October 16, 2014 10:27 AM
By Lexi Belculfine / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
From 5 p.m. Sunday to 12:30 Friday afternoon, 11th-grader Samantha Gibbs lives in a newly opened residence at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, which on Wednesday night, smelled of tacos and chocolate chip cookies.
Samantha and her nine suite mates had just cooked dinner in their shared kitchen, attached to a living room complete with a big-screen TV and computers on which students can make telephone calls.
These, just some of the perks for the 49 students, grades first through 12th, who moved into the residence Sept. 7. A ribbon-cutting was held at the Edgewood campus Wednesday.
The Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf is tuition-free and provides academic and extracurricular programs to deaf and hard-of-hearing children from birth through 12th grade.
Ground was broken in April 2013 for the $9.5 million, 30,000-square-foot, two-story brick-and-stone residence that can house up to 120 students. About 40 percent of the school’s 170 students live on-campus. Some travel as long as six hours, twice a week to attend, assistant director Aaron Noschese said.
“Everything is just like home,” Samantha said, though she does miss her cat, who lives at her home in Erie.
Students are split into suites by age, with boys on the first floor and girls on the second. The social development gained at the school and by living there is just as important as academic and behavioral development, Mr. Noschese said. Students at the school can be on homecoming court, play on the soccer team and travel to Europe for a class trip.
A 50-year-old residence hall for boys was demolished to make room for the new facility, and the former girls’ dormitory will be repurposed. Those dorms weren’t wired to accommodate visual and communications equipment needed by the students, said Vicki Cherney, director of marketing and public relations and Western Pennsylvania outreach.
Mr. Noschese’s favorite space in the new residence is a small second-floor nook with four chairs and a table overlooking the entrance. A Teen Vogue magazine had been left behind there.
Ms. Cherney said she envisions a Christmas tree in the room during the holidays. It is near the floor-to-ceiling fireplace in the foyer, after all.
Source: post-gazette.com