1 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So, my name is 2 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 Michelle Nario Redmond. 3 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I am a social psychologist 4 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and I teach at (Hiram?) College. 5 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 in the psychology and biomedical humanities program, 6 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and I just wrote a book on ableism, the causes and consequences 7 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 of disability prejudice. My first memory, 8 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and I'll just back up and say 1990, 9 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 when the ADA passed I was in graduate school, 10 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 in Kansas, and disability prejudice, the ADA or anything 11 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 related to disability issues was completely off my radar, 12 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and I worked at a place where one of the pioneers 13 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 of disability studies worked, Beatrice Wright, 14 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and I had yet to have a class with her. 15 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 It really wasn't until 1995, which was five years later, 16 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 when my daughter was born, Sierra was (anabifoda??), 17 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 which is when I became aware of disability and found the work 18 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 of Carol Gill and (Simi Litton?) and began to educate myself 19 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 on disability studies and its scope, and the first memory I have of 20 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 confronting inaccessible spaces was a few years later, when we enrolled 21 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 my daughter Sierra in a preschool, at a Catholic preschool, 22 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 right down the road; and it just didn't even dawn on me that we would have to 23 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 work so hard for her to be accommodated as a preschooler, 24 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and it was really a (function?) of the fact that the building was older, 25 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 there were steps, and they really didn't know, nor did they need to legally know, 26 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 about reasonable accommodations and civil rights of their students, 27 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 because they were a private facility and weren't subject to the ADA's rules. 28 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 So it became clear to me that we needed to find a new preschool, and luckily 29 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 we found another private place - it wasn't a public school - 30 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 but it was a music school settlement and they had resources 31 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and they were already operating under a sort of set of presumptions 32 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 about the value of diversity and diverse perspectives, 33 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and we didn't really have to ask for much, because they bent over backwards 34 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to include my daughter in a typical classroom, with her peers, 35 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 her preschool peers, music classes, there were so many eclectic-- 36 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 movement classes, and they even purchased equipment 37 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 for their exercise room and movement room that would be useful to her among others, 38 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and she has since grown up to become this teacher and has applied to work there 39 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 as a preschool teacher, so I think it would be really amazing 40 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 if she came full circle, but I guess to answer the broader question 41 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 about being frustrated and aware of inaccessibility and lack of inclusion, 42 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 we were in a district that, when she then was about to move to preschool, 43 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 I knew that she probably wouldn't be able to go to a private school, 44 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 not only because of the financial cost but also because they would not have to 45 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 think about best practices and the law when it came to 46 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 accommodating their students with disabilities, 47 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and so I knew we would be looking at the public school, 48 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and the public school in our neigbourhood was not accessible. 49 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 We went to visit it, the playground had a little house 50 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 that she wouldn't have been able to get into, 51 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and it was really disheartening and so it came at a time 52 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 when we were already looking for other opportunities, 53 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and my husband got an opportunity to move us as a family 54 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to the West Coast in Portland of Oregon, 55 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 so the way I-- so the way we had to navigate her early educational experiences 56 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 was to only look at spaces and schools that were in districts that were new, 57 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 so that had buildings and had training in terms of 58 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 accommodating their diverse students and their disabled students, 59 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 because just having the brief experiences that I did with the preschool 60 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and IEP meetings that were going to require me to fight at every juncture 61 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 for her basic rights to show what she knows 62 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and participate and recognise herself as a valuable contributor 63 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to the school community, we're not going to be forthcoming 64 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 without a fight, and so we narrowed our search 65 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 to a district, and thank God we had an opportunity 66 99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999 and the resources to do this, that was