DYSLEXIA
TEACHER

Mother Sacrifices all
for Daughter's Literacy

Karen Hetmanski has a high school diploma, but her life has been a series of low-paying jobs and disappointments. At 37, she reads like a third-grader.

The Millers Island woman has launched a crusade - there really is no other word for it - to keep the same thing from happening to her daughter, Amanda Watts. Amanda, who will be 13 next month, can barely read.

"Education is very important to me, because I don't have an education," said the jobless Hetmanski, who has spent thousands of dollars on her cause and put her house up for sale. "That's why I am fighting so hard."

Blaming Baltimore County's schools for Amanda's failures and fed up with her lack of progress, Hetmanski took them to court to force them to help her child.

In July, Karen Hetmanski won, though her struggle is far from over. Administrative Law Judge Mary Shock wrote in a 19-page decision that "the gap between the Student's cognitive ability and her performance has widened rather than decreased during her school career.

I find the Student's de minimis educational progress to be the deciding factor in this case."

Amanda, who has attended public schools since kindergarten, has long taken special education courses, most recently at General John Stricker Middle School in Dundalk. In seventh grade, she has trouble recognizing words on the page, doesn't understand how sounds blend, doesn't know her multiplication tables.

Her diagnosis is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, with learning disabilities, with dyslexia. The learning problems have brought on emotional troubles, according to her mother and testimony. But, as Columbia psychologist Vincent P. Culotta testified, Amanda's disabilities aren't severe enough to keep her more than a grade or two behind her peers.

She's five grades behind now - and the gap only widens.

"Teaching her is a challenge," said Culotta, who has examined Amanda several times over the years, "but she certainly has the cognitive or mental capability to learn - that's quite clear."

Hetmanski went to a judge to get her child out of Baltimore County's hands, requesting that Amanda be sent to a private school for disabled children at the county's expense.

The first time she went, a year ago, the judge ruled in the schools' favor, saying Hetmanski should give them another chance.

The second time, though, she won - partly because of the absence of any academic progress, partly because Amanda was so traumatized by being teased about her poor reading that she had threatened to kill herself.

The judge ordered her placed in a private special education school - a move that will cost the county much more than it spends to educate students in its own buildings.

"This is a student the system has absolutely failed," said Hetmanski's attorney, Roger J. Sullivan. "There aren't too many cases I get too worked up over. I thought it was horrific."

The school system can appeal Shock's decision, though attorneys would not say whether they will.

No one with the school system would discuss the case in detail, citing privacy concerns, though its side is offered in court documents provided by Hetmanski. "Sometimes, parents and school systems don't always agree on what is appropriate," is all Lisa Y. Johnson, compliance coordinator for the school system, would say.

For Hetmanski - who went from Sparrows Point High School to a job sorting rags in a factory and later worked as a nursing assistant, there is no question about what is appropriate.

She wants to spare her daughter the humiliations she herself endured - like the time she took a placement test for community college and found it so hard she never went back for her score.

Or the time, last year, she wanted computer training but was told she'd have to learn to read first.

Nothing about Amanda's tale is simple. She has been out of formal school since that day last January when she threatened to commit suicide and a doctor insisted she not return.

She has been schooled at home - 6 1/2 hours a week, basically one full school day - by a teacher paid by the county.

Her mother, though, set out to prove false what she calls Baltimore County's contention that Amanda can't learn. "I figured, if this kid couldn't do anything, I would give up," she said.

She enrolled her daughter in Sylvan Learning Center in Bel Air. Amanda also goes once a week to the Scottish Rite Childhood Language Center in Baltimore for tutoring with a speech pathologist.

Mother and daughter take literacy courses at Towson University on Thursday nights.

Amanda is almost ready to read at a second-grade level, Nancy Rini, who runs the Sylvan center in Bel Air, told Hetmanski on a recent visit. Amanda is working on sight words, punctuation, adding an s to make words plural, very basic comprehension. In school, she'd be in the seventh grade - in the eighth grade, if she hadn't repeated fifth grade.

"It seems like she's beginning to enjoy reading," Rini said. "We're just encouraging her to keep up the good work."

In 33 hours of reading work at Sylvan, Rini said, Amanda has progressed through nearly an entire school year's worth of work.

"We get kids of all ages and all levels," she said later. "It's the unusual student that is that far behind, five grade levels behind."

All of these extras are costing Hetmanski money she doesn't have.

Every time she took Amanda to Culotta for testing, it was hundreds more dollars. She has financed 180 hours of tutoring at Sylvan, taking out a loan that will cost her $17,693 by the time it's paid off.

Towson costs money. Her lawyer costs money. "I have taken all my equity out of the house," Hetmanski said. "I can't afford the payments. I've done everything to try to get this kid an education."

Between visits by a reporter, a "For Sale" sign appeared in Hetmanski's yard. If she can sell her small house, she figures, she and her girls will move in with her mother, down the road.

Amanda's two sisters - 8-year-old twins - read better than both their mother and their older sister, Hetmanski said.

Baltimore County's experts testified that Amanda was making progress in school but that progress was halted when Hetmanski pulled her out, according to court documents.

Still, a few acknowledged that she was not performing as well as they would like. When the judge said Amanda had to be sent to a private school, Hetmanski planned to enroll her at the school run by Kennedy Krieger Institute, which has 200 students, ages 6 to 21, with a range of disabilities.

It was her first choice and the one Culotta referred to by name in front of the judge.

Last year, Baltimore County sent 54 students to Kennedy Krieger's school, paying an average of $54,560 per child, said school system spokesman Charles A. Herndon. It costs about $27,000 a year to educate someone like Amanda in the public schools.

The school system, Hetmanski said, instead dragged its feet, hoping she would choose St. Elizabeth's School in Baltimore. Last year, the school system sent 23 students there, where the price tag is $37,000 a year per child.

St. Elizabeth's, which has a place for Amanda, focuses too much on career skills, Hetmanski said. "How can you teach a kid how to dye hair, if they can't read the directions?" she asked.

Amanda has been on Kennedy Krieger's waiting list since September. It's unclear how long she could have to wait until an appropriate spot opens up, though seven spots are expected to be available after Thanksgiving, said Julie Lincoln, a spokeswoman for the institute.

The arrangement for the home-school teacher provided by the county expired last week, said Sullivan, the attorney. Sullivan said he keeps pushing Hetmanski to choose St. Elizabeth's, just to get Amanda into school.

Culotta agrees. "I'm just not sure she's going to be able to piece together a program that will benefit" Amanda, he said.

Still, Hetmanski won't budge. "This kid wanted to be a veterinarian or work with computers," Hetmanski said. "Well, that kind of stuff takes knowledge. They told me I should set my priorities lower."

At the kitchen table recently, Amanda and home-school teacher Eve Powers worked on a plastic foam model of the solar system. Amanda was painting a large orange ball. Asked which planet that was, she just shrugged. Her teacher chimed in, "Jupiter."

Amanda's not thrilled to be at home instead of with others her age. When she goes to cheerleading, which Hetmanski chose so Amanda could hang out with other girls, she has to be with the younger kids because she can't read the more advanced cheers.

"Boring," is how she describes life these days - "24-7 with your mother and a teacher and no friends." But she is grateful for what she sees her mother doing for her. "People don't do that for other people," she said.

.....

With many thanks to the informative news source The Baltimore Sun (November 11th 2001).