Ribbon Cutting Set for Life Skills Training Apartment

New Facility Provides Transitional Training for Students with Disabilities

DENHAM SPRINGS, La. – Livingston Parish Public School officials will host a ribbon cutting ceremony and open house at the new Life Skills Training Apartment, housed on the Denham Springs High School campus, at 9:30 a.m. on March 2.

The Life Skills Training Apartment is a remote teaching classroom designed to instruct students with significant disabilities throughout the parish on basic day-to-day, at-home skills that are needed for them to live a safer, more independent lifestyle after they transition out of the public school system.

Belinda Dumas, the parish’s transition facilitator for high school students, said the new facility fulfills a great need in the parish, and it is a model for the state.

“This Life Skills Training Apartment will allow us to meet a serious need of those students with disabilities who are in the 18 to 21 range and who will be leaving the school system in just a short time,” Dumas said.

“The functional living training will deal with how to manage at home and meet the basic needs of daily living as independently and successfully as possible.  Most of these students will require supervision and support of varying degrees following their exit from school, but the better prepared we can make them in living safely and as independently as possible within a typical home setting, the better this transition will be,” she added.

During the open house, select students from Denham Springs High School will demonstrate some typical life skills.  Media representatives will be provided with signed permission slips that will allow them to interview, video and/or photograph these students during the demonstration.

All guests should check in at the Denham Springs High School Office to be escorted to the new Life Skills Training Apartment.

Following the open house, other students with disabilities from throughout the parish will be introduced to the new facility.  However, these students will not be available for contact with the media.

Jackie Abington, the parish’s significant disabilities facilitator, noted that the Livingston Parish Public School System currently works with about 100 students with significant disabilities at the high school level.  She said special education teachers throughout the parish currently work with community-based groups and programs, as well as private businesses, to provide vocational-based training and internships for their students, but the new Life Skills Training Apartment will be the first daily living skills learning center in the parish.

Aimee Seale, the parish’s community-based transition support teacher, said the parish’s disabled students, ages 18 to 21, will be put on rotating schedules to visit the facility twice per month for instruction sessions.  She said each class will have no more than 10 students per session.

Seale noted that the apartment features four instructional areas – a living/den area, a bedroom, a bathroom and kitchen.  The building, which resembles a standard temporary classroom building, was custom designed for its purpose and is wheelchair/disability accessible for entry and exit throughout all the living areas.

Basic lessons will include how to make a bed, adjust a thermostat, operate appliances, including a dishwasher and microwave, and how to sort clothes.  Students also will be instructed in basic cleaning techniques and home safety issues.

“We want to try to give them the most information they can manage for when they leave us,” Seale said.  “These skills will be essential to them functioning in an independent living environment or in a group home.”