Ángel Ramos (born December 30, 1949) is an educator, school administrator, and current principal of the Hawaii School for the Deaf and the Blind. He was the founder of the National Hispanic Council of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. He formerly served as Superintendent of the Idaho School for the Deaf and the Blind, the Sequoia School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, and the Marie Katzenbach School for the Deaf. He is the second deaf Hispanic/Latino to receive a doctorate degree and the first to receive a doctorate from Gallaudet University.
Early years
Ramos' mother, Maria Monserrate, was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. His father, Miguel Ángel Ramos, was born in Vieques, Puerto Rico. After his parents married, they moved to New York City. When Monserrate became pregnant with Ángel, her husband demanded that she have an abortion or he would divorce her. Monserrate refused and the pair divorced shortly after Ramos's birth. As a result, Ramos and his sister were raised solely by his mother, who worked as a seamstress. They grew up in housing projects in Manhattan along with a number of relatives. Ramos attended public schools. In 1959, when Ramos was nine years old, he woke up one morning and could not hear. As a Catholic, he thought God had punished him and hid his hearing loss from his mother for two years. He succeeded in school since he could already read and write in English and Spanish, and was able to follow directions on the classroom blackboard and by reading his textbooks carefully. By 1961, he had learned to lip-read, helping him to graduate. Ramos held a teaching position at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas and was Director of the Gallaudet University Regional Center in Texas. During that time he received a Fulbright Scholar Award and was assigned to Colombia to improve the delivery of educational services to students who are deaf and hard of hearing. He is the founder the National Hispanic Council of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Washington, D.C. Ramos transformed the school from an underperforming school to one of the few "Performing" schools for students who are Deaf and hard of hearing in the country. For his efforts in transforming SSDHH into a "Performing" school, he was recognized as Administrator of the Year and Principal of the Year. While Ramos was Superintendent of Sequoia Deaf School, the then-Governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano, appointed Ramos as a commissioner on the Arizona Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. The Assistant Secretary of Education later appointed Ramos to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf National Advisory Group.
After seven years at Sequoia Deaf School, on July 30, 2011, the New Jersey Commissioner of Education, Dr. Christopher Cerf, appointed Ramos as Superintendent of the Marie Katzenbach School for the Deaf (MKSD), with instructions to transform the school into an educational school. For three years, he worked closely with Commissioner Cerf to transform the school until Cerf's resignation in 2015. With Cerf's departure, the vision for MKSD changed focus, and, unwilling to work in this new climate, Ramos retired on June 30, 2015. Shortly after his retirement, Ramos created the first and only virtual school for students who are deaf and hard of hearing, The Princeton School, with the goal of providing supplemental assistance to schools and vocational rehabilitation programs in their effort to help these students be successful adults.
Ramos is currently the principal of the Hawaii School for the Deaf and the Blind.
Writing
In 2003, Ramos published "Triumph of the Spirit: The DPN Chronicle", about the history of deaf students at Gallaudet University.
See also
- List of Puerto Ricans