Our state lost an amazing advocate and educator with the recent passing of Preston Lewis on October 20 of this year. My first experience with Preston was when we worked together in 1984 (now 40 years ago!) to create the long-running SPLASH (Strategies for Programming Longitudinally for All Students with Severe Handicaps) Project. Funded through the KY Department of Education (KDE, for which Preston worked as a Consultant with the Office for Exceptional Children), SPLASH was originally administered through the Danville Independent School District, for which I was a teacher of students with moderate and severe disabilities. That state-wide, in-service training project for teachers of students with moderate and severe disabilities continued for well over 30 years, and was later administered through the Human Development Institute and then the University of Louisville.
It was actually because of Preston that I came to HDI. In the Fall of 1987, Preston was the Principal Investigator for a new federally-funded KY Systems Change Project for Students with Severe Disabilities, contracted to HDI to work with school systems throughout the state. With Preston’s unwavering mentorship, I left my classroom teaching position to begin work with this new project. One of our aims was to ensure students with the most significant disabilities were educated with nondisabled students to the maximum extent possible. Under Preston’s leadership, we worked with school districts throughout the state to help transition students with severe disabilities from separate schools to age-appropriate regular schools to be taught with their nondisabled peers. At the end of the project, only one of the 15 separate schools for students with severe disabilities in our state remained!
Preston also worked to ensure that students with severe disabilities were included in all aspects of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 (KERA), such as inclusive primary schools, school-based decision making, Family Resource & Service Centers, and educational assessment and accountability. Under KERA, KY became the first state in the nation to include all students in its state assessment, and Preston provided ongoing support to this pioneering effort that originated through the work of the KY Systems Change Project and HDI staffer Jacqui Kearns. Kentucky’s work was recognized by the United States Senate, and inclusive assessment and accountability became part of national law with the 1997 re-authorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act!
Preston provided superb expertise and advocacy for students with significant disabilities in our state for decades as a KDE consultant and administrator. He also led statewide transition efforts for students with disabilities and was instrumental in creating the Community Work Transition Project, a collaboration between KDE, the KY Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, and HDI – perhaps the longest running of all HDI projects – an incredible 40 years! In addition, he served for many years as the KDE representative to the Commonwealth Council on Developmental Disabilities (CCDD), resulting in numerous CCDD initiatives to improve education for students with significant disabilities in our state.
His work touched innumerable students and teachers! After he retired from KDE in 2005, he came to work at HDI as our Universal Design Specialist for Inclusive and Alternate Assessment. He worked for the Universal Design for Assessment Project and the National Center for Alternate Assessment, both HDI projects at the time.
Preston’s last work at HDI was in general curriculum access for students with disabilities in which he led HDI efforts across two projects: Project SMART (Supported Math Accessibility Reading Tool) and the KY Math Etext Project. He retired from HDI at the end of 2012. Preston left an immeasurable impact upon the lives of students and teachers in our state. He will always be remembered for all the lives he touched!
