The face of budget cuts: Jessica wanted to study with students more like her, but that hope was slashed with the Hospital School’s funding
By Vivian Nereim, Boston Globe Correspondent, August 15, 2009
A friendly girl with almond-shaped eyes and a soft smile, Jessica Fiasconaro loves to belt out songs on her karaoke machine, and she once played Gabriella in a production of “High School Musical.’’ But when some of her peers look at her, all they see is her wheelchair.
Jessica has cerebral palsy, and while she has made her way through Bourne Middle School with all the aplomb an 11-year-old can muster, it has not been easy.
“I don’t know,’’ she said. “I’m just different from the other kids.’’
Last winter, when her Sagamore Beach family discovered a state-run institution that provides free care and education to children like her, her world opened up, until she was told she could not be admitted because of a state budget cut. She was placed on a waiting list.
Jessica’s story is but one example of how budget cuts are quietly rippling across the state, hurting families such as hers in profound ways. Many aspects of this year’s budget battle made headlines: the clash over the zoo funding, the fate of health care for legal immigrants, the rancor over the increase in the sales tax. But across Massachusetts, there are deeply personal stories like this one that make clear the gravity of the fiscal crisis.
The Massachusetts Hospital School in Canton was critically affected by its $491,000 budget cut. It had to fire 13 staff members, close a residential ward, and temporarily freeze admissions earlier this summer.
“We’ve been hunting for years, and this was the best place we saw,’’ said Jessica’s grandmother, Marie Cheney. “She’s desperately in need of their services.’’
Jessica’s mother, Elizabeth Cheney, a single mother who works as a house cleaner and has developed back problems from lifting her daughter, said she believed that the Hospital School would give Jessica the care she deserves.
And Jessica said the school would be a better place for her.
“I would have kids that are like me,’’ she said. “And it’s accessible, and I wouldn’t feel different or left out.’’
Because the Hospital School is a chronic care facility, the admission process is slow, but 12 to 15 patients are typically accepted each year, said Katherine A. Chmiel, the Hospital School’s chief executive officer. The school serves 75 residential and 24 day patients between the ages of 7 and 22.
Marie Cheney said her family was told there were 33 children on the waiting list.
Chmiel could not confirm that number, but she said the list reflects an increasing number of needy families, not just the budget cut.
Admissions are no longer frozen, Chmiel said, but she added that the Hospital School must work on a one-patient-out, one-patient-in basis to avoid discharging anyone prematurely and that it is unlikely new patients will start at the Hospital School this September.
So Jessica expects to enter sixth grade at Bourne Middle School this fall.
Her English classes come easily to her, but tasks like opening doors do not. Some of her peers are kind, but some can be cruel. Jessica’s grandmother said that several years ago, a bully paid children $1 each to call her names and throw sticks and stones at her on the playground.
“It just gets harder and harder,’’ said Elizabeth Cheney. “And now that she’s gotten older, we’ve been more and more isolated.’’
For Jessica, the Hospital School is a haven. “You just walk up to a door and it opens for you,’’ she said.
She loves to swim, and she is enamored of the school’s 25-meter heated swimming pool, complete with a ramp. The 165-acre campus holds countless other marvels for her. There are 213 staff members to attend to students, and 140 recreational programs. A stable on the grounds houses about a dozen horses for therapeutic riding.
And the school hosts a prom for older students, held at a local restaurant.
“The girls get dressed up in their beautiful gowns,’’ said Chmiel.
The institution is run by the Department of Public Health, but expenses such as the horses are subsidized by the Hospital School Foundation, a nonprofit that raises donations for, among other things, a graduation trip to Disney World.
On Thursday at the Hospital School, patients in a cooking class waited for a chocolate pie to finish baking and, in the recreation center, a speaker blasted a patient-run radio station playing acoustic pop phenom Jason Mraz.
In the cybercafé, also paid for by donations, 19-year-old John Mariani of East Taunton played video games with a friend.
“This place has helped me grow in my independence,’’ he said. “I love it, because I have a lot of friends here.’’
“It’s so sad that some of these kids aren’t able to have the opportunity that our kids have,’’ said Kathleen Douglass of Cambridge, whose 21-year-old daughter is a day patient.
“In the regular public school system, she was made to feel freakish,’’ Douglass said. “I could just see her self-esteem was being eroded.’’
Elizabeth Cheney hopes that Jessica will never lose the confidence she has nurtured, but she worries.
“Right now she’s so outgoing and personable,’’ Cheney said. “I don’t want to wait until she’s crushed emotionally.’’
Jessica’s own hopes are simpler. This year, she wants to be able to open her classroom doors and go on field trips with other students.
A friendly girl with almond-shaped eyes and a soft smile, Jessica Fiasconaro loves to belt out songs on her karaoke machine, and she once played Gabriella in a production of “High School Musical.’’ But when some of her peers look at her, all they see is her wheelchair.
Jessica has cerebral palsy, and while she has made her way through Bourne Middle School with all the aplomb an 11-year-old can muster, it has not been easy.
“I don’t know,’’ she said. “I’m just different from the other kids.’’
Last winter, when her Sagamore Beach family discovered a state-run institution that provides free care and education to children like her, her world opened up, until she was told she could not be admitted because of a state budget cut. She was placed on a waiting list.
Jessica’s story is but one example of how budget cuts are quietly rippling across the state, hurting families such as hers in profound ways. Many aspects of this year’s budget battle made headlines: the clash over the zoo funding, the fate of health care for legal immigrants, the rancor over the increase in the sales tax. But across Massachusetts, there are deeply personal stories like this one that make clear the gravity of the fiscal crisis.
The Massachusetts Hospital School in Canton was critically affected by its $491,000 budget cut. It had to fire 13 staff members, close a residential ward, and temporarily freeze admissions earlier this summer.
“We’ve been hunting for years, and this was the best place we saw,’’ said Jessica’s grandmother, Marie Cheney. “She’s desperately in need of their services.’’
Jessica’s mother, Elizabeth Cheney, a single mother who works as a house cleaner and has developed back problems from lifting her daughter, said she believed that the Hospital School would give Jessica the care she deserves.
And Jessica said the school would be a better place for her.
“I would have kids that are like me,’’ she said. “And it’s accessible, and I wouldn’t feel different or left out.’’
Because the Hospital School is a chronic care facility, the admission process is slow, but 12 to 15 patients are typically accepted each year, said Katherine A. Chmiel, the Hospital School’s chief executive officer. The school serves 75 residential and 24 day patients between the ages of 7 and 22.
Marie Cheney said her family was told there were 33 children on the waiting list.
Chmiel could not confirm that number, but she said the list reflects an increasing number of needy families, not just the budget cut.
Admissions are no longer frozen, Chmiel said, but she added that the Hospital School must work on a one-patient-out, one-patient-in basis to avoid discharging anyone prematurely and that it is unlikely new patients will start at the Hospital School this September.
So Jessica expects to enter sixth grade at Bourne Middle School this fall.
Her English classes come easily to her, but tasks like opening doors do not. Some of her peers are kind, but some can be cruel. Jessica’s grandmother said that several years ago, a bully paid children $1 each to call her names and throw sticks and stones at her on the playground.
“It just gets harder and harder,’’ said Elizabeth Cheney. “And now that she’s gotten older, we’ve been more and more isolated.’’
For Jessica, the Hospital School is a haven. “You just walk up to a door and it opens for you,’’ she said.
She loves to swim, and she is enamored of the school’s 25-meter heated swimming pool, complete with a ramp. The 165-acre campus holds countless other marvels for her. There are 213 staff members to attend to students, and 140 recreational programs. A stable on the grounds houses about a dozen horses for therapeutic riding.
And the school hosts a prom for older students, held at a local restaurant.
“The girls get dressed up in their beautiful gowns,’’ said Chmiel.
The institution is run by the Department of Public Health, but expenses such as the horses are subsidized by the Hospital School Foundation, a nonprofit that raises donations for, among other things, a graduation trip to Disney World.
On Thursday at the Hospital School, patients in a cooking class waited for a chocolate pie to finish baking and, in the recreation center, a speaker blasted a patient-run radio station playing acoustic pop phenom Jason Mraz.
In the cybercafé, also paid for by donations, 19-year-old John Mariani of East Taunton played video games with a friend.
“This place has helped me grow in my independence,’’ he said. “I love it, because I have a lot of friends here.’’
“It’s so sad that some of these kids aren’t able to have the opportunity that our kids have,’’ said Kathleen Douglass of Cambridge, whose 21-year-old daughter is a day patient.
“In the regular public school system, she was made to feel freakish,’’ Douglass said. “I could just see her self-esteem was being eroded.’’
Elizabeth Cheney hopes that Jessica will never lose the confidence she has nurtured, but she worries.
“Right now she’s so outgoing and personable,’’ Cheney said. “I don’t want to wait until she’s crushed emotionally.’’
Jessica’s own hopes are simpler. This year, she wants to be able to open her classroom doors and go on field trips with other students.
