In newspaper jargon, "putting the paper to bed" means it is ready for the printer. Last year, when a group of high school students put their 10th annual Disability Awareness Newsletter to bed, they thought it was for a permanent sleep. The state had lopped off its funding.

Hopes were awakened when NYSUT stepped in to save the teen-run publication. This week, about 15 students, both with and without disabilities, have been gathering at the statewide union conference center to put out the 2007 issue of the rescued newsletter.

Rory Harte of Guilderland High School, logging his 11th year working on the paper, got to the workshop early to greet his colleagues, geared up for a job he thought he'd lost to the budget axe: this year's editor. In the last issue he wrote a book review of Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time," about a teenager with Asperger Syndrome.

Harte was sure to fit in facts about the illness. Reading the book helped him understand people with autism, he said, as has working on the newsletter for so long with writers who are autistic.

"I've learned how to react and talk with them, and how to joke with them," he said. Meeting each year for a three-day workshop to write and produce the newsletter is helpful, he said, because it is both a writing and a learning environment. Students used to meet more often, but had to trim travel when participants started coming from all over the state. They hope to find a middle ground now of meeting at least twice a year.

"We don't want kids to have to say 'Stop the presses,'" said NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi, calling the project "near and dear" to the union's goals - strengthening education for all and giving students with disabilities every opportunity to succeed.

"We look forward to a great partnership," said NYSUT Vice President Maria Neira, speaking to students during one of the newsletter editing workshops.

Robbie McNary of Bethlehem High School squeezed in a day and half at the workshop, between his job as a dishwasher and soccer practice for the school's varsity team. The editor e-mailed everyone a list of story ideas and topics prior to the workshop; McNary picked Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and was working the Internet for research before beginning his article.

Each year the newsletter has been going out to 50,000 teachers and students. It is rife with essays, poems, cartoons, interviews, plays, memoir and fiction - all focused on some disability. If you deal with migraines, you may find your story here, as well as information about autism, eating disorders, hearing impairment, alcoholism, reading disabilities, or asthma. There are articles about the sport of Sitting Volleyball, and how to prepare for emergency situations when you have a physical disability. NYSUT's goal is to expand distribution of the newsletter.

Mitchell Goliber of Schenectady High School is working on the paper for his third year. Before becoming part of the editorial team, he said "I was not aware of disabilities other than my own. I'm now far more sensitive toward other's disabilities."

The newsletter project is led by Catharine McHugh, who has been spearheading the program since it began. When two state agencies merged into the state's Commission on Quality of Care and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities, the newsletter was nixed, along with McHugh's longtime elementary school program on disability awareness.

In the 1980s, she began a disability awareness project for children as young as pre-K to "get kids ready for kids with disabilities to come into their classroom." Traveling all over the state, she wanted to share the concepts with high school students, but found their schedules were too packed. She brought together high school students to brainstorm on how to spread the word, and they came up with the idea of a statewide newsletter.

Articles have, with permission, been used in college textbooks. Once posted on the commission's Web site, they received hits from around the world. A former editor received a college scholarship to create a disability awareness program in his college's community. Students have been asked to speak at national conferences.

Producing the newsletter, learning about other disabilities, and interacting with students from around the state, "is a learning experience that takes place over a couple years," she said.

McHugh opened the first night's session with guest speaker Clarence Sundram, who founded the New York State Commission on Quality of Care for the Mentally Disabled. He now specializes in international human rights and mental disabilities and has been featured on 48 Hours, Nightline, and the CBS Evening News.

"As soon as you start saying "them" vs. "us" you start on a path of exclusion," Sundram said about attitudes toward people with disabilities.

His goal, he said, is to "start young" to create a more just society, because waiting until people are older begets "bad public policy."

In slide after slide, he showed students pictures of horrific conditions for the institutionalized mentally ill in other countries.

Some institutionalized psychiatrics, he said, have fewer rights than prisoners of war, who get one hour a day outdoors for health and mental stability. They are confined, subject to physical abuse, torture and sexual abuse.

While the color photos show people caged and chained around the world, Sundram said the U.S. has its own ugly history. He was on the investigating committee for Willowbrook State School, a 5,000-bed institution in Staten Island, closed due to abuse and neglect. Sundram not only documents, he protects. He has been a part of international efforts to reform mental health services in countries from Argentina to Uruguay.

In Armenia, he said, a child with a slight disability such as a harelip or crossed eye is often sent to an orphanage because the family believes it will hinder the other family members' chances at marriage. The country does not allow adoption, so the children will be orphaned for life in freezing cold, dirty institutions. In Turkey, patients are so drugged they lie around in courtyards. Some are subject to electroshock therapy without any safeguards. In Indonesia, psychiatric patients are sometimes left naked and manacled to the wall. In some countries, a father can institutionalize a daughter he is unhappy with.

"People with disabilities are labeled. There's a lack of awareness," Sundram said. Referencing Robert Kennedy's quote that each time a person stands up for injustice they are sending out a tiny ripple of hope, Sundram told students that through the Disability Awareness Newletters, "What you have started here is sending out those ripples."

- Liza Frenette