It's time to #reframethedebate on education!

Dear Friends,

At this time when educational policy seems to be in a blender, it has become abundantly clear that we need to reframe the debate on public education to stop arguing about what to cut, and start focusing on how we can foster the innovations that can move us forward.

We’ve been working on just that kind of innovation for 6 years, and what has evolved is a first-of-its-kind, research-backed methodology reducing or even removing learning, social-emotional and behavioral challenges that other schools can only accommodate—and in fact, that they don’t even think it’s possible to change. These breakthroughs have brought transformative results for the kids in our program, and because we are ‘rewiring’ the child’s neuropsychological profile itself, these transformational outcomes actually reduce the costs of meeting their educational needs over the course of their remaining K-12 years—while opening up whole new possibilities for college and beyond.

Innovation this big doesn’t usually come out of a small non-profit — but this one did. We don’t have some big research institution behind us, and we didn’t start with some big grants or corporate sponsors. This all began because I simply refused to accept that my children’s futures would be limited by challenges that scientists suggested a way to solve.

We believe this is the future of education—and a solution that can help solve the special education funding crisis that is devastating our communities while leaving our children vulnerable. In fact, we are so committed to that mission that it’s in our corporate charter that we will publish and dissemminate our findings so they can be implemented in public schools as well.

But we can’t do this alone.

Each donation to our Scholarship and Research Fund has a double impact: it helps another child gain access to our transformational education, and in so doing it expands our cohort, bringing us one step closer to being able to publish and dissemminate our findings. That’s a double impact: help a child in our community today and help support “homegrown” innovation that is developing a new, neuroscience-based blueprint that could transform the field of education tomorrow, delivering better outcomes while lowering costs.

Today, with the removal of federal funds and protections for special needs kids and the shifts in Hartford, we see how urgent it has become to bring this work to the next level, so we’re announcing a grassroots movement to #reframethedebate on education to raise awareness of how much more we could be doing for our kids if we shift the lens from cutting costs on special needs, to investing in solutions that reduce the needs that are so costly to support.

We’ll be kicking this off with our official launch at the special fundraising event our students are organizing to celebrate our building’s 101st birthday on December 11th (get your tickets!), and we’ve added a whole new section to our website bringing you ideas and resources to make it easy for you to add your voice to our movement for change.

Because neuroscience has moved forward, and it’s time for education to do so as well.

In hope and solidarity,

Cheryl