'For dyslexics, there's not even a life raft'

Oct. 23—Trenton Bailey spends every day of his life using relatively simple solutions to knock back a complex issue in his life.

That issue is dyslexia, a reading comprehension malady that can yank printed words off a page — and pile-drive them into a ditch off the side of the road.

October is Dyslexia Awareness Month, and The Dominion Post has been profiling people affected by it.

If you have dyslexia, you're not going to see sentences the same way your classmates or neighbors see sentences.

Words can appear jumbled, or randomly blurry.

Individual letters might spin or undulate.

Sentences can pop in and out like a strobe, or be processed upside down by your eyes and your brain.

Now that he knows how to cope with it, Bailey, who studies engineering and physics at WVU, is both pragmatic and philosophical.

"Obviously, I'm reading a lot of highly technical material, " the 25-year-old graduate student said. "I just know that it's going to take me twice as long. I usually have to read every paragraph twice."

For him, as he says, it's a matter of managing resources.

That's why he and Jeff Bailey were at a meeting of the Monongalia County Board of Education two weeks ago.

The father and son were there to offer support, in the form of funding or mentoring opportunities, through the Bonnie Bailey Dyslexia Foundation, which they and friends founded in 2019.

It's named in honor of Jeff's wife and Trenton's mother, who lost her battle with cancer that year.

Speaking at the BOEmeeting Oct. 11, the Baileys said while Monongalia County's school district is working hard to help students with the disorder, it has neither the teachers — nor the direction — to get it done properly.

"This isn't rocket science, " said Trenton, who knows rocket science.

The Baileys offered—through the foundation and their own experiences—to help the school system better serve students with dyslexia.

So far, the Mon BOE has not accepted the offer.

According to the Bonnie Bailey Dyslexia Foundation, "48 % of the students in Monongalia County aren't reading on grade level. This is a crisis that needs to be addressed. The Bonnie Bailey Dyslexia Awareness Foundation intends to work with Monongalia County Board of Education and the rest of the state to achieve satisfactory reading levels."

'This is something we can do'

Trenton learned to read in third grade at Cheat Lake Elementary through the Orton-Gillingham Method, one of many teaching programs in the field that homes in on the brain's connection between words and sounds.

He was smart and was technically classified as both gifted and learning-disabled — "The only kid in the state with that designation, " Jeff Bailey said.

That status, ironically, his father said, led to Trenton's floundering at University High School in 2014.

Because of earlier test scores, though — the residuals of managed achievement — UHS wanted to bump him up to honors classes, Jeff said.

"It was a combination of things, " Trenton said.

"I had accommodating teachers but there was a lack of foundational understanding."

"This is what his life was like, " Jeff said. "He came home one day and he was mad. He swore the math teacher cheated him on a test."

The answer to the problem in dispute was 92, which Trenton knew, but his brain substituted the number 6 for the number 9 — and 62 was most definitely incorrect.

"Buddy, that's a 6."

"Oh."

In 2016, he graduated, on time and with honors, at the Gow School, an elite learning academy in upstate New York.

A pricey, elite learning academy.

Trenton said the Gow School has offered to carve out time, should a delegation of Mon teachers and administrators want to travel there for some mentoring to bring back home.

The two-fold mission, he said, is to better help students with dyslexia — while elevating the county's flagging reading scores at the same time.

"Not every family has the resources that mine does, " he said. "This is something we can do."

Getting a read on the situation One woman, a mother of two children with dyslexia who attend Mon schools, agrees with all of the above.

The Dominion Post is honoring her request for privacy, as she fears backlash from the district otherwise, she said. She's also a teacher, she said, but is currently not in the classroom.

"In 2022 alone, " she wrote to the newspaper, "our family has spent close to $7, 000 on programs the school should be providing for them [her children ] but is failing to do so."

Deputy Schools Superintendent Donna Talerico told The Dominion Post two weeks ago that while she wouldn't discuss specific students or families by name, the district does use Orton-Gillingham, along with Wilson Language Training and Barton — two other industry standard programs used in classrooms nationwide.

However, having the programs — but no trained teachers to administer them — means a stalled effort, the mom said.

One teacher and administrator from the central office, Amanda Cosner, who divides her time across the county as both a reading specialist and math specialist, is in the process of earning her Orton-Gillingham certification.

That's one-versus-1, 650, the author of the letter said. That's the number of current students in the district she says have been diagnosed with dyslexia.

Staffing issues, Talerico said, have dogged districts statewide since the pandemic. If a student presents with dyslexia, though, the student is properly tended to, the deputy superintendent said.

"It all comes down to our mission to help every student in our system succeed."

Of rising water — and reallocations Both the Baileys and the mother of the two dyslexic children don't doubt the sincerity of that statement or the overall caring and competence of Mon's teachers, they said.

There's a reason, they said, that Mon Schools regularly outpaces the rest of the state in overall test scores and other academic quality-of-life benchmarks.

Dyslexia, however, is daunting, they said.

It's a learning disorder not being properly addressed through the logistics of staffing, they added.

That puts the local district at odds, they said, with both the Americans with Disabilities Act and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

With mentoring from the Bonnie Bailey Dyslexia Foundation, plus a reallocation of funds through Mon Schools' $145 million operating budget — and regular screening for dyslexia — the district, the Bailey father and son said, could be a role model for the nation.

The mom, though, worries about the continuing picture, should no such interventions occur, here or elsewhere.

She likens the current circumstance to "a sinking ship, " she wrote — one that set sail with no evacuation plan.

"People are running around and working hard, but the water is rising, " she wrote.

"Monongalia County Schools plugs more holes than other counties, but at the end of the day plugging a few extra holes does not save anyone from drowning, " she continued.

"For dyslexics, there is not even a life raft."

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