AEHI, Alternatives in Education for the Hearing Impaired, was a
not-for-profit organization founded in 1986 to provide a model
Montessori Cued Speech program for educating deaf children alongside
their hearing peers. The founders named this model program the
“Alexander Graham Bell Montessori School”. But AEHI’s mission
was broader than just to provide this wonderful model program for
educating children who were deaf or hard of hearing: Over the
years, through a variety of Cued Speech Outreach Programs, AEHI has
served, directly and indirectly, thousands of deaf children and
their families.
In 2005, for a variety of reasons, AEHI and AGBMS became two
separate not-for-profit corporations. AGBMS retained the
successful, model Cued Speech program for educating deaf and
hard-of-hearing children, which was integrated in with their
wonderful programs for educating hearing children. AEHI became
a smaller entity, retaining only their Cued Speech Outreach Programs
– with AGBMS staff performing most of the outreach work for AEHI on
a contractual basis. AGBMS went on to build a wonderful new
facility that was also to become the new home of AEHI.
In 2008, shortly after the move into the new facility, the AEHI
board decided to ask AGBMS to take over responsibility for AEHI’s
remaining Cued Speech Outreach Programs and to officially adopt the
name of AEHI as the name of AGBMS’ collective programs that served
the deaf and hard of hearing. The AEHI board decided to change
the name of the “old” AEHI organization to the “Association for
Alternatives in Educating the Deaf” or AAED. AAED would retain
the old AEHI mission, but would focus its efforts on fund raising
only and would mainly target the AEHI programs of AGBMS as the
beneficiary of its fund-raising efforts.
The adoption of the AEHI name by AGBMS and the adoption of the
AAED name by the old AEHI were both made official, through the
office of the Illinois Secretary of State, in November of
2008. Long-time supporters of AEHI who wish to continue to
support all of the programs of the old AEHI – and anyone else
wishing to support the mission of AEHI – may directly support these
programs by contributing to “AEHI”, care of AGBMS at 9300 Capitol
Drive in Wheeling, Illinois. All contributions made to AEHI
will benefit AGBMS’ programs for the deaf and hard of hearing and
will not be applied to paying for the costs of AGBMS’ regular
education programs.
