Campus Expansion

New Group Home

The average time a child spends on Heartspring’s school waitlist is 141 days. That’s 141 days for families to wait in crisis mode. That’s more than four and a half months of growth each and every student on the waiting list is missing out on and of parents just hoping they can deal with their child’s outbursts and behaviors while keeping everyone in their family safe, knowing their child could be in a place that’s safer, a place that can help him or her find his or her independence and become who he or she is meant to be.

Heartspring’s residential program is the last hope for many families of children with special needs. Parents and guardians who come to us have exhausted the resources near their homes and are looking for a place that can keep their children safe while helping them grow and build independence. We are filled to capacity and need more space for the children who need our services. We’ve opened three off-campus homes, but our residential waiting list still remains, and we continue to get new referrals.

The construction of G10 allows us to meet our current and future space needs. We are designing this home to specifically meet the challenging physical demands our children place on it. We’ve focused on durability, design and efficiency, taking what we’ve learned works and what doesn’t work in our current homes and incorporating it into the plans for G10.

Pediatric Services / Autism Services Addition

Imagine being told your child was different than your friend’s kids, sister’s kids or neighbor’s kids. Or that it would take special interventions and treatments you had never even heard of to help your child lead his or her best life. Imagine you were told the sooner you were able to get these services the better, and that time was incredibly important to your child’s future. After all of this, imagine you found a place that sounded perfect for your child that you hear recommended time and time again. Then, imagine you learn that it may be months if not years before your child can actually attend.

Many of the families seeking help from Heartspring’s Pediatric Services or Autism Services programs have to wait up to two years to be seen by a therapist. That is why we are planning a campus remodel and expansion, so families don’t have to go through these hardships. We want to expand and streamline our services to help address the ever-growing need for the therapies and interventions we provide for children.

Cafeteria Expansion and Remodel

Our school campus was constructed in 1998. Since then, we’ve doubled the number of students we serve and increased the meal preparations from one meal a day to three meals a day going from 320 meals served a week to over 1,300 without adding any square footage to accommodate for growth.

Mealtime for our students is more than getting the food to fuel them through the day, it’s also a valuable learning experience. The students acquire extremely important social and life skills like how to properly feed themselves, use utensils or ask food service employees for what they want.

The current space hinders this valuable learning process and creates safety issues while dining. The cafeteria is cramped, making it difficult for staff to consistently have easy access to our students in case of a behavior. Safety is a top priority at Heartspring, and we want to ensure when parents entrust us with their loved ones, we are creating the safest environment possible. As we continue to grow to keep up with the demand for our services, we will have to expand our cafeteria to be able to feed the increased number of students.

Group Home Remodel

For our students, Heartspring becomes much more than just a school, it becomes a home for nearly sixty children every year. This is where they eat, sleep, relax, learn and grow. Our campus has seen birthday parties, holidays, triumphs and many memories.

Deferred maintenance, poor design and improper lighting give our houses more of an institutionalized atmosphere than the home-like atmosphere our students deserve. We are planning a remodel of all six current homes on campus, so our students will have their best possible home at Heartspring.

New Competitive Integrated Employment / Music Building

The number of students served in our school has more than doubled while the number of classrooms available to students has not. To meet the needs of children with special needs and their families, Heartspring needs more space. Currently, we have eight classrooms available to our students. With the addition of our tenth group home, we need additional classrooms. We have three rooms that house our state-of-the-art Competitive Integrated Employment (CIE) program and our music program. While we need more classroom space, these programs are invaluable to our students’ enrichment and preparation for life after Heartspring. Children build vocational skills through classroom work, school-based internships and community-based internships. Our music program provides an outlet for our students to express themselves and learn in a new way.

To add the additional space we need and also keep these two programs running, we’ve added a second phase to our building project — the construction of a CIE/music addition. We will construct a 5,153 sq. ft. building to address the specific needs of both programs. The programs will define the space instead of the space defining them. In CIE, this will enable us to create an environment that closely models the work conditions the students will see later in life setting them up for a path to greater independence. This addition will allow us to keep up with the need for and quality of our services and plan for our future.