The Instructional Services division provides educational programs for the deaf, blind, and deaf-blind children of Utah. It provides residential, daytime, and extension programs in a number of locations throughout the state. The following areas represent the broad cost areas within the division of Instruction.
Teacher Consultant Program: The Teacher Consultant Program provides regular classroom teachers in the school districts with assistance on how to best meet the educational needs of hearing or visually impaired students.
Educational Resource Center: The Educational Resource Center provides materials and equipment to every instructional program throughout the state that has a hearing or visually impaired student. Services include: captioned films for the hearing impaired; braille, large print, and recorded materials; a professional book collection related to sensory impairment; a parent resource library; a textbook depository; visual aids and teaching aids that support the curriculum; and books for recreational reading at appropriate reading levels.
Parent Infant Program: The Parent Infant Program provides home based vision and hearing services to families with children who are sensory impaired from birth through three years of age.
Deafblind Services: USDB provides services to individuals with dual sensory impairments from birth through age 21. Consultants provide services statewide. Services include, but are not limited to, training, technical assistance, mentoring, teaching and interacting techniques, curricula and learning environment modifications and adaptations, the use of appropriate communication systems, etc.
Self-Contained Classrooms and Consultant Services: In addition to the programs detailed above, USDB operates many self-contained classrooms throughout the state. USDB also provides consultant services to deaf, blind or deaf-blind students who remain in their local school districts for their education. The self-contained and consultant services represent the largest portion of USDB operations. USDB established geographical service regions (North, Central, and South) for the School for the Deaf and School for the Blind.
Utah State Instructional Materials Access Center (USIMAC): USIMAC is a state extension service of the National Instructional Materials Access Center (NIMAC), which was created under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act in 2004. NIMAC is a federally-funded, national electronic file repository that makes National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) files available for the production of core print instructional materials in specialized formats. These formats, such as braille, audio, or digital text, are developed on behalf of qualifying blind, visually-impaired or print-disabled students in elementary or secondary schools. NIMAC receives source files in NIMAS format from textbook publishers, and makes these files available for download to authorized users. USIMAC has been designated as the authorized user for the State of Utah and it is funded through the USDB line item. An important note by NIMAS regarding these source files is that they are not student-ready files that can be handed off directly to a student in the classroom. In order to create the braille, audio, digital text, or other format, appropriate technology and training are necessary to convert files into the finished product. USIMAC has been created within the State of Utah in order to fulfill this federal requirement. USIMAC was first funded in the 2008 General Session. (Source information: USDB administration and NIMAC.)
General services provided by USDB include early detection and diagnosis, family support and intervention, core curriculum, additional and adapted core subjects, and transition services for those students progressing to higher education institutions.
During the 2015 General Session, the Legislature appropriated for Fiscal Year 2016, $15,127,300 from all sources for Instructional Services. This is a 4.8 percent increase from Fiscal Year 2015 revised estimated amounts from all sources. The total includes $13,033,800 from the General/Education Funds, an increase of 5.1 percent from revised Fiscal Year 2015 estimates.
In addition to statewide compensation and internal service fund cost increases, the following appropriation adjustments were made during the 2015 General Session:
Prior to FY 2014, nonlapsing balances for Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind were recorded in Support Services. Going forward, nonlapsing balances are being broken out at the program level.
COBI contains unaudited data as presented to the Legislature by state agencies at the time of publication. For audited financial data see the State of Utah's Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports.