Schools Renovate Special Education Classrooms to Inspire Post-Graduation Success

LaRue County High School is renovating its Special Education area thanks to $150,000 of funding from the Kentucky Department of Education.

“The idea is that we not only provide life skills like we've been doing, like self-care and cooking and cleaning and things like that but also soft skills and job-related skills so that our students can find gainful employment,” Savannah Boone, LaRue County Special Education Director.

Across the nation, graduates with disabilities struggle to find gainful employment. If they do manage to find work, the employment is often either part-time or at a lower wage than their non-disabled peers.

However, a growing number of grocery chains like Publix and food service locations, including restaurants, are seeing the benefit of inclusive and equitable hiring practices. This data means that students with disabilities often get a leg up if they can prepare for careers in those areas.

This data was also a key driver in the vision to remodel the kitchen in the classroom for students with moderate and severe disabilities at LCHS.

“Our initial vision was to prepare our students for careers in food service because our data shows that that is where a lot of our students go for employment upon graduation -- to restaurants within the county,” said Boone.

Boone said the improvements go beyond food handling and kitchen preparation. The Special Education (SPED) team wanted to diversify the skills these students could learn, including factory work.

“A lot of typically developing teenagers can just go straight into vocational training or college upon graduation,” Boone said. “We recognize that our students may need a little bit more support before they go into vocational training and so the next part of our vision was to start providing that support, so we bought equipment that resides at the bus garage to help students learn how to change oil and tires along with various other equipment for vocational training.”

With the money from the Department of Education, the Special Education team was also able to buy toolkits and benches for students to start learning how to use basic tools. They also dedicated time for students to learn rather than feeling rushed.

“As a part of those classes, the students have been learning skills working with the tools and curriculum that we bought," Boone said. “Our students have also been going on field trips to workplaces to see those skills in action. Some of those workplaces have expressed a lot of interest in recruiting our kids and so that's been a really successful relationship.”

Boone said this pursuit of equitable education gets to the heart of the broader SPED mission.

“Our mission is that we will provide high-quality instruction and care to every student, that we will promote independence and inclusion and protect civil rights through compliance,” she said. “Ultimately, our goal is to promote independence because our students, when they graduate, need to be able to take care of themselves…it is very difficult to take care of yourself without a job.”

Boone hopes this expansion and renovation won’t just shape the lives of the students experiencing the facilities, but also help the community realize the misconceptions that exist around students with disabilities.

“What we often hear is ‘students with disabilities are able to draw an SSI check to take care of their basic needs, so they won't need to work’ but we believe that our students are capable of more,” Boone said.

For Boone and other special education leaders across the county, the Profile of a Learner applies to all students, not just the majority.

“The vision for our kids is that they receive high-quality instruction so that they can be independent in the future and included in their community,” Boone continued. “You should be part of this community and continue living, learning and contributing regardless of disability status."