Music to audiologists’ ears

Thanks to a three-year effort by audiologists and their union, public school students now have access to hearing loss assessment in Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx and at two locations in Brooklyn.

The updated hearing booths — crucial technology to perform exams that audiologists use to equip students with adaptive devices — mean that families can bring their children to exams closer to home, get appropriate services faster and lose less class time. Until the update, there were only two working hearing booths in Brooklyn, a prohibitive commute for some families.

“If we don’t have an audiological evaluation, we can’t do our job,” said Judy Cohen, a Manhattan audiologist who led the charge to update the hearing booths. Cohen explained that when a student has hearing loss, an audiologist might fit them with a hearing aid programmed to the student’s specific level of hearing. Alternatively, the audiologist may implement a sort of “one-way walkie-talkie” where the teacher wears a small microphone that feeds into an earpiece on the student. Other students may be placed in a Deaf and Hard of Hearing Education Services classroom.

Whatever the right intervention is, audiologists “can’t do it without an audiogram,” a diagnostic assessment using a hearing booth, said Cohen, because “every child’s hearing loss is individual” and must be measured accurately.

When Cohen noticed in December 2021 that the hearing booth in Manhattan was failing, she asked District 75 administrators how it could be replaced. As she contacted her colleagues in other boroughs, she realized the problem of failing equipment was more widespread. Concluding the situation was “dire,” she turned to her union for support.

Susan Kavanagh, the UFT chapter leader for audiologists, supported Cohen’s efforts. The union brought the hearing booths up at consultation meetings with the District 75 superintendent and documented wait and travel times for students. But Cohen, she said, “took on this big task herself and pushed it through.”

Parents like Stacey Haynes, whose 5th-grade daughter is Deaf, are grateful. Haynes’ daughter attends PS 347 in Manhattan, which is only a block away from the location of one of the new booths. Now, when her daughter goes for a hearing test, she misses only about an hour of class, “instead of a half a day or longer,” Haynes said. Just as importantly, she said, the DOE assessment reduces her daughter’s anxiety because she feels comfortable being with her teacher and a DOE audiologist whom she knows.

“It’s a fantastic resource,” said Haynes.