Last week we learned of the origins, programs and services of Kayne Eras Center.

Because of learning, emotional, behavioral and developmental challenges, children and young people ages 5 through 21 have experienced difficulty functioning in the public school system. But at the Kayne Eras Center each is assessed and the most effective teaching and learning approach is determined, with ongoing therapeutic and enrichment activities and individualized support.

In 2007 the center merged with the Eceptional Children’s Foundation (ECF). Guy Shulman, ECF’s vice president of development & external affairs, told the News that “kids come to Kayne Eras so beaten up, and with such low self-esteem. The sports program has really made a difference. Two years ago our kids won a basketball championship through the AMASE (Association for Movement and Athletics in Special Education) League. We sprung for letterman jackets and they wore them, even in 90-degree weather!”

He offered an impressive and inspiring statistic.

“One hundred percent of our high school diploma track graduates have gone on to two and four-year colleges. Some we didn’t get until grade 10. They were considered failures when they came to us. We teach them to fly. Many of the kids come here hungry; we feed them. One-third of the kids are not with their parents but with other family members or in a group home or in foster care.”

Mishelle Ross Owens, the center’s vice president of educational and therapeutic services, spoke with delight of a former student “who called me last spring. She’s finishing up at Cal State Fullerton and asked me for a letter of recommendation. She wants to become a therapist. If I didn’t have a pen available to sign that letter, I’d sign it in blood!”

“These kids are a living legacy,” added Shulman. “Once you better yourself, it’s passed down to a better life for your progeny. Our kids learn new lessons and will teach their kids new lessons.”

“Every child can learn something,” Owens emphasized.  “We work with any special needs. In regular public school you have a percentage of the population that hates it.  Here they’re safe and cared for. They know this place is good for them, so there’s no rebelling.” 

Owens told of one child who was “an amazingly talented artist with high--functioning autism, learning disabilities, and visual and auditory memory problems. Through our DATS Agency, our educational therapist worked with his teachers to create an alternative way to test his knowledge so that he could pass the California high school exit exam. We figure out what the processing issues are and create compensating strategies.

“This boy’s educational therapist was so committed to his success that she sent a personal check to Cal Arts for his tuition, but they wouldn’t accept it and gave him a scholarship instead.  They decided that if someone believed in him that much, he deserved to attend.  He is now at Cal Arts creating lighting designs and preparing for his future.”

Shulman recalled a girl who came to the center in April 2005 with a history of fighting, throwing long-lasting temper tantrums and running out of the classroom in public school.

“Diagnosed with the eligibility of OHI (other health impaired), her public school was unequipped to handle her emotional and social needs and to attend to her learning needs,” Shulman said. “After failing for a few years, her mom brought her to Kayne Eras, where she has embraced the enrichment programs and found teachers who understood her and knew how to teach to her special needs.

“She is doing very, very well, makes good grades and is part of the pep squad/cheerleaders, has learned to play piano and the drums, and performs at every show or festival whether on her own, often her own compositions, or with a group or supporting others at which she has learned to excel. She graduated eighth grade last June and says it’s her greatest achievement, but next on her list is graduating high school and then going to college.”

Also among the many success stories is a musically talented young man who graduated from the center in 2007, having started there in the ninth grade with a history of learning problems. Educational therapy and counseling helped his grades to improve. His grades and behavior qualified him to perform in school productions in the center’s enrichment program and gave him an opportunity to play basketball and football in the AMASE League. During his junior and senior years he was dual-enrolled at the center and at a public high school.

After graduation he moved to Atlanta to attend Morehouse College, where he not only carries a double major of psychology and sociology, plays tennis and runs track but has also been active in Atlanta’s Jumpstart program, in which college students mentor and tutor pre-school children in low-income communities for a year.

Proving that happy endings for those with special challenges need not be confined to fairy tales, positive life-changing events have frequently evolved through the center, which marks its 30th anniversary this year. The lobby wall of that sunny yellow building on Machado Road displays a motto that seems to encapsulate its mission:

“Dream, learn, and achieve.”