Driver’s class not now required of blind girl

Press, 5 December 1984, Page 14

Driver’s class not now required of blind girl

NZPA-AP Peoria, Illinois A legally blind high school senior will not have to take a required driver’s education class, education officials said after urging from a state official who called the issue “silly”. Woodruff High School officials originally had refused to grant the 17-year-old girl’s request that she be excused from the course, which is required by state law. However, a State Board of Education attorney, Ms Julia Dempsey, said the law allowed exemptions for handicapped students. “There is nothing in the law that requires people to

act in a silly or a ridiculous manner,” Ms Dempsey said.'Tt is silly to put a blind student in a 30-hour driver’s education course.”

Woodruff’s principal, Mr David Barnwell, said Ms Dempsey’s interpretation conflicted with a month-old directive from another state education official, but added, “If the state says she does not have to take the course, we will certainly go along.” The student, identified only as Kimberly, had not been required to take be-hind-the-wheel training, but only classroom training, said Mr Barnwell. He said the state’s Privacv Act prevented him from disclosing the girl’s sur-

Mr Barnwell said classroom driver’s education certainly could not hurt. “There are a number of safety things that come up that she would need to know because she will be a passenger or a pedestrian all her life,” Mr Barnwell said. “Certainly we are not attempting to put her behind the wheel of a car. She is legally blind.” Kimberly, who is not totally blind, can read large print and did not enrol in the district’s programme for the handicapped, said Mr Barnwell. Instead, she took the mainstream coursework, which -put her in line for driver’/?: education. b