A high school senior wants to know whether he will be able to cross the stage in his wheelchair at graduation in two weeks.
“I said that I would prefer to cross the stage with my class and you know have that spotlight moment like everybody else,” Kyle Tempesta, 18, told NBC Connecticut in an exclusive interview Thursday.
A school staff member told the Norwich Technical High School student on Wednesday there would be no ramp at the ceremony in the gym, but a spokesperson for the Connecticut Department of Education that runs the school said the administration is working on a solution.
“She basically told me that I was going to be unable to cross the stage at graduation with the rest of my class and I would have to receive my diploma kind of off to the side out of the spotlight unlike everyone else,” Tempesta said of his conversation with the staff member.
Tempesta took to Facebook and expressed his disappointed in a post that has been shared more than 350 times.
“I was angry, disappointed more so for him than anything,” Kyle’s mother Michelle Tempesta said.
Her son started to lose the ability to walk during his sophomore year because of a genetic disorder. Tempesta was also in a medically induced coma for a month after cardiac arrest.
Local
The high school has been accommodating to his medical challenges, even sending a tutor all the way to New Britain when he was in rehab, Tempesta said.
NBC Connecticut called a local company that rents out ramps that meet the Americans With Disabilities Act rules and regulations.
“We do multiple graduations every year,” Bob Danek of Amramp said over the phone. “That’s a big part of our business, we’ll go in install the ramp for a day or a week.”
In a statement to NBC Connecticut, Department of Education Director of Communications Peter Yazbak said: “The Norwich Tech administration has been working on a solution since last month and is exploring a number of options including engaging the services of a staging company to provide a ramp fitted out to the specifications of the graduation ceremony stage. The company is willing to provide the ramp free of charge. The school’s administration is confident an appropriate solution will found before the date of the ceremony on June 21.”
Tempesta is one of nine students that is in the high school’s first graduating class from the biotechnology shop.
“There was a time we didn’t know that he would make it to graduation,” his mother said, “whether he’d be walking, or in the wheelchair or make it at all so this has been a huge milestone that we’ve been looking forward to.”
NBC Connecticut passed along the contact information for Amramp to the Department of Education in case plans fall through.
