Catholic schools work to improve accessibility for students with learning disabilities, autism, Down syndrome and other special needs
By Kevin Birnbaum
When Joey Kane was of the age to start kindergarten, his three older siblings were already attending Holy Rosary School in Seattle. But Joey has Down syndrome, and it wasn’t clear whether the school would be able to accommodate his special needs, said his mother, Ginny.
But Holy Rosary’s principal at the time, Kris Brown (now assistant principal at St. Joseph School in Seattle), had no hesitation about accepting Joey, having gotten to know him through his family.
“He’s so big-hearted and warm and friendly, and I just started to think in my mind: I want Joey to be able to attend Holy Rosary with his family,” Brown said. “I just thought it would be a gift to Holy Rosary.”
Enlarging hearts and soulsThe school had never had a student with Down syndrome before, and meeting Joey’s educational needs took some creativity and flexibility — and money. The Kane family and Holy Rosary split the cost of hiring an assistant to work with Joey in the classroom for his nine years at Holy Rosary; for the first six years, Joey got extra services at a local public school.
The extra effort and resources required to make Joey part of the Holy Rosary School community ended up paying off for everyone involved.
“I think the students in Joey’s class — the whole school — their hearts were enlarged, their souls were enlarged because of Joey,” said Brown. “He’s probably the kindest person I’ve ever met.”
“He was completely accepted and included at Holy Rosary,” said Ginny. “It was a wonderful experience for him.”
Joey is now a junior at Kennedy Catholic High School in Burien, where he’s part of the school’s Mother Teresa Program, started in 2006, which serves students with special learning needs.
Joey is “a part of the fabric of our school,” said Principal Mike Prato.
After two years as the football team’s equipment manager, last fall Joey suited up as a member of the team. He even got in for one (no-contact) play against Highline on Oct. 19. That same month the junior class elected him homecoming prince.
“He reminds me every single day of why I’m a Catholic high school principal, of why this is important to me — that we can provide a Catholic school education for our National Merit finalists and our Mother Teresa kids,” Prato said.
Special needs workshopSuccess stories like Joey Kane’s are great, but when it comes to serving students with special needs, Catholic schools in Western Washington are “all over the map,” said Kay Purcell, assistant superintendent for school accreditation and instructional services.
“We have a fair number of schools that are really welcoming and have the systems in place to provide services to meet those needs,” she said. “We have a number of schools that do not at this point have systems in place so that they can really meet the needs of those kids and those families.”
For the last year, Purcell has headed a committee of 12–15 educators committed to improving Catholic schools’ accessibility for students with special needs.
About 80 Catholic school principals and teachers attended a workshop on special needs Feb. 25 in Seattle. Cathy Muzzy, principal of Serra Catholic School in the Diocese of Orange, Calif., spoke about overcoming the obstacles to accepting more students with special needs: limited resources and personnel, older facilities and opposition from parents and teachers.
Two possible modelsSome parents of typically developing children worry they will lose out if teachers have to focus on students with special needs, Muzzy said, but the reality is that “the more variety of instructional practices that happen in that classroom, the more you’re benefitting every learner.”
Ultimately, Muzzy said, serving students with special needs is part of the mission of Catholic schools. “Jesus Christ would have never turned these children away, and we should not either,” she said.
At the workshop, Father Stephen Rowan, superintendent of Catholic schools, announced that improving accessibility for students with special needs would be one of the areas addressed in the archdiocesan strategic plan currently being developed for Catholic schools.
Father Rowan suggested two possible models for improving special needs education in the archdiocese.
“It may be that we will want to specialize within regions, whereby one school or two schools … would be able to bring in a state-of-the-art program because they have the resources … and then that model could be replicated within the deanery,” he said.
Another possibility would be for every school to do “a little bit and we build from there,” he said.
‘A newness factor’One of the challenges of serving students with special needs is that the term encompasses such a wide variety of students, including children who just need a little extra help in certain subjects; children with learning, developmental or physical disabilities; children on the autism spectrum; and children with Down syndrome, among others. Many educators also consider exceptionally gifted children, who may require extra stimulation, to be special needs students.
Serving special needs students is “not traditionally an area that Catholic schools, particularly in Seattle, have excelled at, and so there’s a newness factor to it,” said Brian Anderson, principal of St. Benedict School in Seattle.
But historically, he said, “Catholic schools have done a very good job reaching marginalized populations,” including immigrants and the poor. “And I think that special needs students are the next marginalized population that Catholic schools need to start serving,” he said. “It’s part of our mission.”
St. Benedict employs reading and math specialists for students who need extra help, and the school currently has one student with Down syndrome. But because the school building has multiple floors and no elevators, Anderson said, he can’t accept students with certain physical disabilities.
St. Mary Magdalen School in Everett has started before- and after-school tutoring programs for students who need it. The school is not currently equipped to serve students with profound special needs, said Principal Bruce Stewart, but it’s working toward the goal of wider accessibility.
“We want to make sure that the school is available to all parish families, and that if they have a student that has any type of special needs, that we can do our best to serve those students,” he said.
Stewart pointed to St. Madeleine Sophie School in Bellevue as an inspiration for Catholic schools aiming to better serve special needs students.
That school opened eight years ago with the goal of being truly diverse, said Principal Dan Sherman — not just economically and culturally diverse, but also academically diverse.
“Over 20 percent of our kids have some sort of student support plan,” he said, including several students with severe autism and Down syndrome.
Sherman said Catholic schools shouldn’t be afraid to accept students with special needs.
“We have gained so much more out of having kids with [special] needs here than we’ve probably ever given any of them,” he said.
Published in The Catholic Northwest Progress on March 17, 2013