Story time and music lessons are routine parts of the school day for most young children. But for residents of Sunshine Children’s Home in Ossining, who face significant medical and developmental challenges, normal classroom activities had been out of reach.
That changed this month, thanks to a new partnership between Sunshine and the Putnam/Northern Westchester Board of Cooperative Educational Services, which has launched a new full-day school program for 28 children.
The children, aged 5 to 20, are being taught in three bright, colorful classrooms on the Sunshine property so they can be near the medical, nursing and therapeutic services they need. Until now, most of the children had received up to two hours of tutoring daily because they are too medically fragile to travel to off-site schools.
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Susan Pinckney, director of Social Work and Related Services at Sunshine, said the residents would now have a real school day – with meals and therapy woven into the program.
“It adds another layer of normalcy,” said Ms. Pinckney, adding that it gives the children the type of structured class time that is important for all students.
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BOCES Special Education Director Adam VanDerStuyf said the program has already started to expose the students to a wider range of school-day experiences and activities. Students are also receiving more instructional time.
The teachers, working with teaching assistants and aides, will use a variety of teaching approaches to adapt the curriculum for individual students, and to help them reach their maximum potential. Meanwhile, nurses, therapists and other specialists from Sunshine will continue to provide a host of other services to students throughout the school day.
PNW BOCES, a creation of 18 component school districts, provides specialized educational opportunities and supportive services to students with unique learning needs.
Sunshine Children’s Home is a 54-bed licensed nursing facility. Some children come to Sunshine after an extended hospital stay and need rehabilitative care that will allow them to return home. For other children, whose care is too complicated for their families to provide, Sunshine becomes a new “second” home. The children have a variety of respiratory, neurological, endocrine and orthopedic disorders.
