By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

For some children, the daily noises and rigors of a standard elementary school classroom can be too much.

They need a soft place to land, and the Hays school district has created that through the STAR program, which stands for Strategic Teaching with Adaptations and Reinforcement.

This program serves children with multiple disabilities, severe autism disorder and high needs who can’t function in the general education classrooms without some intensive support. Three newly modified rooms have been dedicated to the STAR program at Roosevelt Elementary School, and they look a little bit different compared to a standard general education classroom.

“It is the mission of this district to make sure every child has what he or she needs to learn in every classroom every day,” Roosevelt Principal Paula Rice said.

The 21 students at Roosevelt are focusing on daily life skills. There are 13 adults in that program.

“It is not uncommon for these kiddos to have the social and spacial needs of 10 of their general education peers,” she said.

Three classrooms may seem like a lot of space, she said, but these students have a greater need.

The special education staff created a video in which the STAR students take viewers on a tour of the STAR classrooms. The video (below) was shown at the school board meeting Monday night.

McDaniel said the school plans to share the video with general education students soon so they can understand these students can learn too.

The closets in these rooms have been turned into break rooms for the children. Some children who have sensory issues need dark quiet spaces, so the school gave them that.

Beans bags have been placed in corners to create reading spaces. There are places to work on reading, math, life skills and communication skills.

It is a place where the special education staff says just in the first 27 days of the school year children have grown.

Lindy McDaniel, special education teacher, said when the special education teachers came to Raj Sharma, director of special education, last school year and asked to build this structured learning program for these K-12 kids, she said she was not sure what she had signed up for.

“As we have moved forward, it has been amazing what these kids have become,” she said,” and they feel part of something.”

These are children who typically do not participate in other youth programs like recreation sports or Boy or Girl Scouts, but they can be a part of the Shining Stars, the special education elementary group.

“I know it may seem like small gains when you see a kid write ‘I can’ and then scribble write, but he is sitting, he is complying, he is participating,” McDaniel said.

A little girl in the video who was using a flip book to communicate had no means to communicate at a functional level before the flip book was introduced to her at the beginning of the school year. She doesn’t have to act out physically because she can communicate, McDaniel said.

Tasha Lang, special education teacher said, “It is the little steps. We always have to tell ourselves it’s the little steps. They are not going to shine overnight. We have to help them shine over the whole year.”

School board member Mandy Fox visited teacher Tasha Lang’s room at Wilson, and she said the new STAR rooms compared to former facilities were wonderful for the children.

Children start in their general education classrooms, but can move to the STAR rooms whenever they need to. Some children stay only minutes in general education, and some students stay all day. The rooms give the students and teachers the flexibility to work on a variety of skills.

Fox encouraged other board members to tour the classrooms.

Rice concluded with a thank you to the staff at Roosevelt, especially to those working in special education.

“As educators we all work very hard all the time, but these ladies really impress me,” she said of the special education teachers. “They are usually up until midnight or 1 o’clock redoing the schedules for every one of their students every single day, and then they are in the office at 5:30, 6 printing them off and getting ready to go every single day.

“They rarely take lunches. They rarely take breaks. It is nonstop from the time the kids get there until they leave, and then they are not done. They do it because they love these kids and they know they can gain.”

Corrected 5:26 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30, 2017.