If you need a bus for your child for next year please complete the following form sent by the district by the end of the day June 10th. The link can be found below. If you do not complete the link your child will not have a bus for the first day of school. You will have to do a separate form for each child in your household:
https://wearecms.iad1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cZRayNC4khfw0T4
Staff Spotlight: Cavin Fertil, speech-language pathologist at Albemarle Road Elementary
As a speech-language pathologist, I have been blessed to have accomplished achievements that I never saw coming. One of them began with an email from a university program director in Saudi Arabia inviting me to become part of a four-member steering committee that would establish a constituency group within our national organization, the American Speech Language Hearing Association (ASHA). Its purpose was to bring awareness to communication disorders in the Republic of Haiti. Being one of the more impoverished nations in the Western Hemisphere, it has many needs but has lacked financial and human resources. Communication disorders are prevalent there like anywhere else in the world, but speech therapists cannot be found there to address those needs. There is also a large Haitian population in the United States being served by people who do not understand the language nor the culture. Thus, in 2021 the Haitian American Caucus of ASHA was established. Its overall goal is to help bring quality speech-language services to Haiti and to provide support and resources to professionals working with the Haitian community. Because of the enormous impact we have had in such a short period of time, our group was recently celebrated at the Embassy of Haiti in Washington, D.C. Distinguished members of ASHA and government officials were in attendance as we were recognized and presented to the public
My journey to that proud moment in the embassy started in the early 2000s when I provided guidance to the CMS Speech-Language department in the area of bilingual speech-language development and disorders when immigration was emerging in Charlotte. I introduced the infrastructure currently in place which brings awareness to potential biases, inequities and inequalities that an English language learner is susceptible to because of language barriers and differences. Since then, the CMS speech department has done one of the finer jobs in the country in identifying, evaluating and serving this group. Then I began receiving invitations from universities and school districts as far as Charleston, South Carolina to come share my expertise and unique insights with professionals and graduate students. Since 2017, I have been serving on different committees at the national level for ASHA in support of cultural and linguistic diversity issues. In 2021 I was recognized as one of the pioneers of bilingual speech-language pathology in North Carolina.
None of this is what I had planned, but it has been wonderful. For me, communication is a gift and a human right. I am just doing my part to make sure somebody acquires it and that somebody else takes care of it while they still have it.
