Leaders break ground on co-location for schools serving blind and visually impaired, deaf students

Gov. Eric Holcomb and leaders from the Indiana School for the Deaf and the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired broke ground Thursday on a project to join the two schools on one campus.

The project has been in the works for years. And it will still take years to complete. The new colocation, on the campus of the School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, won’t open to students from both schools until 2028.

The schools serve hundreds of students on campus.

Holcomb praised the collaboration and cooperation between the schools for getting the project to this point.

“To really build something special — something that is world class, something that is state-of-the-art,” Holcomb said. “Something that will, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say, become the envy of the nation.”

School for the Deaf Superintendent David Geeslin, who is deaf, said he looks forward to leading the new campus with his counterpart at the School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, James Michaels, who is blind.

“Through our leadership, they’ll see they could become an architect; they could become a superintendent,” Geeslin said, signing and speaking through an interpreter. “They could become the next governor. There are no limits put on them.”

The firms designing the new campus are consulting a blind architect and deaf architect throughout the process.

Brandon is our Statehouse bureau chief. Contact him at bsmith@ipbs.org or follow him on Twitter at @brandonjsmith5.