Megan Navarro
DRIPPING SPRINGS — After being housed in various locations over the years, Dripping Springs ISD’s 18+ program is getting a new facility to further its students’ needs and it’s anticipated to be ready for the 2026 academic year.
The special education, and adult transition services, 18+ program is offered by way of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which ensures that all children with disabilities have a free appropriate public education that is designed to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment and independent living.
“It's different for every student, but if we have a student who is wanting to go to college, but because their executive functioning skills are still lacking, then they, along with the parent, [might] agree to stay with the school district,” explained Brook Roberts, director of student services for DSISD. “They can still stay connected to the district and the district still has an obligation or responsibility to provide them with individualized instruction.”
Students involved in the program learn a variety of lessons, Roberts explained, ranging from financial literacy and money management to entrepreneurial skills and doing their own laundry. The district has also partnered with community businesses — such as H-E-B, Lucky Lab, Sleep Inn, Moxie and Playa Bowls — who have provided job or internship sites for those students.
“It helps our community to affirm working with people with disabilities and to see them and to not just accept, but to include those individuals through their own understanding by building some of these partnerships,” Roberts said.
Those lessons will expand even further with the program’s newest facility that’s in the works. The students and staff have moved from different locations over the years, from a classroom at Dripping Springs High School, the Peabody House — where Walnut Springs Elementary School currently sits — then the high school again and now, they are at Wildwood Springs Elementary.
The new facility, which was initially approved by voters in the May 2023 bond, is getting closer to fruition with the board’s unanimous decision Oct. 27 to approve the design development and Construction Manager at Risk (CMaR) Delivery Method for the project. This also follows the board awarding PBK Architects with the job in 2024.
Adjacent to the Sycamore Springs campuses, the 5,000-square-foot building will include three major classroom spaces — a workshop, life skills classroom and a simulated living/kitchen area — as well as a laundry room and outdoor greenhouse, Roberts said.
“What we want to do is those things that you want to move people from being just participants in towards full independence. We want to be able to have a facility that gives us our best shot at teaching those skills for the remaining time that we have to do that with these particular students,” he said.
Students with disabilities have an annual meeting every year, called an Individualized Education Program (IEP) plan or, in Texas, it’s called an Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD). The student’s ARD committee is made up of an administrator, general education teacher, special education teacher, others who are involved in their education and families who help make decisions for their education.
A component of those decisions is transition and the ARD committee needs to be thinking about what the plan is for the student following high school, Roberts said. Ideally, he continued, the committee would start thinking about this type of program around the ninth grade and whether or not they will need it.
IDEA services are available to students up to 21 years of age according to how it was written in law, Roberts explained; however, if they turn 22 during that last school year, they are able to stay until the end of it.
“It’s a right of people with disabilities to be able to have that. It's not necessarily an elective or an option. It's really something that the district has an obligation to our community and to the taxpayers and to the families and to the individuals with disabilities to provide them with an appropriate education. This is part of their education,” Roberts shared. “Not everything in school is math, science, reading and writing … I think if you look at our mission statement and our vision statement, it's really about creating a whole lifelong learner and so, this gives us an opportunity to do that, when maybe these students weren't able to complete those tasks by the time they finished 12 years in school with us.”
Currently, there are 14 students in DSISD’s 18+ program, with some who are in a morning block and others who attend in the afternoon. There are also two special education-certified teachers and four job coaches, who support them by helping them with their internships, driving them to job sites, etc.
Looking to the future, Roberts explained that within two years, they anticipate there will be closer to 22-24 students involved in the program, based on how the community is growing and the projected numbers. He said they are excited for the new building, as it will give them more opportunity to serve the students, but they continue to dream of what’s next.
“We're just spending time dreaming. We get together with our teachers and with the families and with the students and we just talk about things that we're interested in. We had an astronaut come visit us last week and so, we started talking about rockets,” he said. “The sky is wide open to do anything. While we have this facility, it's going to be very flexible and adaptive for us. We're going to be able to utilize it in ways that we haven't even thought about yet. The goal is to keep growing it and we want to be a model 18+ program for the state. We want districts from all over the state to come look at what we're doing and how we're preparing our young adult students for life after high school.”
To learn more about DSISD’s special services, visit www.dsisdtx.us/page/special-services.
