Spring 2001 Table of Contents
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Interesting Facts from the Year 2001 Annual Registration of Students with Visual Impairments

By Nick Necaise, APH Materials and VI Registration Coordinator, TSBVI Outreach

The Annual Registration of Students who are Visually Impaired (VI) is the count of eligible students who are visually impaired in each school district of Texas as of the first Monday in January. The "as of" date for this year's Annual Registration was January 2, 2001. This count is done for a number of reasons. 1) It determines the amount of funding the state receives to get materials from the American Printing House for the Blind. 2) Each region's State Supplemental Visually Impaired (SSVI) funds are portioned out according to the number of VI students they have. These SSVI funds can help pay for things like Vision Specialists at the Education Service Centers, salaries of VI teachers and O&M Specialists, training workshops, family support and other VI-unique needs as determined by plans within each region. 3) It is a tool for statewide and regional planning. 4) It is a federal requirement. Here are some interesting facts from the registry that give us a picture of students in Texas with visual impairments.

Total number of students registered - 6719 (One student in a non-public school)
Number of students who were on the 2000 registration but not on the 2001 - 1024
Number of new students added to the 2001 registration - 1142
Braille readers - 335
Large print readers - 1215
Regular print readers - 1417
Auditory readers - 407
Non readers - 2475
Number of legally blind students - 4502
Number of infants - 555
Number of preschoolers - 784
Number of kindergartners - 374
Number of districts with 1 or more VI students - 710
Number of districts with only 1 VI student - 190
Number of districts with 3 or less VI students - 393
Number of students whose primary handicapping condition is visually impaired (VI) - 3902. The first handicapping condition listed is VI. The students may or may not have additional handicapping conditions listed.
Number of students whose secondary handicapping condition is VI - 1586. The primary handicapping condition listed is other than VI.
Number of students whose third handicapping condition is VI - 1026. The first two handicapping conditions listed are other than VI.
Number of students who are VI only - 2815. No other handicapping conditions are listed.
Number of students with 2 or more handicapping conditions - 3903
Number of students who are AI/VI or DB (Auditorially Impaired/Visually Impaired or Deafblind) - 375 (Editor's note: There is a sizeable discrepancy between the number of children who appear on the VI registry as AI/VI or DB and the number that are listed as deafblind on the Texas Deafblind Census - see page 27. We're trying to determine why these numbers are different because we want ALL children with visual impairment have to access to services and resources.)
The region with the most VI students registered is Region 4 (Houston area) with 1428 students on the Annual Registration.
The region with the least VI students registered is Region 9 (Wichita Falls area) with 79 students on the Annual Registration.
There are 42 Braille reading students at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired.
1573 or 23.82% of the students on the 2001 Annual Registration receive instruction in Orientation and Mobility.

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Last Revision: September 1, 2003