Opportunity School in Amarillo adds therapy classrooms to help children

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - The Opportunity School recently received a $2,000 grant to buy equipment, which will help children with special needs speed up their development.

They used the funds to get items like sensory bins to support children in occupational, physical, and speech therapy.

“This has been awesome just to be able to provide a place to come in and do what they need to do when they need to,” said Laci Beezley, early intervention specialist at The Opportunity School.

They previously focused on speech therapy but wanted to expand their services to identify challenges children may have at an earlier age.

“If we can catch those things early, we can work with children for a longer period of time and hopefully help them overcome those things,” said Jill Goodrich, executive director of The Opportunity School. “[It] also give the families some tools that they can be working on as well to help their child.”

It saves parents time and money not having to outsource to private practices to find these issues and to have therapy sessions.

Their partnership with West Texas A&M Department of Communication Disorders also helps parents save money for these services.

“We helped identify autism, we identified children with hearing impairments, so lots of different diagnoses that would affect language development,” said Tracy Fredman, academic and clinical instructor for West Texas A&M University.

The opportunity school has a full waiting list and is currently hiring for teachers to help more children.

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