Sara’s Garden is pleased to announce that it will be expanding its special needs educational and intervention services to the Greater Toledo Area with the opening of its second regional special needs school—New Horizons Academy—Springfield. Just like its Wauseon campus, the Springfield campus is dedicated to providing the highest quality of educational programming available and to empowering children with disabilities to recognize and optimize their full potential.
New Horizons Academy is a chartered, nonpublic school, serving preschool children through young adults (up to age 21)—transitioning from school to the work environment. New Horizons Academy began in 2012 with two students and has grown in just seven years to 100. Superintendent Gene Rupp explains the key to the school’s success, “Our special needs students are children first with all of the needs, desires, and feelings of children without disabilities. They are more like other children than different. Their disabilities are inconveniences that keep them from enjoying full lives, and therefore must be overcome or compensated for so that the children can grow and move out into the world. At New Horizons Academy, kids come first. We exist for our students; our students do not exist for the school. Students don’t have to fit into the classes; the class and program are made to meet the individual student’s needs.”
New Horizons Academy’s Wauseon campus serves special needs students from nine different Northwest Ohio counties and 22 school districts; and now, New Horizons Academy is ready to expand its services into the Greater Toledo Area by offering special education, intervention, and therapy services at its new location, 6201 Trust Drive in Holland.
Its Springfield campus will open its doors to students on Monday, September 9. A community-wide Open House will also be held on September 9 from 6-8:00 p.m.
New Horizons Academy is an applied behavioral analysis (ABA) school, which has created a unique, accepting and loving environment for all of its students and staff. Sara’s Garden wants to share this caring, compassionate, educational environment with a whole new batch of students. Unlike traditional classrooms, New Horizons Academy has an incredibly low staff to student ratio of 1 to 2 with all of our students on individual education plans (IEP’s). Personalized teaching and instruction are the keys to reaching many of our special needs students. Their classrooms are small. Their teachers know and care about them, and they don’t get lost in the rush. Our students are what matters!
“A young child with special needs in a regular classroom often finds himself as the only ‘problem’ in the class, always needing extra help and always being the different one,” explained principal Marty Friess. “At New Horizons Academy, this child has classmates, who do some things better than he does and classmates who do some things not as well. The child is not different or special; he is just one of the kids—free to develop an ‘I CAN’ attitude. This is what New Horizons Academy is all about. If this is what you and your special needs child is looking for, then look no farther. Please come visit and tour New Horizons Academy.”
Initially in Springfield, our primary focus will be on early intervention, preschool to second grade, middle school to high school students focusing on the importance of life and work skills, and 18-21 year old young adults transitioning from school to work with a heavy emphasis on vocational training and goals.
As a chartered, nonpublic school, New Horizons Academy accepts the Autism and Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarships as payment in full from the Ohio Department of Education and also contracts with local school districts to serve their more severely affected autistic students. New Horizons Academy provides educational, aide, intervention, and therapy services as a part of its tuition and educational program.
For more information about New Horizons Academy or its Springfield Campus, please call or email the Springfield Director Tara Dumas at 419-335-7272 or [email protected] or to set up a tour or to get information about enrolling your child in New Horizons Academy, please call or email Admissions Director Ronda Rupp at 419-335-7272 or email at [email protected].
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