 Hello, I'm Jamie Lowe, it's proud principal of Oak Park School. I'd like to spend a few moments introducing you to Oak Park School and all the wonderful things that our campus has to offer. Oak Park is a district-centered school that provides educational services to over 300 students with disabilities. Our staff consists of highly educated and trained teachers, specialists, paraprofessionals and administrators who continuously set high expectations for our students so that each may strive to reach his or her individual potential. Well, Oak Park is the best school. I like it. I remember when I was in Haiti, I used to go to school, but I stopped going to school because of my leg and because of my spine injury. So that's the reason why I could have walked. So that's why I decided not to go to school and I spent so many days staying home in Haiti. And then ever since the earthquake came in, we had no place to go, nowhere. I had to live with my uncle until we finally got something, then that's when we finally came to America and that's when they were going to put me to a school because they didn't want me to stay home. That's when I came to Oak Park and then they signed me up on Oak Park and then that's when I first came here and I remember since I came to Oak Park. I liked it a lot. Oak Park has six instructional teams with each team supporting student needs according to exceptionality, strengths, and medical and behavioral needs. Our teams include DAT, Transition K-8, Transition 9-12, Spectrum, Action and Post-Grads. Some of our students utilize assistive technology to access curriculum and communication. We utilize general education curriculum as well as curriculum design specifically for students with special needs. All curriculum is rigorous and relevant and is differentiated to meet the needs of each individual student. Our master schedule includes course offerings and core subject areas as well as electives in music, art, physical education, and technology. All teams participate in community-based instruction in which teaching occurs off-campus while using community venues as extensions of the regular classroom. Our Post-Grad team prepares students for adult living by teaching necessary life skills such as budgeting and banking, meal preparation, housekeeping, accessing community services, and utilizing public transportation. They provide career experiences by working and volunteering with retail companies. Oak Park provides unique therapies for our students that are directly accessible on campus. Services include hippotherapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech and language, vision and heart of hearing services. Our swimming pool was designed with our students' needs in mind and is used regularly for water therapy. Hippotherapy utilizes equestrian trainers who work with our students on improving physical strength and balance. My name is Linda Fries, F-R-E-A-S-E. I am an occupational therapist and a hippotherapy clinical specialist. Instride therapy has been in Sarasota County for over 20 years. I joined them 20 years ago because I started getting involved with hippotherapy and I saw the changes that it made in the kids and I was hooked so I quit my job and went back to school and I moved here because of the hippotherapy program. Hippotherapy offers to our students with posture and movement disabilities a platform where they can experience the kind of three-dimensional movement that we all take for granted. Those children who participate in the hippotherapy program have posture and movement disorders that prevent them from being able to walk. Some of them are not able to sit up. I have seen children sit for the first time, hold their heads level for the first time, talk for the first time after the polio epidemic because they had a lot of people who had polio. They didn't have a lot of therapy facilities and there was a woman who had been afflicted by polio whose doctor said she would never walk again and she won a silver medal in the Olympics. I'm sorry, I can't tell that story without crying. I always tear up. The gold medal winning rider had to carry her to the podium. She still couldn't walk and like she says it's a pretty big deal to win a silver medal. Each student at Oak Park School participates in vocational programming that prepares them for employment opportunities after transitioning from our post-grad program. The WeWork Lab is designed for students to learn pre-vocational skills that will lead to employment. The horticulture and practical arts programs provide hands-on experiences on campus that provide restoration and beautification to the school and its ground. Hi, I'm Sarah Conway. I'm a job coach here at Oak Park and I've been here for about I think this is my 10th year. I always wanted to work with this population ever since I was a little girl. I just always felt like they needed to feel like everybody else. What we do here in job coach land in that part of the school is we have a work lab to help the students transition whether they're going to be staying home after they exit Oak Park, whether they're going to a group home or whether they're going to independent living. We try to help teach them skills that they're going to need to be successful. The work lab has a lot of boxes to teach fine motor skills. We have tools, we have puzzles, we have restaurant wrapping hamburgers. We have a big variety of task boxes so that the students can all practice on whatever skill they need, whatever they can do and whatever they can make better. This Pelican Cottage that we're in now it's just a a portable that we thought why not make a studio apartment for these students so that they can practice independent living. So we made a a portable and everything was donated to us for this very nicely by Pelican Cottage. So it's a really good place for the classes to come in whenever they want with their teachers and their in their peros and practice independent living. It's been very successful and it's it's open every day just like a regular classroom nobody runs it we just set it up and it sort of runs itself. It's uh uh been very successful here to help the students transition. Oak Park is fortunate to have many dedicated and supportive business partners who continuously support our campus with monetary and in kind donations. Our interactive and stimulating playground was constructed through a generous contribution from the Knights of Columbus. We even have professional sports teams as business partners. The Tampa Bay Lightning is committed to hosting street hockey camps for our students to expose them to the sport and perhaps more importantly the value of being part of a team. I'm the PTSO president of Oak Park School and have been for five years now. Well our PTSO stands for Parent Teacher Student Organization so we encompass the entire school where we of course are a very unique demographic as we have students from pre-k all the way up to age 22 and all have an IEP which would indicate that they have some type of special needs and teaching to accommodate them at Oak Park. And as you've already witnessed while you've toured our campus and taken videos of all of our specials programs from our gym to our pool to our hippo therapists to our physical therapists our occupational therapists our speech therapists our library our media center our vocational arts our practical arts and our actual art room and music. So we involve the community by inviting them to different events.