The Clarke School for Hearing and Speech in Northampton, Massachusetts is downsizing due to changes in its student body, but it will continue to offer the same programs and services it does now. It has sold nearly all of its property to a Springfield real estate developer.
When The Clarke School opened in 1867, it was primarily a boarding school for elementary and high school students who were deaf or hard of hearing. There are now five Clarke schools around the country. President William Corwin says technological advances in equipment for hearing-impaired children have drastically shifted the age of his student body, and the length of time they study at the school.
"Digital hearing aids and now cochlear implants which give even profoundly deaf kids access to sound has really opened up opportunity for kids to really fully develop listening and spoken language skills on a level they never could have before. And that, along with newborn hearing screening, has dramatically changed how we work."
By kindergarten, Corwin says, many children are ready to "mainstream," or enter regular school classrooms alongside their hearing peers. As a result, the student body is about a quarter of the size it once was, and has become largely a day school rather than a boarding school. At the same time, he says Clarke has begun to use computers and telecommunication to serve students off-campus and around the world. — in China and the Middle East, for instance.
Corwin says the Northampton campus will consolidate into one building, and perhaps purchase one more building in the city.The remaining nine original buildings — including a gymnasium with an Olympic-size pool — were sold to Opal Real Estate of Springfield. The company says it will convert the property into an apartment complex with an emphasis on historic preservation.