Parents of children with disabilities have found that many early childhood education programs in San Antonio lack the expertise, staff and resources to provide meaningful educational experiences for their children.
Among them are Carter and Taylor English, who discovered those obstacles when they sought to find child care for their daughter Isabelle, who was born with Down syndrome.
“When Isabelle was born, all we wanted was to find the best possible resources to support her growth and development,” Carter said in a statement announcing the school’s opening. “We soon realized that the resources were difficult to access and the childcare we needed didn’t exist.”
Knowing other families were likely facing the same issues, the family came together with others to start the Rise School San Antonio, the newest school in a network focused on preparing children from a young age for success in kindergarten.
The Rise School’s new campus at CHRISTUS Children’s Hospital in downtown San Antonio will welcome two classrooms of 12 students in August, each serving half typically developing students and half those with special needs.
In-classroom support
Unlike typical early learning special needs programs, which pull students into separate rooms and away from classmates, the new school’s approach involves therapy of various types embedded in each classroom and lesson, according to Vanessa Hurd, the founding director of the nonprofit private school.
“We start from the very beginning, and we integrate all of the therapies; physical, occupational, speech, and music, with the learning environment with the teaching curriculum,” she told the San Antonio Report. “So that looks like hiring really highly qualified teachers, terrific therapists, training them from the get-go so that they work together to constantly be thinking about, what does each of their particular kids in the classroom need?”
In addition, teachers…
