It only took six minutes during Thursday night’s Trigg County Schools Board of Education meeting.
But in the end, a trio of high school DECA students — looking to make their “Not for One, But for Everyone” presentation a winning one at next week’s Regional Conference at Murray State University — brought considerable awareness to a critical issue on campus.
For disabled youths and adults, both in the school and in the community, the simplest tasks can actually be really difficult.
Anna said she, Caroline and Carter not only conducted discussions with students about using wheelchairs, but also reviewed the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and developed an action plan through guidance from the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Those barriers, Caroline said, are many:
+ The entrance to the main high school building, where an intercom button necessary to gain entry is not low enough for those sitting in a wheelchair;
+ The entrance to the main high school building, which also doesn’t have an automatic or power-assisted door for someone in a wheelchair, or with limited physical ability;
+ In fact, there is no automatic or power-assisted door in any of the buildings high school students use regularly on the campus;
+ Perdue Field, home of Wildcats football, also doesn’t have such doors for its restrooms;
+ Wheelchairs fit through classroom doors, but the rooms themselves don’t have a place for wheelchairs, nor is there a tabletop suitable for wheelchair users;
+ The tables and chairs in the high school science labs are tall, with no space for wheeled individuals to be accommodated;
+ The school’s cafeteria is designed to accommodate and feed students as fast as possible, but those in wheelchairs can’t move as quickly, encumbering lines;
+ And the Trigg County High School Gymnasium doesn’t have an elevator, though Caroline noted the trio was pleased to hear one will be installed prior to their graduation.
Bound to a wheelchair himself, and also Caroline’s brother, Carter experiences these problems daily. And while he, his friends and family have found solutions and workarounds, most of them are temporary — and it means others might be struggling with answers.
In order to share his part of the story, Carter used artificial intelligence and voice chat — noting that attending public high school in Cadiz, something he wants to do, simply comes with extra challenges as he makes his way through the buildings.
While there are many reasons one might have a wheelchair as a visitor or Trigg County resident, neuro-muscular diseases are particularly difficult to manage. According to Penn Medicine, the conditions affect skeletal muscles, peripheral nerves and/or neuromuscular junction.
And they can include a bevy of diagnoses including Lou Gehrig’s Disease, chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, Lambert-Eaton Syndrome, acute Muscular Dystrophies, Myasthenia Gravis, Myopathies and Peripheral Neuropathies.
With several of its parts constructed in the late 1960s, Trigg County Schools and its many officials over the years have been working toward ADA compliance and disabilities access.
