HALIFAX – A school tailored for children with autism, ADD and other special needs will be staying open, at least for now.
The Paths2Learning Academy & Society in Halifax announced late last month they were in serious financial need and would be closing down a major portion of its services, the school house, in the new year without immediate help.
READ MORE: School tailored for children with autism, ADD to close without $70,000 in funding
The school-house portion of the academy provides one-on-one and small group learning with customized programming for the students they serve. Currently, there are 15 students taking part in the program.
Global News has learned that since taking their story public, the school has raised enough money to keep their doors open until a little longer.
“Right now, we’ve raised enough money that we’ll be able to keep the schoolhouse open for another whole month, until the end of February, which is fantastic,” said Hannah Rodgers from Paths2Learning.
Crystal Harms, the executive director of Paths2Learning, says the academy tries to keep the costs for parents reasonable and affordable. Each child is charged a tuition of $1,100 a month. But even with the tuition, the school cannot cover their operating costs.
“A lot of the families here don’t have a lot of other options. There’s not a lot of other services that do what we do and so if we are forced to close a lot of these kids just go back to a situation that isn’t ideal, where they’re not maybe learning to their full potential,” Rodgers told Global News.
Keeping the school open, even for another month, is good news for parents.
“This school is just magical to me,” said Marni Adams, whose son attends the academy.
“It’s not just academics, it’s the social, emotional growth that they’re helping my son develop, the self regulation for behaviour so that he can interact more positively in the community and hopefully access more things.”
Paths2Learning needs to raise $70,000 in order to keep their doors open.
The academy does not have charitable status, meaning a lot of funding options are not available to them.
“Charitable status has been difficult to get just because we don’t have an employee whose full time job it is to write policy and documents and things like that for us. We can’t afford it. our employees go right to the kids,” Rodgers said.
The school is still trying to raise money to help maintain the rest of the school year and are now trying to get the help of the provincial government.
The school is submitting an application this week to become a registered charity, and are hopeful it will help them keep their doors open.
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