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Welcome to Park School
Park School focuses on the needs of students who function in the moderate, severe, and profound range of cognitive disability and/or have multiple disabilities. Park School is jointly funded and operated by District 65 and Evanston Township High School. Students can attend Park School from age 3 until the day before their 22nd birthday. Park’s program goals maximize a student’s strengths toward preparation for an inclusive and happy adult life. The school day is divided into a variety of subjects: readiness/social studies/science, reading/writing,math, home and adaptive living skills, adaptive physical education,instructional lunch, vocational skills and leisure time. Art and music/dramaare also part of the school week. Students can also benefit from related services provided in the school, including speech-language, social
work, occupational therapy, physical therapy, hearing impairment services, vision impairment services, and nursing as indicated on their Individualized Education Plan. We are also equipped with two sensory rooms, one for gross motor and one for fine motor, both which help students learn how to seek out their own sensory needs and learn to self-regulate. All of our students have access to these rooms at least one time per week, and more as is individually appropriate.
An obvious weakness of a self-contained special education facility is the lack of interaction with typically developing peers throughout the day. However, our students do receive some interactions with typically developing peers on a regular basis. We have programs designed with a Preschool Programs, Bessie Rhodes Magnet School, Nichols Middle School and ETHS. We are also always in the process of developing meaningful interactions with other schools and within the community all throughout the year.
Park School provides students with as many opportunities as possible to have similar experiences as their typically developing peers. Therefore, we have a basketball team and cheerleaders, all-school assemblies, and school dances and parties. We also have Community Resource Days (CRD), approximately one time each month. CRDs are community based instructional experiences which afford students the opportunity to practically apply the functional skills they learn in the classroom to more authentic settings. This includes participating in structural leisure time activities in the community, as well as exposure to mobility training. In these ways, Park is often a less restrictive educational environment.
Our goal for our students is to be as independent as possible in their adult life after graduation. For some students, this means having a community job and being mobility-trained on public transportation. For others, it is preparing them to live in a residential facility and working in a sheltered workshop. Regardless, our staff provides supports for the entire family to help everyone prepare for these steps. We provide students with every opportunity so their last day at Park looks like the first day of the rest of their life!
MISSION STATEMENT
The Staff of Park School believe in the commitment to educate all students regardless of their disability or socio-economic background. We believe that the purpose of the school is to educate all of its students to their fullest potential while fostering positive social/emotional growth and development. The program must stress functional, realistic goals that assist with the transition from a school environment to that of the community. We will continue to foster integration of our students with their non-handicapped peers and develop programs that result in our students becoming contributing members of the community. We accept the responsibility for the implementation of such a program
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