‘School for disabled’ gaining support
An increasing number of people were joining an online petition, Monday, to support the Seoul education office’s plan to build a special needs school in Gangseo, western Seoul.
More than 80,000 people signed the petition, launched by a group called “Citizens who love Gangseo-gu,” urging the related government authorities to promptly build the school on land formerly occupied by Kongjin Elementary School as outlined in an original plan in late 2013.
Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon also expressed strong support for the plan to build the school which 142 children will attend by 2019.
In his Facebook post, Cho said building the school is non-negotiable. “A special needs school is nothing like a nuclear plant or a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), an anti-missile system. It concerns basic human rights and could be the determining factor in deciding whether a person maintains a life or forfeits one.”
Society needs to halt discrimination on the basis of being disabled, the top educator added.
“The school needs to be considered not as something out of the ordinary but as part of an entire educational institution, just as people with disabilities should be considered as part of society.”
The comment came amid growing conflict between parents and residents there as the second — the latest — public hearing ended at Topsan Elementary School last Tuesday with no signs of compromise. The first hearing in July did not produce any results either.
In a video clip that recently went viral, about 50 parents and 10 residents faced each other for hours kneeling at the second hearing with more than 400 people attending including civic groups representing the disabled, parents with disabled children, Cho and Rep. Kim Sung-tae of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP).
Mothers in the clip sobbed and implored the residents to help their children receive an education near their homes, but their emotional pleading was met only with cynicism and derision by residents who told them not to “put on a show.”
The plan became a topic of public debate after Kim, a conservative politician won the district in the April general election last year after pledging to get a traditional Korean medicine hospital built there, which he claimed would help improve the district’s image and help it financially.
Kim won the votes of many constituents there who disliked what they considered “repulsive” institutions in their district. They claim the prices of their houses and land will plummet due to the negative image associated with a minority group.
However, the school, designed to take care of children with chronic medical conditions, is a desperately needed “last” educational institution for parents with mentally or physically challenged children, because most schools refuse to accept them, saying they “disturb regular classes and other students find them bothersome.”
Parents say building the school is the only way to educate their children, adding a lack of such schools leads many of them to spend up to three hours commuting every day.
In Gangseo-gu, there is only one such school which can only accept 100 children. Many of the 645 children in the district requiring special needs education are either left without any education or spend up to three hours commuting.
According to data from the Ministry of Education, as of April, out of 12,929 children with disabilities, only about a third, or 4,496, attend one of 30 special needs schools in 25 districts in Seoul. No special needs public school has been built since 2002 when Seoul Gyeongun School was built in Jongno-gu.
The number of students requiring special needs school education nearly doubled to 89,353 from 54,470 in 2002, while the number of such schools nationwide increased to 173 only up 37 from 136 during the same period.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare maintains that it has no plans to build a hospital in the district.
The ministry asked the Korea Health Industry Development Institute to conduct a feasibility study following a budget allocated to Kim in December last year.
However, the project was halted after the study concluded the SMOE-owned land, the use of which is limited only to educational purposes, does not have approval for building any medical institutions.
The ministry added it was notified by SMOE of its plan to build a special needs school on the land in March, and no other discussions followed to reverse that decision.