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  • School-to-Work Programs

Barrow County School System's Special Education services include several valuable school-to-work programs. Expand the areas below to learn about Youth Employment Services (YES), Student Transition Enrichment Program (STEP), and Project Search.

Expand the + sections below to read about each program:

Goodwill of North Georgia’s YES program is a partnership between the Barrow County School System and employers to empower our youth. Goodwill staff works with participants of the youth job training program to set career goals and equip students with the necessary skills to enter the workforce. YES participants earn high school credit for job readiness training classes and paid work experience. The YES program has three phases:

  • One transition class at Sims Academy during the fall semester of senior year (earns one elective credit).
  • A Paid Internship in the spring of senior year if the student has proven to be motivated and reliable (earns one elective credit).
  • Full-time job placement after graduation.

Eligibility requirements are as follows:

  • Senior in high school and on-track to graduate
  • Has a current IEP
  • Third-grade reading level or higher
  • Goal of full-time employment after high school
  • On GVRA caseload

The Student Transition Enrichment Program (STEP) is a full-time, yearlong, school-to-work transition program is for students with significant cognitive disabilities who have the goal of supported employment after high school. The STEP program provides supported work experiences in a variety of community business settings, as well as within the Sims Academy coffee shop, school store, cafeteria and various CTAE classrooms. It also gives students the opportunity to practice self-determination, self-advocacy and independent living skills. This program has an application process and students must be accepted for the IEP Team to consider this service.

To be eligible for STEP, students must meet the following requirements:

  • Significant cognitive disability
  • Graduation requirements completed
  • 18 to 21 years-of-age
  • Motivated to work
  • Goal of supported employment after high school
  • Receptive to direction and feedback

Project SEARCH is a yearlong, school-to-work transition program targeting older high school students with exceptionalities. This innovative program, originating at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, has prepared young adults to find success in integrated, competitive employment sites both nationally and internationally. It is driven by a collaboration of community partners all centered on providing employment opportunities to students with disabilities. The Barrow County Project SEARCH program is a collaboration between the school system, Chico's FAS as the host business site, Hi Hope Center as our Community Service Provider, and Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation Agency.

During the student’s final year of high school, interns practice and refine their employability skills through three, 10-week internships solely at the host business site. As the year progresses, student interns create an employment goal with the assistance of their support team. Job placement by the end of the internship, or within six months of program completion, is the ultimate goal for 100% of the interns. Also notable, Project SEARCH graduates receive effective follow-along services to gain and retain employment after they complete the program. This program has a comprehensive application process and students must be accepted for the IEP Team to consider this service.

To be eligible for Project SEARCH, students must meet the following requirements:

  • Cognitive or developmental disability
  • 18-21 years-of-age
  • Appropriate hygiene, social and communication skills
  • Ability to take direction and change behavior
  • Pass drug screen and background check
  • Goal of competitive employment after high school

Want to Learn More about Project Search?

News about our School-to-Work Programs

2023 project search graduates.

Congratulations to our 2023 Project SEARCH graduates! These students earned their high ...

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Joel, a Sims Academy STEP participant, fell in love with the goats at one of BASA's...

Students in the STEP Program are ready to work!

Students in the STEP Program have been identifying characteristics that signify th...

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Serving education, businesses, and the community.

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Supports are provided to students through job training services . In addition, IU13 offers a variety of transition supports and resources for families and schools.

Work Immersion Programs

IU13’s Work Immersion Programs focus on helping young adults with disabilities make a successful transition from school to productive adult life. This unique one-year immersion program serves students with disabilities who are in their last year of high school. With the goal of competitive employment, each student receives classroom instruction and hands-on experience through internships. Through their work immersion experiences, students also develop employability, social, and independent living skills.

Learn more about these work immersion opportunities for students:

  • Masonic Village Work Immersion Program – partnering with Masonic Village at Elizabethtown – view program brochure here

  • Willow Valley Work Immersion Program – partnering with Willow Valley Communities – view program brochure here
  • Project SEARCH Lancaster – partnering with Lancaster General Health – view program brochure here  and learn more through the video below

  • Moravian Manor Work Immersion Program – partnering with Moravian Manor Communities – view program brochure here
  • Materials Handling & Logistics Transition Program – partnering with Lancaster County Career and Technology Center (LCCTC). Among the valuable independent living and employability skills to ensure successful transitions, students receive forklift training and certification, OSHA certification, and CPR/First Aid certification. View program brochure here , and learn more through the video below:

School to Work

The School-to-Work (STW) program provides community-based training in real work settings. The program, which is available for high school students with disabilities, is designed to help students learn self-determination and functional academics, and to establish linkages to adult service agencies. View program brochure here.

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Work-Based Learning in High School

A framework for ensuring that high school special education students develop the skills they need to join the workforce with confidence.

High school teacher works with students

As a special educator, I have one goal in mind: to help students gain the skills and knowledge necessary to be as independent and fulfilled as possible in their adult lives. After teaching at the middle school level for over a decade, I decided to make the leap to high school and to specialize in work-based learning in order to help facilitate lifelong success for my students.

Work-based learning is the intersection of project-based learning and social and emotional learning, as it invites students to work on real-world tasks that will facilitate their ability to obtain employment. The social and emotional learning component? Developing the soft skills, or interpersonal skills, necessary to thrive at work.

It’s incredibly rewarding to help students secure their first job, complete their first tax forms, open their first bank account, and yes, make their first purchases with their very own money.

I’ve seen countless students with special education services move from a negative self-image and disengagement from school to increased self-worth and a new sense of success after accomplishing the task of attaining employment. They start to believe in themselves on a much stronger level as they realize their capacity to participate in the workplace.

Giving Students the Tools They Need

Over my years as a work coordinator, I’ve learned many helpful approaches from seasoned colleagues and personal research. Here are some helpful tools and strategies that may support student success.

Over-helping helps no one.  Too often, students with special education services develop over-dependence on adults at school. Many have grown up with extra support, and they may not realize that they can perform countless tasks on their own. Work-based learning is a chance for students to find their full capacity with independence. As a rule, I never say or do anything a student could say or do themselves.

For example, rather than calling an employer to see if they’re hiring, I train the student on how to make that phone call on their own. Decreasing support and facilitating independence is critical to ensuring lifelong student success, and work-based learning is the perfect platform for this.

Connect the classroom to the workplace.  Work-based learning programs should always include a classroom component. Each state has different requirements for work-based learning programs, but many require a “career seminar” class to support student learning in tandem with on-the-job experiences. Career seminars focus on explicit instruction in areas such as safety, labor laws, the job-seeking process, choosing a career, and employability skills.

I run my career seminar class as if I’m a manager at work. For example, students have a scheduled break halfway through class, and this is the only time they can check their phones. Students clock in when they enter the room by entering an assigned number in a Google Form. The more we can practice the activities and habits they’ll need at work, the better. This supports their ability to maintain employment for the long haul.

Share your story.  What was your first job in high school? I’m guessing you didn’t start your work life as a teacher. Share your work experience story with students, including both the challenges and the rewards. What came easily to you? Were there bumps in the road, and how did you overcome them? How did you wind up in teaching, including your particular content area?

Invite students to share their own employment stories if they’re already working. Conversations about successes at work can deepen relationships and motivate other students who may feel inspired to join the workforce and enjoy the benefits this can bring.

Skills pay the bills. When you approach your instruction through a work-based learning lens, it’s all about transferable skills that will stay with students—which all working adults must learn and practice to keep a job. These include abilities like communication, conflict resolution, accepting constructive criticism, organization, and adaptability.

With such skills in mind, many classroom situations can become teachable moments geared toward work-readiness, including undesirable behavior choices. Rather than engaging in power struggles with students, remind them that you have the same goal: their future success and employability. From this place, you can engage in problem-solving together. Continuously bring it back to their skills for work, rather than school rules or policies they may find arbitrary.

Don’t stop believing. Cultivating hope, resilience, and a growth mindset in your students will support them tremendously in their future attempts to join the workforce. The path to their dream career may be marred with obstacles and challenges along the way. In order to overcome them, students need to believe in themselves and commit to persevering through setbacks.

As educators, we can help foster their success when we convey that we truly believe in them and in their potential. In today’s job market, there’s a job to suit most every student. There are countless programs available to create avenues for individuals with disabilities to gain meaningful paid employment. Share this with students, believe in their potential, and convey your commitment to build their capacity.

I’m so grateful to be a coordinator of work-based learning. Countless students have reconnected over the years to tell me their own success stories, which were launched by their high school work program experiences. Whether it’s a restaurant employee who moved up to manager, a child care aide who moved up to teaching, or an apprentice in the trades who became a foreman, work-based learning planted the first seeds to grow success. Work-based learning is an extremely valuable opportunity to bring out student strengths and help them leverage those strengths to lasting lifelong rewards.

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school to work programs for special education

WHAT IS THE TRANSITION SCHOOL to WORK GRANT (TSW)? 

The Transition School to Work Grant (TSW) is a collaboration between TN DHS, TN Vocational Rehabilitation, and Knox County Schools via the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) signed into law in July of 2014. WIOA provides the means for students ages 14 to 22 with a disability to receive Pre-Employment Transition Servics. 

WHAT ARE PRE-EMPLOYMENT TRANSITION SERVICES (pre-ets)?  

Pre-Employment Transition Services (pre-ets) are disseminated through TSW in conjunction with the student's high school case manager or SpED teacher. Pre-ets includes teaching skills in the areas of job exploration, work-based learning, workplace readiness, self-advocacy, and post-secondary counseling & enrollment assistance. Either a TSW team member or a Community Rehabilitation Program employee will provide the services in the schools during school hours. To obtain these services, please reach out to your student's high school case manager or call TSW at 865-594-1490.

A permission form must be filled out completely and signed by a parent/guardian/student 18 or older in order to get service. The permission form can be emailed (scanned or a picture) to [email protected] or given to the SPED teacher/case manager.

PERMISSION FORM 

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TSW Grant Team Wins 2023 Spirit of ADA Community Service Provider Award !

Link to article/video HERE

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Work Foundations+ is a secondary special education program focused on providing comprehensive academic instruction and real-life career exploration, experiences, and training to students with disabilities to best prepare them for successful post-secondary training and education, employment, and independent living.

Academics:   Students learn the necessary soft skills to be competitively employed upon graduation. Instruction is focused disability identification and self-advocacy in the employment setting, financial application and management, and independent living skills instruction in areas such as personal care, housekeeping & home maintenance, shopping, food preparation, community resource awareness and money management.

2023 Work Foundations+ Graduate Testimonials

Future and career readiness activities: As part of our comprehensive transition program, all students participate in our future and career readiness activities in an integrated community-based setting. Our future and career readiness activities are school-coordinated and sequential experiences based upon the individual student’s skills, interests and needs and are based on PDE’s Career Readiness Indicators. Our CSIU Transition Job Coaches, along with our teachers, provide job coaching, supervision, assessment, and transportation to our community partners. Students are not paid for these experiences as they are part of their comprehensive educational program provided through Work Foundations+.

PA Career Readiness Indicators and Crosswalk to Programming Tier 1: Career Awareness and Preparation

  • During career awareness, students receive intensive instruction on rules of grooming, dress, and behavior in the workplace. This tier of future and career readiness is student driven and assists them in making informed decisions about their futures.

Tier 2: Career Acquisition

  • Structured activities in which the student receives hands on training and experience in a selected career of interest in an integrated community setting. During this time, the student receives on the job training from the site supervisor and job coaching and supervision from the WF Transition Job Coaches. This tier of future and career readiness is determined by the student’s assessed skills, needs and interests. Placements and scheduling are determined by site availability and individual need of the student.

Tier 3: Career Retention and Advancement

  • Intensive level of hands on learning in an integrated setting to assist the student in developing the necessary skills and knowledge needed to acquire an entry-level job. Tier 3 activities are longer in duration, occur in one specific placement, and require the student to develop a schedule with the site supervisor. This tier of future and career readiness occurs after the student successfully completes all elements of Level 1 and Level 2.

Tier 4: Entrepreneurship

  • Intensive, 1:1 instruction with students to explore options for developing a business plan that addresses their interests and a need in their local community. Students research and explore all possibilities and work to determine feasibility and sustainability.

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The students at Work Foundations+ take great pride in their work.

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Cathy Yordy (570) 523-1155 ext. 2808 [email protected]

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school to work programs for special education

Special Education Options That Meet Each Student’s Needs

Students reach their highest potential in safe and structured environments that afford them a strong sense of security, an engaged learning attitude, and growth in positive behaviors. Students with academic, behavioral, and social-emotional needs thrive in our standalone Sierra Schools and High Road Schools, and in-district classrooms . Both school districts and parents trust SESI schools and programs due to our small class sizes, high staff-to-student ratios, and dedicated teachers, therapists, and other staff committed to each student’s success by implementing proven learning models, academic rigor and positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS) frameworks.

I give complete credit to the High Road School and their ability to listen to a parent and to understand a student’s behaviors. They were able to read my son like a book and tailor a program to his needs—one that got him back into the school setting and learning.

Our students have a wide range of developmental, emotional, and behavioral needs. Our special education programs offer them:

  • Small class sizes, with evidence-based learning models
  • Highly personalized attention
  • Positive behavioral interventions and supports
  • Transition skills and life planning services

Autism Spectrum Disorder Emotional Disability Other Disabilities

Contact our team to find out how SESI can partner with your students, staff, district and community to achieve positive, measurable change.

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Specialized Education Services, Inc. (SESI), a division of FullBloom, is a premier provider of special education and alternative education services for K-12 students. SESI partners with 600+ districts across the country to meet the needs of 7,000+ students with learning disabilities and behavioral challenges through day schools and in-district classrooms.  

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Welcome to Northshore School District’s Special Education Services! We provide comprehensive support and services for students with disabilities, ensuring they receive a tailored education in a supportive environment. Explore our resources and connect with our dedicated team to help your student thrive.

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Are you a current Northshore family concerned about your student? Northshore School District’s Special Education Department offers guidance and support. Learn how to address your concerns and connect with the right staff members to ensure that your student receives the right assistance.

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We are here to help your student get the support and services that they need to excell in Nothshore.

Email: [email protected] | Phone: 425-408-7733 | Address: 3330 Monte Villa Parkway Bothell, WA, 98011

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Pathway’s curriculum includes daily experiences in STEM for students with special needs

“STEM for all” is The Pathway School’s unique approach to experiential learning in S cience, T echnology, E ngineering, and M ath. At most schools, STEM is an honors program. At some special education schools, STEM is offered as an elective. At Pathway, STEM is the core of our curriculum and permeates everything we do. Each day we are creating opportunities in STEM for students with special needs.

What is STEM?

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. STEM programs are designed to teach students 21st-century employment skills in an interactive and fun way. The STEM curriculum challenges students to think critically. With our project-based approach to learning, students gain real-world experiences and knowledge for their future.

Our STEM Program

Pathway’s approach to providing STEM education opportunities to all of our students, ages 5-21, will be ever-evolving as our students grow and technology changes. Students take the knowledge they have gained from their daily courses and apply them to STEM activities. For example, students use their math and engineering skills to measure, construct, and build in our vo-tech 2.0 classroom and maker space. They create robots, design 3D art, participate in woodworking, and much more.

Our students have the opportunity to work behind or in front of the camera by participating in video production or being an anchor on our morning Pathway Today show. The Beats by Girls program and our eSports lab enable our students to work together, find commonalities and passions between classmates, and maybe even a potential future career. STEM enhances our education across the board – in our classrooms and our STEM environments.

Click here to learn about Pathway’s Robotics program.

Innovative STEM Environments

To support our STEM-based curriculum and give our students an innovative and interactive environment, in the fall of 2019 we opened a state-of-the-art Innovation Center.

The Innovation Center is a place where students have the opportunity to use “Design Thinking.” It features a maker space for creating and learning using technology; a media center for video production; an eSports lab for competitive e-gaming; an engineering, tools, and tech space; and a classroom focused on the sciences.

In addition, students learn about reducing carbon emissions through the energy-efficient solar panels on the Center’s roof and students run a café in the Center’s culinary arts room. A multi-use dining and presentation space completes the Center’s offerings.

“In the Innovation Center, we are creating a culture where applying math, science and engineering is cool. With hands-on activities and new technologies, we foster abilities in cooperation, critical thinking, and correspondence, and setting the students up for achievement in school and the labor force,” states Jose Quijas, STEM Coordinator.

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Pathway’s unique holistic approach to education focuses on the student’s abilities and needs so that targeted instruction and support is provided to them!

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Career Preparation

Vocational training programs for special education students teach work, life skills

Programs also foster acceptance in the community.

school to work programs for special education

Lasherica Thornton

January 30, 2024.

school to work programs for special education

As guests check out of El Capitan Hotel in downtown Merced, a group of students wearing Merced County Office of Education (MCOE) shirts or lanyards enter recently vacated rooms to strip the beds, empty the trash bins and vacuum the floors. 

For more than a year, students like Alondra Fierros, who always has a smile on her face, have separated and washed the hotel’s dirty linens while Jayden Flores has neatly folded the clean hotel towels into stacks of eight without looking up from the task.

Most of the students, ages 18-22, are diagnosed with varying degrees of autism and/or other disabilities, are in special education in the county office’s adult transition program and learning how to do laundry and clean for the first time. 

Despite their limits, the students obtain skills as part of the county office and hotel’s housekeeping program. 

“I clean the place, and I take a bunch of dirty bed sheets and towels and put them in the laundry room and wash them,” Flores said about tasks he learned by shadowing and observing housekeepers. 

Through hands-on experience at the hotel, students gain skills to work in the housekeeping and hospitality industry — whether at El Capitan or elsewhere — after they graduate. And they develop life skills for adulthood.

school to work programs for special education

“At this age, we’re really trying to (give them) more experience in the community,” said Laura Fong, an assistant superintendent in the Merced County Office of Education. 

Vocational training programs have traditionally tailored jobs around special education students’ needs, such as a Fresno restaurant with modified cash registers to accommodate students who can’t read. 

This is not the case with Merced County’s program which, instead, integrates students into the housekeeping career, making it one of a few in California and across the nation to do so. The program now serves as a model for other districts aspiring to integrate students with disabilities into careers and society.  

From model room to real world experience 

The office of education launched the housekeeping training program in October 2022 for its special education students to gain work and life skills in a real world setting, Fong said. 

Before the program’s creation, students practiced their skills in an “isolated” mock hotel room, which worked for a while, Fong said. 

But it wasn’t enough. The students couldn’t apply what they learned to their life because those skills weren’t being used in a real-world environment. They weren’t observing housekeepers’ work, and therefore couldn’t comprehend the logic behind the tasks they were being instructed to do. They weren’t working alongside employees, so they weren’t learning how to interact with others or the proper ways to behave in a work setting. 

The county office sought a collaboration with the hotel, which had built the hotel room replica. 

Fong said the yearlong program is critical for the students “to be in the actual field,” get on-the-job training and be able to model employees’ behavior, which in turn provides them with real-world experience while allowing them to interact with others.

How county office’s training programs work

Once Merced County special education students finish their shift at a training site, they return to the classroom or visit another training program for the remainder of the day. In class, one of their tasks is to formulate their resume to include their on-the-job training experience. 

Working in the actual hotel “really teaches them responsibility,” said vocational trainer Lorie Gonzales, who accompanies the students to their training programs to supervise and assist them, if needed. 

With Gonzales checking their uniforms and attire before a shift, students learn that they must dress appropriately for a job. They learn about the importance of being on time because they’re expected at the hotel for their respective shifts and must clock in once they’re there.

Hotel staff are primarily responsible for training students for the housekeeping tasks, said Robin Donovan, managing director of the hotel.

The students remove dirty sheets and linens, vacuum and straighten rooms, so a housekeeper only has to make the bed and clean the bathroom. Once the housekeeper takes over, students sort, wash and dry the laundry, then vacuum the hallways and stairways and wipe down art and other fixtures mounted on the wall. 

The work skills, such as changing sheets and cleaning, become independent living skills that students need in their personal lives, Fong said.

“We want them to be prepared. Not only can they go out and find a job in this industry, doing this work, they can also transfer those skills to living on their own, independently,” she said.

Meg Metz, director of people and culture at El Capitan, said the hotel staff were at first worried about how they’d adapt to working with the students. Now, however, the staff looks forward to working alongside students, Metz and Donovan both said. 

Donovan added that hotel staff enjoy their shifts with the students who they say are reliable and hardworking and bring positivity to the workplace. 

“They do quality work,” she said, “and with the biggest smiles.” 

But the social interactions extend beyond connecting with hotel employees. The partnership with the hotel allows students to engage with hotel guests as well, including those who may still be in their rooms. 

“When I come to work here in the hotel, I say, ‘Knock, knock. Housekeeping,’” Flores said as he knocked on a third floor hotel room door. 

Gonzales, the vocational trainer, has coached the students on being courteous whenever they run into guests in the hallways and stairways. The students, for instance, tell guests to use the elevator first, Gonzales said. 

Expanding opportunities for students with special needs 

The housekeeping program isn’t the only vocational training program for individuals with disabilities in Merced County or the surrounding Central Valley communities. Since opening in the 1980s, Wired Café has been a coffee shop where adults with disabilities gain skills that prepare them for the workforce, according to Fong. It is owned and operated by Merced County’s education office as well. Students learn and grow as they take orders and fix and serve smoothies, lattes or sandwiches. 

Mimicking Wired Café, the Fresno County education office established Kids Café in 2017 as a work-based learning environment for special education students, county office leaders Christina Borges and Liza Stack said. 

school to work programs for special education

In their uniforms and aprons, students working at Kids Café complete a variety of tasks, including: preparing and serving food, such as pizza, sandwiches and salads; sweeping or mopping the floors of the restaurant; clearing and wiping the tables after customers leave; stocking inventory; laundering; baking and packaging cookies or scones; weighing and bagging chips; and working the cash register.  

The Fresno County office adjusted aspects of the restaurant to accommodate students’ needs and abilities, thereby fostering independence and ensuring student success, Stack said. Restaurant modifications include visual task cards with pictures as well as step-by-step instructions, color-coordinated towels for different cleaning tasks, and a modified register in which 4C means four slices of cheese.

How Kids Café operates

The café provides two-hour shifts for most special education classes during the school year, with longer shifts offered over the summer and winter breaks. Students with special needs living in one of Fresno County’s 30 regional areas for special education services and enrolled in a county-operated program can participate. Participating students may have autism, be deaf or hard of hearing or have emotional disabilities, to name a few. Thirty-three Fresno County special education students, up from 19 last school year, have worked at the restaurant so far this school year. 

Starting around July 1, the Fresno County education office will partner with local businesses throughout the county to provide other types of vocational training for students with disabilities and offer employment opportunities in maintenance, facilities and technology at the county office. 

“We’re really looking to expand into those areas to give students something more than just restaurant work,” Borges said about integrating students into existing businesses rather than only designing programs for them. “We want to go beyond our students being in one restaurant at one location.” 

Much like the Merced County housekeeping training program, Fresno County’s planned expansion would create more vocational training that integrates special education students into careers, rather than tailoring jobs for students — a move that, Borges hopes, will show businesses the value of these students. 

Even the California Department of Rehabilitation has worked to close the employment gap for people with disabilities and, in 2022, launched an initiative with the Institute for Workplace Skills & Innovation) , a workforce development organization, to employ people with disabilities in allied health care, clerical and manufacturing jobs as part of the Ready, Willing and ABLE program. 

In August, the department and organization again partnered to establish Career Launchpad , a vocational skills and career transition program for students with disabilities — an often “overlooked and undervalued” community, a media release at the time said.

Students with disabilities are valuable to the workforce

Overall, vocational training programs such as those in Merced and Fresno exemplify how valuable students with disabilities can be to the workforce, leaders of Merced and Fresno counties said. 

“Our students being seen as active, valued members of society is one of the most important things that comes out of this,” Stack said. 

Flores, one of the Merced County students, aged out of the housekeeping training program in December when he turned 23. Gonzales, his vocational trainer, said she had hoped his employment with El Capitan Hotel would continue, especially because he could work independently in the training program. The hotel was unable to hire him because they had no open positions. He now participates in the Haven Program, a community-based center serving adults with disabilities. 

“I hope in the future, there’s more businesses that will hire them after they graduate,” Gonzales said. “… They’ve proved to us that they are capable.” 

As Merced and Fresno counties implement and expand programs throughout their communities, Borges hopes the community’s attitude will change toward students and individuals with disabilities. 

“Our students with disabilities,” she said, “have a role in the workforce.”

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William Barnes 7 months ago 7 months ago

Kudos to the Merced County Office of Education and the El Capitan Hotel for implementing this program for people with special needs. It brought back memories of two former positions I held as a teacher with similar curricula. The first was when I was hired by The Sheldon Independent School District in Houston, TX, to be the Community Based Vocational Instruction teacher for student at C.E. King High School. Through a federal grant, the school was … Read More

Kudos to the Merced County Office of Education and the El Capitan Hotel for implementing this program for people with special needs. It brought back memories of two former positions I held as a teacher with similar curricula.

The first was when I was hired by The Sheldon Independent School District in Houston, TX, to be the Community Based Vocational Instruction teacher for student at C.E. King High School. Through a federal grant, the school was partnered with San Jacinto College-North to place my students in 4 different locations on the college’s campuses. These 4 locations were the child care center, the auto body repair center, the library, and the cafeteria. My students would work in each of the locations for a period of time and then rotate to other locations to give them different experiences with different types of work. Sadly, after I moved to El Paso, the grant expired a couple of years later, and the program was dropped. From what I know, all my students were placed in adult assisted living situations.

The second time I was involved in this type of program was becoming the Transition Placement Partnership between Pittsburg High School and the California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation in the late 2000s and early 2010s. In this program, some of my students became qualified to become clients of the Department of Voc. Rehab. and the department would help my students to focus on either a post secondary or vocational training path in order to gain access to either an A.A. or certification in a career to allow them to start working. Some of the businesses in the local community were involved in being designated worksites for the students.

Again, sadly, due to inept and poor school administration and communication, the partnership was dissolved and I was replaced by another teacher who was more to the liking of the administrators. However, I enjoyed to time I did have while I was in the program.

Nance Burton 7 months ago 7 months ago

What funding source is being utilized to pay the students? There are a lot of transition programs struggling to find funding to pay the students for the work being done, enticing the employer to allow them to work on-site. Thank you for the great article Lasherica!

Melody Davis 7 months ago 7 months ago

Yes this vocational opportunity is part of our quality of living. Monies should be very much invested in programs like this everywhere .

CARI E 7 months ago 7 months ago

Are the students paid for the quality work they provide?

Lasherica Thornton 7 months ago 7 months ago

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