A university’s single biggest task is to take high school graduates and other young people and give them the tools for success as adults.
But larger institutions have many other missions, and one of the most impressive at the University of Southern Mississippi is the DuBard School for Language Disorders.
For more than half a century the school has helped children with severe speech disorders learn to speak properly and to read better. There’s no doubt that the school’s efforts have improved countless lives.
Wes Brooks (the DuBard School’s development coordinator and a regular columnist each month in The PineBelt NEWS) routinely makes the rounds to speak to clubs and organizations throughout the state and recently brought his travelling road show to the McComb Rotary Club over in Pike County.
As always, he provided club members there plenty of information about the school, but a brief video of a young boy was the most effective display.
The child, about 5 years old, suffered from severe apraxia of speech. It’s a neurological disorder that prevents a person from saying what he is trying to say.
At the start of the video, the child could barely make the sound of a vowel. There was a little improvement in the next segment, filmed six months after he started school at DuBard.
But in the final segment, after two years of school, he was clearly enunciating words. The transformation was amazing.
The DuBard School got started at USM in 1962. Its founder, Etoile DuBard, Ph.D., got interested in “speech correction” after World War II, when she helped wounded combat veterans regain the ability to speak.
She started the school by herself, with three students. Today the school has 80 students between the ages of 3 and 13, learning to overcome problems like dyslexia, processing disorders, hearing disorders, moderate to total hearing loss and mild autism.
Brooks said that all the children at the DuBard School have multiple disorders. The average per child, he said, is five, and can include ADHD and even physical limitations.
He said that as far as officials can tell, DuBard is the only language facility in the country that is a public school. State education funding provides most of its budget, along with contributions from USM and the United Way.
The school has students from 19 counties, all in south Mississippi. Parents outside the Hattiesburg area must make a serious commitment to have a child at DuBard: Most families must drive their child to and from the school each day. The state provides a fuel allowance.
Most students stay at the school for two or three years. The goal is to return them to their local school performing at their grade level.
The school also offers private “outclient” services to nearly 100 more students for a fee. So it’s clear there is a demand for the school’s services — and that the program is successful.
Brooks said limited funding has prevented the school from expanding. It has two options to do so: Its one-story building on USM’s Hattiesburg campus was designed to hold a second floor. The school also could expand to USM’s campus on the Gulf Coast.
It would help Mississippi if the DuBard School is able to expand in the near future.
In the meantime, Brooks said, “We’re training teachers and we’re training professionals to take our strategies to their respective schools.”
