Making Special Education Actually Work

Because KPS4Parents is focused on solving the problems of special education, it’s often the case that we’re discussing negative things. It’s necessary to problem-solving, but we don’t spend every moment of every day steeped in negative energy or we’d burn out and never achieve our mission. Besides, it isn’t all bad!

Today, I got to do something really fun and uplifting. Those of you following our Facebook page may recall that we got in a donation of BEST Reading Kits (42 cases of 6 kits each with a total value of $9000). We don’t provide instruction to children ourselves, but we couldn’t pass up the opportunity and the donor was relatively local, so we got a self-storage unit and stashed them, then started looking for programs that could use them to benefit children learning to read. We gave out kits to a number of organizations: the Pleasant Valley Neighborhood for Learning in Camarillo, CA; El Descanso Elementary School in Camarillo, CA; an alternative school program in Ventura, CA; Lancaster School District in Lancaster, CA; Newhall School District in Newhall, CA; the San Luis Obispo County Literacy Council; and Support for the Kids in Ventura County, CA; as well as a few individuals who won them in a Facebook contest or otherwise asked for them.

The largest group we donated to was Support for the Kids, which is another non-profit that finds materials to donate to children in disadvantaged situations. Today, I got to go to Rio Elementary School, which houses a migrant education program, where we gave out reading kits to every child in attendance. These kits will travel with them as their families follow agricultural jobs to help them learn the English language no matter where they are, which is such a powerful use of these kits that it made me all teary-eyed to think of what we have done.

I had the honor of helping pass out the kits to the students and took pictures, which you can see in our Facebook album?dedicated to today’s event. Many thanks to Lynda Miller of Support for the Kids, her volunteers, and the teaching staff and volunteers at the migrant education program?at Rio Elementary School for putting these reading kits to constructive use. As their poster on the wall said, they are making a global impact one child at a time and we are honored to be a part of it.