The Orange County Department of Education has accepted the challenge of providing quality education for Deaf and Hard of Hearing students, grades seven through twelve.  Guaranteed access to a regionalized setting provides many educational, social, and emotional advantages for students.

The Orange County Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program is located within the Irvine Unified School District at Venado Middle School, and University High School in Irvine; the program serves over 165 Deaf students living in 28 school districts throughout Orange County.  Students have the opportunity to be mainstreamed in general education classes with their hearing peers or to spend most of their day in special classes designed for Deaf and Hard of Hearing students.

Without Orange County’s regional effort, each of the 28 school districts would be responsible for creating small, individual Deaf programs and would compete for a limited number of specialists, including skilled sign language interpreters; speech and language therapists; psychologists; counselors; and audiologists who are trained in Deaf education.  However, by pooling their economic resources into one regionalized effort, the districts provide Deaf and Hard of Hearing students and their families with a richer, more effective comprehensive educational environment.

The advantages of regionalized programming are many.  Having 115 Deaf students at the high school and 52 students in grades six through eight provides opportunities for Orange County Deaf students to feel pride in themselves as members of the community as well as to feel comfortable and knowledgeable in working and socializing with their peers.

In fact, Deaf and Hard of Hearing students feel that their school provides them with the best of both worlds.  For example, there are enough Deaf students to compose a junior National Association of the Deaf chapter, play in the Deaf Basketball Tournament, compete in the Deaf Academic Bowl, and organize special Deaf assemblies. 

In addition, students can participate in extracurricular activities, varsity sports, and student government with their peers.  This kind of programming provides young people with self-esteem and pride in their Deafness along with the confidence, experience, and knowledge that they can accomplish anything a hearing student can.

Regional educational programs can prevent unnecessary duplication of essential support services.  With the monies collected and monitored by the Orange County Department of Education as a consortium for the districts, the regional Deaf program is staffed with a site administrator, a program psychologist, guidance counselor, career education specialist, mainstream resource coordinator, two audiologists, three speech therapists, 17 full-time interpreters, 17 teachers (seven of whom are Deaf,) and 19 instructional assistants.  All of these support personnel are trained in Deaf education and are required to sign fluently.  This type of program helps to establish continuity in the curriculum and produces educational programming that has led to academic scores that average two to three years better than the national norms across the curriculum.

The Orange County Department of Education Deaf and Hard of Hearing Program has been recognized as a model of regionalized programming nationwide.  Colleges such as Gallaudet University, National Technical Institute of the Deaf, and California State University at Northridge come to recruit students at University High School several times annually. Our students go on to attend four year colleges, community colleges, vocational training programs or transition to our Career Adult Program located at Coastline ROP in Costa Mesa.