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 kids across a wide range of profiles, from dyslexia and dyspraxia to regulatory difficulties to the Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome “Zebra” kids who started it all. Moreover, 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.
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.
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 science suggests we should be able to solve.
Every time I share with folks what we’re doing at Cajal — whether it’s at a Cajal Info Session, a S.E.L.F. special education resource fair, the SONO art fair or just in line at the grocery store — I’m blown away by the enthusiasm and the urgency I hear, not just from parents with twice exceptional or EDS kids, but from taxpayers who don’t even have kids but simply want to see a more problem-solving-oriented approach, and public school teachers who wish they had access to these tools themselves. I’ve lost track of the number of people who’ve said they’d like to help—but aren’t necessarily in a position to donate and don’t know how else to support our mission. 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.
That’s why we’re kicking off 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’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, from sharing our messages on social media, to using our templates to write to your local board of education or state representatives, to attending an information session at our school, to connecting us with potential corporate sponsors or major gift donors, to making a donation to our Scholarship and Research Fund to help bring us closer to being able to publish and share our work to impact the field of education as a whole.
Whatever your time and your resources, we hope you’ll find a way to channel your own passion for empowering kids and join it with our own. After all, when neuroscience moves forward, education should too.
In hope and solidarity,
Cheryl