Submitted Report.
Approximately 25 Hays CISD special needs students, aged 18 years or older, are finding independence and self-worth every weekday morning thanks in part to a newfound partnership with Jardines in Buda.
Educational professionals say the most important ingredient in a successful teaching outcome is positive relationships. The district’s Special Ed “Over 18” program and Jardine Foods are reinforcing those positive relationships through a campaign underway this month.
Students are assembling Jardine’s world-marketed chili kits for sale and shipment. For each kit sold during November, the students’ program receives 50 cents.
Hays CISD special needs students work with Jardines to put together chili kits. |
Last school year, Vicki Schwandt, a Hays CISD employment development specialist, visualized what has become the district’s Vocational Training Center.
She said, “I realized we needed a more structured work setting for our higher need students.”
For various reasons, Schwandt says, many of these students are unable to go into the community to do the type of work they’re doing at the center, located across the street from Kyle Elementary at the old Kyle Public Library, which is now Hays CISD property.
Schwandt said, “Jardine’s has been of huge support,” providing “real job tasks” and allowing the center’s students “to practice skills that they may never have otherwise been able to experience.”
Explaining the center’s efficiency, Schwandt credits both her staff’s ability to closely supervise the team and her students’ ability to work independently in the same setting.
