The face of budget cuts ...
Jessica wanted to study with students more like her, but that hope was slashed with the Hospital School’s funding.
A friendly girl with almond-shaped eyes and a soft smile, Jessica Fiasconaro loves to belt out songs on her karaoke machine, and she once played Gabriella in a production of “High School Musical.’’ But when some of her peers look at her, all they see is her wheelchair.
Jessica has cerebral palsy, and while she has made her way through Bourne Middle School with all the aplomb an 11-year-old can muster, it has not been easy.
“I don’t know,’’ she said. “I’m just different from the other kids.’’
Last winter, when her Sagamore Beach family discovered a state-run institution that provides free care and education to children like her, her world opened up, until she was told she could not be admitted because of a state budget cut. She was placed on a waiting list.
Jessica’s story is but one example of how budget cuts are quietly rippling across the state, hurting families such as hers in profound ways. Many aspects of this year’s budget battle made headlines: the clash over the zoo funding, the fate of health care for legal immigrants, the rancor over the increase in the sales tax. But across Massachusetts, there are deeply personal stories like this one that make clear the gravity of the fiscal crisis.
The Massachusetts Hospital School in Canton was critically affected by its $491,000 budget cut. It had to fire 13 staff members, close a residential ward, and temporarily freeze admissions earlier this summer.
“We’ve been hunting for years, and this was the best place we saw,’’ said Jessica’s grandmother, Marie Cheney. “She’s desperately in need of their services.’’
Jessica’s mother, Elizabeth Cheney, a single mother who works as a house cleaner and has developed back problems from lifting her daughter, said she believed that the Hospital School would give Jessica the care she deserves.
And Jessica said the school would be a better place for her.
“I would have kids that are like me,’’ she said. “And it’s accessible, and I wouldn’t feel different or left out.’’
Because the Hospital School is a chronic care facility, the admission process is slow, but 12 to 15 patients are typically accepted each year, said Katherine A. Chmiel, the Hospital School’s chief executive officer. The school serves 75 residential and 24 day patients between the ages of 7 and 22.
Marie Cheney said her family was told there were 33 children on the waiting list.
Chmiel could not confirm that number, but she said the list reflects an increasing number of needy families, not just the budget cut.
Admissions are no longer frozen, Chmiel said, but she added that the Hospital School must work on a one-patient-out, one-patient-in basis to avoid discharging anyone prematurely and that it is unlikely new patients will start at the Hospital School this September.
Published on Boston.com [MORE ON THIS STORY]
