A story from the New York Times about how a music school for the blind has
lost its home, was posted to the email list of the ACB of New York email
list yesterday. I've copied the story below my explanation. The reporter has
no idea of the real story, of what the music school was originally, and how
symptomatic this is of what is happening all around us.
When I was seven years old, my parents wanted me to have piano lessons. But
I had very poor vision, couldn't read music, so they began searching for a
resource. My parents were amazing people. My father was a laborer who never
graduated from high school. My mother was very shy and had graduated from
high school after taking a business course. But she never worked. Before her
marriage, she was supported by her brother and sister. She had a disfigured
eye with no sight. Because of that, she didn't feel confident to try to find
employment. But when I was born, legally blind, they found a doctor who
could help me, and they did everything that they could to find the resources
that would allow me to live as fully as possible. So they went searching for
a way for me to learn to play the piano, and they found The Lighthouse for
the Blind in Manhattan. The Lighthouse had a music school. This was in 1944.
The Lighthouse was housed in two old buildings on Manhattan's east side. The
two little buildings were connected by an enclosed walkway on the third
floor of each building. I began with something called, "ear training
lessons", and moved onto piano lessons. No, I don't remember what the ear
training lessons consisted of, but I remember the teacher's name, Mrs.
Jacobs. I remember sitting in a small room called, "the library", with other
youngsters, sitting around a table, all of us waiting for our lessons. There
were shelves with big braille books lining all the walls and one large
window. My first encounters with totally blind children were in that music
school library. All of us who took music lessons, were invited to join the
children's chorus which met on Saturday mornings. Just as there were large
print music scores, there were large print lyrics of the songs we learned in
Chorus, and of course, there was braille for the children with no sight. I
remember being amazed to watch their hands, skimming along those pages of
braille, reading those lyrics, as quickly as I could read my print version.
And because of the chorus, my mother learned that there was a children's
recreation program in the afternoons on Saturday. Back then recreation for
boys and girls was separate. All of us children would troop back across the
bridge to the 59th Street building, and the girls would take the elevator to
the fifth floor where our recreation program was held. We'd bring our lunch
from home, eat it in the lunchroom, and then participate in 4 hours of
recreational activities in the afternoon. That music school also provided
lessons for adults and many many years later in the early 90's, I knew a
woman with whom I'd been on trips to Ireland and Portugal, who was a member
of the Lighthouse women's chorus.
The Lighthouse provided recreation for children, teenagers, working adults,
and the elderly. It had a nursery school for blind children. Its music
school provided lessons for people at all levels of expertise. The
Lighthouse Drama Group included a few fully sighted performers, and
performed several plays a year for paying audiences The agency operated
summer camps for nursery school aged children, as well as teenagers, working
age adults, and the elderly. The agency provided the traditional services
like rehab teaching, rehabilitation services, mobility instruction, job
training, and later on computer lessons. It had workshops in the old days
and a men's residence, then later, a residence for working women. It
provided volunteer readers for students. And there's probably more that I
can't remember. Jose Feliciano , I knew as a hunched over little ten year
old kid, who played the guitar without lessons, and attended the recreation
program.
But in the late 80's, the Lighthouse began to strip away services.
Interestingly, it had modernized its old buildings, then replaced the
modernized old buildings with a wholly new building. It had revamped and
modernized its adult recreation services. And then it began rationalizing
why the services were no longer needed. Recreation services for the elderly
were no longer needed because people could be integrated into existing
services for sighted people. The rehab services that were reimbursed by the
federal government remained. Other services that had been free of charge,
now had fees, because, it was said, fees helped people keep their dignity.
So if you wanted help with learning to use a computer and you were not a
rehab client, you paid $60 an hour. And then all local services ended as the
agency metamorphozed into The Lighthouse International.
There was another multi service agency for the blind in Manhattan called The
Guild for the Jewish Blind. It never had quite the image that The Lighthouse
had, probably because the Lighthouse was started by very wealthy protestants
and a lot of theater and radio personalities were involved with it in the
early days. But the Guild had many of the same services and, at one point, a
much better vacation camp for blind adults which, rather quickly, separated
itself into its own separate entity. But by the beginning of the twenty
first century, both agencies were moving in the same direction and
eventually they joined together. Their boards of directors joined. And they
changed their focus. Now, most of the money available to non profit agencies
in New York State was for agencies providing Community Medicaid Services so
that's what The Lighthouse/Guild does. It is involved in a huge
federal/state/counties bureaucracy which provides very poor in home care
for disabled old people on Medicaid. It provides federally and state
subsidized rehab services to blind people as well.
Apparently, the Lighthouse Music School ended up being housed at the Guild
until now and here is the article which doesn't actdually explain what
happened to cause the Guild to decide to strip away the music school.
School for Blind Musicians Is Evicted by Its Parent Charity from The New
York Times
By COREY KILGANNON Get
It was supposed to be a cheery holiday performance in front of the large
Christmas tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but the music school
ensemble seemed to be singing for its survival.. The school, which has
served blind and visually impaired musicians in Manhattan since 1913, finds
its existence imperiled by its own parent group -- a charitable organization
with a mission to help the blind. Singers were led into place by volunteers
or guide dogs, but before the music started, the school's executive
director, Dr. Leslie Jones, told the crowd inside the museum's Medieval
Sculpture Hall that the school would be 'separating' at the end of the month
from its longtime parent entity, Lighthouse Guild International. This was a
cordial take on the situation. The Lighthouse Guild sent a letter to
students in June -- in large print, for the visually impaired -- notifying
them that the 105-year-old school would no longer be part of the Guild's
future and that it must leave the Guild's building on West 64th Street.
'This decision was difficult because the school has been a part of the
fabric of Lighthouse Guild for over 100 years,' Dr. Alan Morse, president of
the Guild, wrote in the letter. Jillian Raquet, 24, who sings in the vocal
ensemble and volunteers at the school as a music teacher on Saturdays,
recalled getting the letter over the summer. 'To find out in some dry letter
that we have to look for a new home, it just seemed like, 'Oh, we don't
really care about you,' Ms. Raquet said. Faced with an order to vacate by
the end of December, school officials will spend Christmas week packing up
12 grand pianos, its estimable Braille music library and other items,
presumably to go into storage. Ms. Jones declined to comment on the
situation, explaining that she did not want to jeopardize the school's
separation arrangements with the Guild. She referred requests for comment to
the Guild; a Guild spokeswoman said its officials would not comment. Ms.
Jones did provide Dr. Morse's letter, which said that the school's leaders
must make organizational changes to 'direct our resources to support and
serve the largest number of people who are living with or potentially facing
vision loss. School volunteers and students said the school, officially
known as the Filomen M. D'Agostino Greenberg Music School, was scrambling to
find temporary space in Manhattan -- a daunting challenge, given its limited
budget and Manhattan's high rents -- by late January to avoid canceling the
spring semester. Ms. Jones, they said, was scrambling to incorporate the
school as a nonprofit in order to organize its own finances and raise funds
as well as transfer its endowments and funding streams out of the Guild's
control. The school's revenue has come from its modest tuition, grants and
private fund-raising, as well as funding from the Guild, which also provided
space for the school. 'She's been trying to fight for the future of the
school and the survival of the school,' said David Malkin, a lawyer in
Manhattan, who helps the school with its endowment. 'What's going to happen
for them is uncertain,' he said of the school. 'They're hoping they'll find
a new home and sustaining support to continue their mission. The school has
been an unsung staple of New York City arts circles for decades, including
20 years of performances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and holiday
recitals at Midtown Manhattan office buildings. The blind teenage jazz
prodigy Matthew Whitaker is a student there and accomplished alumni include
the blind musician Jos? Feliciano, who is currently traveling in Vienna but
sent a statement recalling that the school helped him learn music
transcription and other skills. Mr. Feliciano called the Guild's decision to
no longer house the school 'callous. 'Perhaps they don't care anymore,' he
said. 'When you consider the school's benefits and how important and
meaningful it is to so many people, it's just very sad. The school serves
120 students, children and adults of varying musical levels. All students
attend part time, for lessons, classes and other services, including Braille
music transcription. In addition to several performance groups, the school
has an archive of roughly 25,000 Braille and large-print musical scores that
it said is second in size only to the collection held by the Library of
Congress. Losing their home has been particularly upsetting for students,
some of whom spoke of their disappointment in the Guild, which has long
promoted itself as a beacon of hope and an advocate for the blind. 'The
school has been such an empowering place and it's just so painful to see
these students being sent a message that blind education doesn't matter, and
that the school is not worth keeping open and they have no say in any of
it,' said Leona Godin, a former student. For more than a century the school
was part of Lighthouse International, which in 2013 merged with Jewish Guild
Healthcare to form the Lighthouse Guild. The Guild has also closed the
Harriet and Robert Heilbrunn School for students who are blind and have
other severe disabilities. Its 33 workers were laid off this month and its
53 students were placed in other schools. The music school is named after
its main benefactor, Filomen D'Agostino Greenberg, a self-taught stock
trader who died in 2000 when she was 101. Mr. Malkin is the director of the
Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation, which donates $100,000 a year to the
school, and had served on the guild's board of directors. But he said he
resigned from the board because he was so disturbed by its decision.
Regarding the students, he said, 'They are at risk for so many other things,
and to lose this resource and opportunity puts them even greater at risk.
After the holiday concert on Wednesday, one student, Daniel Gillen, 24,
tucked away his Braille choral music and picked up his long white cane. He
said he was hopeful that the school would find at least interim space.
'We're not going to be left on the sidelines,' he said.. PHOTOS: Dalia Sakas
conducted a choral group of students, teachers and volunteers from the
Filomen M. D'Agostino Greenberg Music School on Wednesday at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Leaving the museum afterward were Lisa Cantwell,
left, 53, with her dog Louie, 3, and George Ashiotis, 71, with his dog,
Pike, 5. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY HIROKO MASUIKE/THE NEW YORK TIMES).
the Terms of Use agreement that you electronically signed when you signed up
for NFB-NEWSLINE? Online. Please do not forward this E-mail or its
attachments to any other person or disseminate it in any manner. Thank you.
The NFB-NEWSLINE? Team.