SAN ANTONIO – A new school for young children is on a mission to provide a high-quality childhood education for all children, while in an inclusive setting.
At Rise School of San Antonio, young children with or without developmental delays will learn and play together.
“We have four therapists on our team. So speech, occupational, physical and music. With those four therapists we can provide all the supports that children need,” Vanessa Hurd, founding director of Rise School San Antonio said.
The school will be located at a Christus Childrens Hospital building, in downtown San Antonio.
“We’re going to be enrolling students ages 1-3 in August. We will have two classrooms basically the ones and twos and they are are going to have one teacher per every three students,” Leslie Gonzalez, school director of Rise School San Antonio said.
The school will later enroll students up to six-years-old.
Gonzalez who is also an occupational therapist, said she saw the need for a school like this one in San Antonio.
“I worked for Christus Children’s for about eight years. During my time there, I was able to see the need for educational environments for kiddos of all ages, especially for kiddos who had special needs or developmental delays,” Gonzalez said.
For families with financial need, the school offers tuition assistance scholarships.
“We want to provide the best setting for all the kids and the families. So we anticipate serving hundreds of families well into the future and giving their kids just a leg up that they wouldn’t have had. We want every child that graduates from Rise to be ready to join any mainstream kindergarten setting,” Hurd said.