathan Davidovich, when the latter tried to address the board. The 4-3 vote on a motion by Board Member Kay Schomp specified that Miss Tracy may attend Boettcher School for the handicapped only for the first semester of the 1977-78 school year, while legal action is pending to straighten out her status. The tuition at Boettcher School is more than $6,000 per year for nonresident students. However, while the school board was in executive session considering the issue, Davidovich revealed he filed a motion in Denver district court late Thursday seeking a temporary restraining order requiring school officials to allow Miss Tracy to continue at Boettcher until the courts act on his plea for permanent relief. A hearing on the motion for a temporary restraining order was to be held early Friday before Judge Robert Fullerton, Davidovich said. A companion lawsuit, filed by Davidovich and attorney Charles Welton, in behalf of Miss Tracy, four of her companions in the Atlantis Community and other handicapped persons, seeks: Compensatory education for Miss Tracy and others of her class of handicapped persons who were denied admission to public schools programs "for a period equivalent to the number of years during which an adequate education was denied them". To invalidate Colorado laws limiting public education to children between the ages of 3 and 21, as applied to handicapped persons over 21 who are educable and have been denied an education suited to their needs in public schools. The plaintiffs motion estimates there may be as many as 10,000 handicapped persons in Colorado who would belong to this class. The school board was unaware the companion legal actions had been filed when Miss Tracy, a dozen or more of her companions at the Atlantis Community- a community of handicapped persons, most of them in wheelchairs- and her parents and lawyers appeared in the board room of the Denver Public Schools Administration Bldg. 900 Grant St. Mrs. Schomp, chairman of a board subcommittee on special education, noted the persons in wheelchairs in the audience and, at the start of the board's meeting, moved to take up Miss Tracy's case before it would normally come up on the agenda. The board voted, 6-1, to do so, with only Board Member Robert Crider dissenting. Mrs. Schomp then moved that the board allow Miss Tracy to continue at Boettcher School for the first semester of the new school year "while we are seeking a state ruling as to where funds for her education should come from". State special education funds go only-unless the new court action determines otherwise- to children under the age of 21. Crider asked whether admitting Miss Tracy would set a precedent binding the board in the case of other handicapped persons. Michael Jackson, the school board's attorney, said the motion by Mrs. Schomp would only commit the board for one semester. Mrs. Schomp said the subcommittee was aware of possible legal pitfalls. "We are also aware we can't commit the school district to something illegal," she added, "but the subcommittee felt we shouldn't penalize this one person while the whole ponderous (fund - seeking) process is taking place. "The best solution may well be in the courts," she noted. Miss Tracy's problem is that in addition to cerebral palsy, she has perceptual handicaps. After being denied admission to the school system, she wasted nine years at the Ridge State Home and Training School and another five at the United Cerebral Palsy Center- in neither of which she received any substantial education After two years at Boettcher, she now reads at about the third-grade level, her mother, Elaine Jacoby, said. "I love school- my teacher helps me there, and I learn things I never learned before,"Debbie said recently. And she wants to continue there. However, this spring, because she is 21, she was "graduated" from Boettcher with a "certificate of attendance" rather than a high school diploma. And school officials said she should go to Opportunity School rather than continue at Boettcher. Crider insisted at the board meeting that allowing her to continue at Boettcher "puts every board member in the position of making a decision that may affect us for years". He moved to table the motion to admit Miss Tracy. Board Member Bernard Valdez supported his motion, asserting that if the board voted to admit her to Boettcher it would "defuse" the lawsuit her attorneys were preparing. At that point, Davidovich moved to the speakers table in the bedroom and tried to say something. Chairman Blair pounded his gavel and told Davidovich to "Shut up.. I don't want to hear anything from you. We offered to set up a special meeting with you and you refused." When Davidovich persisted in trying to speak, Blair gaveled him down and then called for an executive session of the board, which lasted for more than half an hour. During the executive session, Davidovich told reporters he merely wanted to tell the board he already had filed the lawsuit and the board's action wouldn't affect that. When the board returned, it voted not to table Mrs.Schomp's motion, then voted to approve it, both on 4-3 votes. Voting for admitting Miss Tracy were an unusual combination: Board Members Naomi Bradford, Marion Hammond, Virginia Rockwell and Mrs. Schomp. Against were Blair, Crider, and Valdez. After the vote, a disgruntled Blair thundered that the vote "is not a precedent set by this board in any way, shape, or form". Members of the Atlantis Community- 11 of whom were by then sitting in front of the room in their wheelchairs- booed him lustily. The school board then recessed- having done nothing else on their agenda to that point- for a dinner break. Asked about how she felt about it all, Debbie Tracy said , "Yes, I'm happy" about being allowed to continue at Boettcher. "It all seemed to be pretty interesting,"she added. " And I'm tired of staying at home."
ADAPT (67)
Rocky Mountain News 6/30/77 [This text contains the story that appears in ADAPT 67 and ADAPT 72, but the entire text is included here for easier reading.] PHOTO (News Photo): In darkened doorway a young woman in a wheelchair (Debby Tracy) appears light against the background, almost like she is glowing. She is a in a motorized wheelchair, the armrests come almost up to her arm pits. Her legs are turned to one side and her feet don't meet the footrests. She is looking up a bit and smiling a big smile; her long delicate fingers play around her control box (for her chair) and her other armrest. Caption reads: Debbie Tracy at home: "I want to go back to school. I like it there." [Headline] Debbie Tracy fighting to acquire knowledge By Sue Lindsay Roll Two years ago Debbie Tracy couldn't tell time. Today she reads the newspaper every morning. Her IQ has increased by 45 points. The source of her improvement was two years in a Denver public school specializing in special education. But Debbie, who was born with cerebral palsy and spent most of her life in institutions for the disabled, is 21 now and Denver school officials say she's too old to remain in public schools. They cite a state law saying the school district is required to educate children only up to age 20. Forty wheelchair-bound young adults converged in front of the school administration building at 900 Grant St. Wednesday to demonstrate their support for Debbie’s right to more education in Denver public schools. Debbie's mother, Elaine Jacoby. says she'll go to court if necessary to fight what she sees as a violation of her daughter's civil rights. She threatened to sue the Denver Board of Education, the state Institutions Department and the State Home and Training School in Wheat Ridge, where Debbie lived for nine years, for misdiagnosing her daughter's mental capacity and depriving her of an education. DEBBIE SEES HER PLIGHT more simply. "I want in go back to school,“she said. "l like it there. I've been learning all kinds of things I didn't know before." Supporting Mrs. Jacoby and Debbie in their fight in the Atlantis Community, an organization which works to remove the severely disabled from institutions and place in jobs and apartments throughout the community. "Debbie is an adult who has been deprived access to the education that would give her the skills she needs to be independent," said Mrs Jacoby, who is divorced from Debbie's father. “l am not asking the taxpayers to finance her until she is prepared for college. But I feel that the Denver public schools owe Debbie more than two years of very basic education before they throw her out into society. I fail to see why my child should be denied what every other child has simply because she is not able-bodied." Mrs. Jacoby said Debbie is a victim of the state's failure to meet the needs of handicapped children. She said Debbie was prohibited from attending public schools and even special education schools because cerebral palsy, a disorder which affects the muscles, had left her without bladder control. For five years, Mrs. Jacoby said she repeatedly tried to get Debbie into public schools. DEBBIE ATTENDED THE United Cerebral Palsy Center for five years. But Mrs. Jacoby said the training there was at pre-school level, directed toward a future in a sheltered workshop. "This was not an acceptable goal for my daughter," Mrs. Jacoby said. During this period, numerous psychological tests were conducted. When Debbie was 10, her mother placed her at Ridge Home. "I thought she would receive educational and social programming that was adequate, but I found again that programs available to able-bodied children," she said. When Debbie turned 19, things began looking up. The state passed the Handicapped Children's Act which, since 1975, has required public schools to provide education for handicapped and disabled persons aged 5 through 20. Debbie moved out of Ridge to the Atlantis Community at 2965 W. 11th Ave. and entered Boettcher Elementary School, a special education facility within the Denver school system. Her progress was remarkable. "When we got her from the Ridge she didn't know her alphabet, she didn't know her colors, she couldn't tell time," said Wade Blank, an executive director of the Atlantis Community. "Now she’s alert and able and eager to learn. She reads the Rocky Mountain News. Debbie had an IQ of 50 when she got out of Ridge. Two years later her IQ is 95. That says a lot to us.” She now functions at the level of a third or fourth grader, according to Blank. “We know she would be a normal functioning adult if only she had been given the opportunity to develop," he said. “Instead, the state shoves everyone into state homes where they vegetate just because they happen to be confined to wheelchairs. It has nothing to do with actual mental ability. " But Debbie is now 21. She has been told that she can no longer attend Boettcher or any other Denver public school. Mrs. Jacoby has appealed this decision to everyone from the Boettcher school principal to Supt. Joseph Brzeinski. LAST WEEK MRS. JACOBY received a letter containing the school officials’ final decision. Debbie could not be allowed to continue to attend Boettcher. But the letter, from James M. O'Hara, executive director of the Department of Pupil Services, suggested that other alternatives existed for Debbie at the Cerebral Palsy Center,the Emily Griffith Opportunity School and at private community agencies. "None of these alternatives are adequate". Mrs. Jacoby said Wednesday in front of the board's headquarters. "They do not meet Debbie's needs. Debbie is not ready for the Opportunity School, but she needs more than the Cerebral Palsy Center can offer. “For 21 years, I’ve put up with empty answers from school officials. I’ve talked and talked to people whose minds are already made up. They aren’t used to persons like Debbie living independently. They're used to them being institutionalized. Debbie can do better than that and I want her to have that chance.”
ADAPT (65)
The Denver Post Friday, August 19, 1977 The Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire vol. 86 number 19 15 cents, 76 pages PHOTO by Kenn Bislo: Medium close up of a young woman (Debbie Tracy) in a power wheelchair holds her hands to her face. Eyes closed behind her glasses, she smiles. Three women around her, mostly out of the picture frame, grasp her chair and her shoulders and smile their congratulations. Caption reads: HAPPY WITH DECISION. Debbie Tracy claps her hands to her cheeks in relief after the Denver School Board voted 4-3 to let her continue to attend Boettcher School for the handicapped. Miss Tracy, a cerebral palsy victim, had been denied right to continue school at Boettcher because she had passed the age of 21. The board's action Thursday night would allow her to attend one semester while legal action is pending. (See story and photo page 3)
ADAPT (21)
PHOTO [no credit available]: A small woman (Debby Tracy) in a fairly large manual wheelchair, eye glasses, a paisley dress and sneakers, smiles and looks down toward the floor. Behind her two men and a woman are standing and also looking down and smiling. Caption reads: FROM LEFT, SAM SANDOS, RESIDENT DEBORAH TRACY AND LAMM. Lamm encouraged Atlantis residents to seek state funds for project.