Private school on campus? Wichita State should learn from its own history

Dr. Martin F. Palmer was the greatest Wichita pioneer most people have never heard of. Yet in his time and for a decade after his death in 1965, his creation, the Institute of Logopedics (now Heartspring) was world-renowned in treating speech, hearing and other disabilities affecting children.

One of its first clients was Clyde Berger, who was a recent graduate of Hutchinson High and had been living on the Reno County Poor Farm since losing his grandfather when he was 17.

Berger could walk but had very poor speech. While helping him talk more clearly, Palmer got him into college and Berger earned his Masters degree and became the Institute’s technical librarian in the late 1940s. He held the job 47 years.

By then, the University of Wichita had purchased the land where the Boys and Girls Club is today. On that site, Palmer built a large boarding school for students from across the nation and world. It also had day students from the Wichita area.

Then there were farm kids from towns all over Kansas. I joined the last group in 1964. By then, Palmer was dying of and the Institute was separating from the university.

We students largely didn’t know that. Nor did we know who among us was from rich families. The Institute didn’t treat kids from Portis differently from kids from wealthy East Coast homes.

In 1973, Jack Jonas, who would found the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation, and others got the Legislature to pass a special-education law mandating public schools accept students like me. (Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975.)

The state law allowed me to enroll in Logan High, the school my family has attended since the 1910s. It also forced the Institute, now Heartspring, to accept only children with extreme disabilities from affluent families.

But Heartspring is a private school on private land and its business model is not the public’s concern.

That’s not the case with a planned private school to be built on WSU’s Innovation Campus, elitist enough now. Funded by Chase and Annie Koch, the school’s tuition will be $10,000 a year for K-12 and $6,500 for its preschool. WSU said it will offer scholarships to less-wealthy families and accept kids with disabilities “eventually.”

To expect it to do so now, WSU spokesperson Lou Heldman said, would be like expecting a newborn to slam dunk a basketball.

Horse feathers. Scholarships could and should be available and the disabled admitted when the school opens. The Kochs and/or WSU can easily find funds and staff to do so. Also, private or not, the school will be on public land and should not be exclusive if only temporarily.

Palmer’s motto was “That all may speak.” He never said “eventually,” nor should WSU.

This story was originally published February 11, 2018 at 2:55 AM with the headline "Private school on campus? Wichita State should learn from its own history."