Cleary School for the Deaf Celebrates
A Century of Educational Leadership
The Moving Up ceremony for Pre-K and second grade students was a great kickoff to 100th anniversary celebrations at the Cleary School for the Deaf.
The June 20 ceremony at the Nesconset campus featured a graduation march as parents and other relatives waved paddles with photos of their daughters and sons, and faculty and administrators saluted the young students. “Today, we gather to celebrate a team of superheroes—our amazing Pre-K and second grade students—who are moving up and soaring higher than ever before,” said Assistant Principal Josie Garcia.
Mackenzie and Christopher Cardinale watched proudly as their young daughter, Murphy, joined her classmates moving forward after a Pre-K year filled with growth. “The teachers are absolutely amazing,” Mackenzie Cardinale said. “They made Murphy love going to school.”
Murphy, who enters Kindergarten this fall at a local public school in St. James, first came to Cleary School as a baby to join her mother in the Parent Infant Program, or PIP. More than 95 percent of those who are born deaf are children of hearing parents, and the program offers a nurturing, family-focused environment for children from birth to three years old who are deaf or hard of hearing.
This year, Murphy and her Pre-K classmates learned to advocate for themselves, which benefits them as they move on to public school classrooms where they may be the only deaf or hard of hearing students, her mother said.
In her classroom, Murphy was placed with a hearing role model, a pairing that helps to facilitate better conversation skills. “Some of the hearing role models are her best friends,” Mrs. Cardinale said.
The actual 100th anniversary celebrations of the Cleary School for the Deaf were a June 23 barbecue and “Walk Down Memory Lane” at the Nesconset campus followed by a gala the next evening at Watermill Caterers in Smithtown.
The Cleary School is a private, state-supported program serving the deaf community of Long Island since 1925. It offers numerous programs and services for deaf children and their families at five sites in Suffolk County, including Nesconset and four in the East Islip Public School District, to which Cleary belongs.
Jacqueline Simms, Cleary’s executive director and principal, says her school is “trying to get equal, if not better, education for kids who are deaf and hard of hearing. That’s what I want, and I think we’re doing it…I’m very pleased with what we’re coming up with.”
Cleary School offers an integrated model, from kindergarten through high school, where deaf and hard of hearing students typically learn alongside hearing students in a listening and spoken language program. “They learn how to speak from them, they learn how to hear from them, they learn how to learn from their peers in these settings,” Simms said.
Other students are able to take advantage of instruction featuring American Sign Language during their school years.
Cleary School began when Rosemary Cleary, the founder and first director/principal, opened Camp Peter Pan, the first summer camp for the deaf in the United States. Cleary, a Brooklyn native who taught at
St. Joseph’s School for the Deaf in the Bronx for 20 years, was joined on the staff by several of her sisters.
In 1960, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, now Catholic Charities of Long Island, legally assumed sponsorship and ownership of the Cleary Deaf Child Center Inc. From 1960 to 1970, Catholic Charities supplemented state funds and provided capital improvements at the school.
The Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood served on the school staff and fulfilled administrative responsibilities for many years. In 2005, Sister Catherine Fitzgibbon, C.S.J., retired as superintendent, ending a 36-year tenure with Cleary.
CCLI’s Chief Executive Officer Michael E. Smith serves on the board of the Cleary School for the Deaf, and Chief Financial Officer Richard Balcom serves as vice president of the board of the Cleary Foundation for the Deaf Inc.
“Catholic Charities is proud of our association with the Cleary School for the Deaf and all the good it has done for deaf community over the past 100 years,” Smith said. “We hope its caring work continues to make a positive difference in the lives of many more generations of students and their families.”
If you would like to learn more about the groundbreaking work the Cleary School for the Deaf has accomplished for 100 years and counting, please visit Cleary School for the Deaf website.