A’s Despite His Eyes

GRANADA HILLS â€”  All the students in Vonceil Allford’s English class open their books and a few of them read aloud.

Well, almost all of them. One sits at the back of the Granada Hills High classroom, staring at nothing in particular and trying to absorb every word. All David Haas can do is listen carefully.

“Most of the time, I have to picture in my mind what they are saying, and I’m able to learn that way,� said David, a 17-year-old senior.

David is among a growing number of legally blind students who attend mainstream classes in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Their ranks have more than doubled from 400 in 1982 to 900 this year, said Joy Efron, coordinator of the district’s visually impaired program. Two-thirds have other disabilities in addition to their visual impairment, she said.

Of the total, about 100 attend Frances Blend School for the legally blind in Hollywood.

The remainder of visually impaired students are assigned on-site or visiting teachers who check their progress, Efron said.

“It’s important to mainstream them as soon as possible,� she said. “They need to sooner or later enter the mainstream world.�

The school district admitted the first blind child to a regular kindergarten in 1915, Efron said. In 1950, it built the Frances Blend campus to serve blind students, and in the next few decades the district intensified its mainstreaming programs.

It provides several tools to help visually impaired students succeed in regular classrooms, Efron said, including a device David uses called Braille-Lite that projects text onto a computer screen, and cassette players that allow students to listen to taped lectures and books on tape.

“David is the perfect example that legally blind children can function perfectly in a conventional setting,� she said.

David’s friends and teachers agree, saying he has proven he can hold his own by taking advanced and honor classes, although he has to work twice as hard to complete his homework.

After a full day of classes, David goes home and takes a short break. He then sets up his “reading machine,� which looks like a giant microscope. He places a sheet under a lens and reads his textbooks a word or two at a time on a computer monitor.

“Studying can take hours and hours. It takes me a while just going through one sentence,� he said. “I sometimes spend all night studying, but who needs sleep, huh?�

His sleepless nights have paid off. David has maintained an A average through most of high school. A quick memory also helps, since he sometimes has to memorize lectures, notes and speeches at the last minute.

“Attending a school for the blind has never been a question,� he said. “I push myself more and more every day. I just want to be like anybody else.�

His parents and younger brother support his decision to attend a university in California and major in either engineering or physics.

His friends are always happy to see his tall and husky frame walking toward them from a distance. They recognize his warm smile and see him carrying his backpack and heavy suitcase that holds his reading machine.

But being blind has never been a disability for him, he said. It just means a little extra work. David was born with a condition that permits him to see only vague shapes, and he recognizes friends mostly by their voices.

When he gets together with his friends, he jokes about his blindness to put them at ease. Sometimes he asks other students for the time. There is a clock right there, they say, pointing to the nearest wall.

“I can’t see,� he says.

“What do you mean you can’t see?� they ask him. They take a closer look, see his green eyes shaking uncontrollably and ask him, “What’s going on?�

Some of his friends share his sense of humor.

“He is a really cool guy and tutors me in physics,� said 16-year-old junior Rochelle Watkins. “He can’t see what you look like, so he can’t discriminate.�

Robert Elias, 17, said David has inspired him to become a better student, encouraging him when he does not feel like doing homework. In return, Robert shows David a little bit about mainstream life.

“Sometimes he calls me and asks me if I want to go see a movie,� Robert said. “I say, ‘Dude, you can’t see.’ But he can, if we sit in the mid or front rows.�

Joseph Vanderway, David’s physics teacher, said David is one of the brightest students he has known. He has to follow his intuition rather than sight and “is right most of the time,� Vanderway said.

“I just keep up with everybody else,� David said. “I can’t see, but I can still do things.�