A student who is hearing impaired has a hearing loss that is permanent or fluctuating.  This loss is so severe that the student has difficulty in processing linguistic information through hearing with or without amplification.  The hearing loss adversely affects the student's educational performance in the school setting so educational support is needed.  This exceptionality of hearing impaired includes students who are deaf and hard of hearing that have a conductive and/or sensorineural hearing loss.  This exceptionality is determined by the results of a 1508 educational evaluation.

Lafayette Parish School System's students with the exceptionality of hearing impaired are served through the Individual Educational Plan (IEP) which addresses the students's own specific educational strengths and needs.  Some students are served in their home zone school by a generic resource teacher and other students are taught within the Lafayette Hearing Impaired Consortium which is located at S.J. Montgomery Elementary, L.J. Alleman Middle School and Lafayette High School.  The Consortium has a special education staff that includes teachers for the hearing impaired, audiologists, speech and language pathologists, and interpreters/transliterators.  Services include special education instruction which addresses the needs of the hearing impaired, auditory training/monitoring, speech/language therapy, interpreting/transliterating and/or C-Print captioning.  These services may be addressed in a variety of different settings from the regular classroom to a special education classroom.  In addition, sign language classes are offered at night for family and friends of the deaf/hard of hearing students.