• staffing levels and expenditures from FY 1998-99 through FY 2001-02;
  
  
• enrollment at the residential school and in the youth and adult summer programs; and
  
  
• the extent to which the Department has implemented the objectives included in its May 2000 transition plan.
  
  

Program Expenditures

Center expenditures increased from $6.0 million in FY 1998-99 to $7.1 million in FY 2001-02, primarily because of expanded statewide outreach efforts. Spending for outreach services was $1.4 million in FY 2001-02.

Residential School Enrollment

Enrollment at the Center’s residential school, which is located in Janesville, increased from 62 students in the 1997-98 school year to 84 students in the 2001-02 school year. The Center serves students 3 to 21 years old from throughout the state. However, in December 2001, 1,128 students with visual impairments attended local public school districts.

The residential school serves primarily students with multiple disabilities, many of whom are severely disabled. With the exception of weekend transportation, its services are provided at no cost to local school districts. Overall, approximately 75 percent of students enrolled in the residential school have disabilities in addition to visual impairments. Consequently, many of these students require more special education services than those who have only visual impairments.

The Center’s transition plan includes a goal of expanding shortterm residential school enrollments in order to teach particular skills, such as orientation and mobility training, before students return to their local school districts. However, in the 2001-02 school year, only 3.6 percent of residential school students attended for 36 days or less. We include a recommendation for the Center to raise awareness of the opportunities for short-term enrollment.

Summer Programs

From 1999 through 2002, the Center supported 20 summer programs to teach youth with visual impairments skills such as orientation and mobility techniques.

The programs were targeted to the students’ needs, and feedback indicates that students and their parents were satisfied with the programs. However, the Center was unable to readily provide us with complete information about program contents, costs, or participation.

We include a recommendation for the Center to improve its oversight of the youth summer programs and to collect management information that could help it decide whether to expand specific summer opportunities.

The Center also does not have contact information for all parents of children with visual impairments, which prevents it from notifying these individuals about its summer programs and other outreach services. Local school districts have this contact information but are hesitant to share it with the Center because of confidentiality concerns.

We include a recommendation that the Department ensure the Center obtains parental contact information to enhance its outreach efforts.

Outreach Activities

Through December 2002, the Center made satisfactory progress in implementing many of the objectives associated with six transition plan areas we reviewed.

For example, it:

• provided four Braille workshops that were attended by 88 individuals from throughout the state;
  
  
• loaned, purchased, or produced 1,637 Braille and large-print books in 2002; and
  
  
• created six regional staff positions to facilitate and coordinate outreach services statewide to students with visual impairments.
  
  

In addition, the Center has worked with Silver Lake College in Manitowoc to address a shortage of teachers who provide educational services to students with visual impairments. In FY 2002-03, there were only 77 licensed vision teachers in Wisconsin’s public schools.

The Center does not expect to implement all of the transition plan’s objectives because the needs of students and educators have changed since the plan was developed three years ago. Education officials with whom we spoke, however, are generally satisfied with the Center’s outreach services.

Objectives of the transition plan included increasing the availability of assistive technology services and devices to students and teachers.

The Center’s expenditures for assistive technology devices increased from $26,700 in FY 1999-2000 to $170,400 in FY 2001-02. The Center loaned 1,025 assistive technology devices as of December 2002, and it hired an assistive technology specialist in November 2002 to provide technical assistance and training to students and educators. However, it fully completed only 1 of 13 specific objectives.

We identified other problems with the Center’s implementation of the transition plan’s objectives, including a lack of written policies for some outreach activities. We also recommend that more information about resources available to students and teachers be included on the Center’s Web site.

For Future Consideration

The Center has changed its focus from primarily serving students enrolled in the residential school to providing outreach services to students with visual impairments statewide. However, additional effort is needed to improve existing outreach services and to provide other services that are being considered but have not yet been offered.

Later this year, the Center anticipates completing a strategic plan in order to build on the transition plan efforts to date. We include a recommendation to establish specific goals that will allow the Center to measure its progress in meeting the objectives included in its strategic plan.

Recommendations

Our recommendations address the need for the Center to:

• raise awareness of short-term enrollment options at the residential school (p. 27);
  
  
• develop the capability to contact all parents of children with visual impairments; (p. 32);
  
  
• collect basic programmatic and financial information on its youth summer programs; (p. 32);
  
  
• develop written policies for its production of Braille and largeprint materials, charge out-ofstate requestors for production costs, and list available materials on its Web site (p. 42);
  
  
• develop written policies for lending assistive technology devices (p. 49); and
  
  
• provide to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, by October 2003, a strategic plan that sets program priorities and establishes specific goals against which the Center’s progress can be assessed (p. 53).