FAD President's Blog Archives

March 2011 Spring is here and I want to wish you a belated Happy New Year! The year 2011 has been hectic so far but exciting things are happening! We had a board meeting on January 29, 2011 at the Villages. We voted to hire a lobbyist to work on several bills. The Bill of Rights for Deaf Children is going through the state House of Representatives and Senate! Rep. Elaine Schwartz, D-Hollywood and Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood are the main sponsors for the bill. You can track those bills on the Florida House of Representatives and Senate websites. The numbers are House Bill 1385 and Senate Bill 1584. http://www.myfloridahouse.gov/sections/bills/billsdetail.aspx?BillId=46565&SessionIndex=-1&SessionId=66&BillText=&BillNumber=1385&BillSponsorIndex=0&BillListIndex=0&BillStatuteText=&BillTypeIndex=0&BillReferredIndex=0&HouseChamber=H&BillSearchIndex=0 http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2011/1584 We will let you know if it is time to encourage your state Representatives and Senators to vote for this bill. The Education committee has been working hard on this bill. Kudos goes to Tami Hossler, Jennifer Hoff and Lissette Molina-Wood. Chris Wagner, our legislative liaison is also assisting us in the process. The board also voted to support three other bills which will be brought up at next year's session. One is the bill to change the wording on the Telecommunications Act which gave us the distribution of TTYS. The Florida Telecommunications Relay, Inc. reports that only six TTYs were distributed in the state of Florida in 2010. CapTel is still distributed but we all agree that this law needs to be amended to add wireless and internet based technology. The other two bills are Sign Language Interpreter Regulation and Visual Smoke alarms. Allan H. Karp and his Housing committee met with Erich Schwenker from the Cardinal Capital Management company to discuss building Senior Citizen Housing in Palm Beach County. The Housing Project in Arizona is supposed to open this summer and Florida is next! Last February, Vice President Lissette Molina-Wood and I attended the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention conference in Atlanta. Tami Hossler, a parent has been guiding us and we met with the Florida state coordinator for the EDHI program. We are in touch with the person responsible for the early Steps program. We would like to see deaf mentors involved in working with families who have deaf or hard of hearing children. Deaf Awareness Day is on April 30, 2011 at Wellington High School. We had several fundraisers to earn money for this event: the movie Black Sand, a murder mystery dinner and donations from instruction classes at the Fred Astaire Dance Academy. Hilary Ainbender and her committee are working hard for this event. For more information, please check our website and register for this exciting day! www.fadcentral.org I have been working on the Medical Interpreting issue. Some hospitals are willing to provide interpreters but others are not. Some hospitals are starting to use the Video Remote Interpreters. I have contacted the Florida Hospital Association, the National Association of the Deaf and two lawyers to discuss this issue. If you or anyone you know are denied interpreters, please let me know. You can contact me at june@fadcentral.org. Please keep documentation of dates and other vital information such as the name of hospital. You can also contact your local Deaf Service Center to ask them to advocate for you. It is time to do "the call for our biennial conference". The 43rd Florida Association of the Deaf conference will be on June 29-July 3, 2011 at the World Golf Village in St. Augustine. Cindy D' Angelo and her committee have been working hard for an exciting conference. Howard Rosenblum the new CEO of the National Association of the Deaf will be our keynote speaker. Please check the website for more information at:  www.fadcentral.org The next board meeting will be on Saturday, April 2, 2011 at 9 am at the Palm Beach Association of the Deaf. Please encourage your affiliate representative to attend. Visitors are always welcome. November 2010 The time is really passing by so quickly especially when we are having fun! I attended the Florida School for the Deaf 125th anniversary last October and the FAD had a booth during the Fun Day. It was great to see many old friends! I enjoyed hearing stories from alumni especially the two women who rode to St. Augustine with me. Rebie Sasser whose husband Ralph was a former president of FAD and Carolyn Phelps told me wonderful stories about what it was like in the 1930s and 1940s. They lived in Miami and went home only for the holidays in December and the summer. Interstate 95 and the Florida Turnpike were not built yet. Vice President Lissette Molina and I had a meeting with Tami Hossler and Jennifer Hoff and we discussed issues in education of the deaf and hard of hearing. We discussed the possibility of having a Bill of Rights for Deaf Children. The movie Black Sand will be shown on January 9, 2011 in the Lake Worth Theater. This is a fundraiser for the FAD and I would like to thank Hilary Ainbender, the FAD secretary for chairing this event. Allan H. Karp, the chair of the Housing Committee informed me that we will have a meeting on January 12 with the Cardinal Capital Management Company. They are now building Senior Citizen Housing in Arizona and we hope that they will be able to work with us in Florida. The FAD Board meeting will be on January 29, 2011 in The Villages and I would like to thank Louis Schwarz, the president of the Tri City Association of the Deaf for obtaining a room.  TCAD is also interested in hosting the FAD conference in 2013. FAD will have a booth at the Deaf Nation Expo in Miami on February 5, 2011. We will have information about the conference and Wet and Wild event. Please remember that you need to be a member to get the early bird rate (before Jan. 30) for the combo ticket at the FAD conference on June 30-July 3, 2011 in St. Augustine. Have a wonderful holiday season and Happy New Year!