Donna Curry

I currently work at Rite of Passage as the National Director for Special Education, where I'm responsible for making sure all of our campuses across the country are under the special education compliance of IDEA. We work with adjudicated youth who've been placed in our schools due to violations and legal offenses in the community. I travel to support over 60 campuses across the country, though not all of them provide education services. I ensure our students get their in-class supports, that we're holding individualized education meetings, and reaching out to local education agencies to make sure there's a partnership with us while those students are with us. When they return back to their community, they're still able to obtain their FAPE in their community as well. The parents are very much involved, and if we have students who do not have been awarded to the state, we make sure we have surrogate parents for those students. We have special education teachers on most campuses, but when they're not there, we have support in place to do Zoom meetings to make sure those students get their services, like our speech therapist who Zooms in to a few of our campuses. I may have to go in as a facilitator to make sure those partnerships are made between the communities and our school staff. We face challenges with retaining staff in the culture we work with, but most times we're able to find those who have a good heart for the students that we serve.