New Gloucester residents want to save Gray-New Gloucester High School’s American Sign Language program from the chopping block, as the school district is eyeing it as a potential budget cut.

According to Laura Peterson, an advocate for the Deaf community and parent of a deaf child, the ASL program has existed for 15 years, with a full-time ASL teaching position for the past eight. Before that, it started informally at the middle school, where Kathryn Larson, the current teacher of the course at the high school level, helped deaf students. Starting out as a club, the program eventually expanded into a full-fledged class, being taught alongside spoken languages such as French and Spanish, with 67 students in ASL 1, 43 in ASL 2 and 15 in ASL 3.

Larson is retiring at the end of this school year. According to Peterson, the district claims that it has been looking for a replacement teacher for three years, primarily through informal conversations with the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf and the USM Department of Linguistics ASL Interpreting Program. However, as of this month, there is no ASL teacher position posted on the district’s website or on servingschools.com, a popular job board site for Maine and New Hampshire schools.

Peterson has had several email conversations with Superintendent Chanda Turner, and said that the district has told her that the district can’t find anyone to fill the position, and that there has been an increase in certification requirements. While other districts have struggled to find an ASL teacher in recent years, Peterson said that those are for brand-new programs, as opposed to Gray-New Gloucester, which has a well-established program with an existing curriculum.

Peterson said the 2023 Lewiston mass shooting, in which four victims were in the Deaf community, highlighted the importance of everyone, deaf or hearing, having access to communication, particularly in emergencies. Peterson, who lost a family friend in the shooting, said that, while there are some people who had very basic sign language knowledge who were able to come to the aid in simple ways, many deaf people had little access to communicate potentially life-saving information. In the months since, she noted that a number of people in the local Deaf community have been working with police authorities and have even gone to Washington to advocate and share insight on what was missed and what could have been done better.

Peterson also emphasized the importance of the program as a means of connecting members of the community. She has heard from a deaf local who was thrilled to have a conversation in ASL with a Gray-New Gloucester student, and from students who say that it means a lot to them to meet a deaf person at their job and to be able to have a conversation with them. She noted that ASL is an important skill that can translate into many future jobs, ranging from becoming an interpreter to employment in social work and psychology.

“Any time we are able to put ourselves into someone else’s shoes and see a little bit from their perspective, that’s really important,” said Peterson. “That’s a skillset that translates into the workforce, translates into just being a good human, and is probably more important than ever in our current divisive society.”

For the past few weeks, Peterson, along with other New Gloucester residents, have been getting the word out about the program. She said that a petition from the group has reached 280 signatures, and they are looking to get as many people as possible to come and speak in support of the ASL program at the district’s budget meeting on Thursday, May 22.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Superintendent Chandra Cooper’s title and misstated the day of Thursday’s budget meeting.