My Possibilities announces expansion

Four years after opening, business is booming at Plano-based My Possibilities.

A school designed for cognitively disabled adults who have aged out of the public school system, the organization offers continuing education-style programs that teach students independent living, health and wellness, social, and vocational skills.

The school opened its doors in June 2008 with 10 students and an all-volunteer staff. Today, it serves about 150 families per week and employes 15 full-time staff members.

"We have just outgrown our space," said Charmaine Solomon, president of My Possibilities. "We actually need a bigger campus environment. ... We have such a demand for our service we have people on a waiting list, and there's just more need than we can provide at this point."

To meet the growing demand, My Possibilities is moving from its current 11,000-square-foot home near Custer Road and West 15th Street to a new, 23,000-square-foot facility around the corner at Independence Parkway and West 15th Street.

In addition to more classrooms, the new building will feature a special needs gym, a fully functional training kitchen and an area for speech and language pathology. There is also room on the property to expand the building to accommodate future growth.

"We're moving into providing things that our [clients] need and just have difficulty finding throughout the community," said Michael Thomas, executive director. "So it's not just more people being served on a daily basis, but they are receiving more services as well."

Solomon was one of three parents of cognitively disabled children who helped found My Possibilities. In 2008, her son, Kyle, neared graduation from high school. After doing some research, Solomon began to realize that there were no suitable day programs in the area.

"Our children were graduating from high school and there were really just no quality places to send [them] where they would be educated and where they would grow," she said.

She then set out with other parents to found My Possibilities, a school Thomas said is an alternative to the kind of unemployment and inactivity that causes many disabled people to lose the skills developed during high school.

"If they're doing a great job, that's wonderful, but when they turn 22, that's it," he said, referring to the maximum age of graduation for cognitively disabled high school students. "The question then becomes, 'Where do you go now?' and more often than not individuals end up graduating from high school programs and spending the next two to 10 years sitting at home and not doing anything, and the speed in which they regress in skills and learning is tremendous compared to a normal adult."

The growth of My Possibilities is "built-in" by the constant stream of special needs graduates from area high schools and a general lack of similar services in the state, Thomas said.

"If you have an adult with a disability in your family, Texas is probably the worst state in the country to live in," he said. "It's the worst-funded per person in the United States for special needs services. ... So it's kind of a field of dreams method. If we build it, they will come, and we've found that people need these kind of services and there's just not very many people doing it."

The new facility is currently under renovation, and the school will relocate the new building in June 2013, the fifth anniversary of the school's initial opening.

"The reason we've been successful has a lot to do with the support of the community," Thomas said. "... It was community partners and supporters that helped build our first facility, so we're certainly in a place where as we begin building, the more help and more support that's out there, that's the stuff that we greatly appreciate and that's kind of what helps us do what we do."

My Possibilities is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. For information and enrollment instructions, visit www.mypossibilities.org.

Current Rating: 3 of 3 votes!

Rate File: Select Rating: * ** *** ****

 Plano Apartments
 Plano Attorneys
 Plano Auto Dealers
 Plano Auto Parts
 Plano Auto Repair
 Plano Beauty Salons
 Plano Car Rental
 Plano Dentists
 Plano Doctors
 Plano Flowers
 Plano Hotels
 Plano Insurance
 Plano Loans
 Plano Mortgages
 Plano Movers
 Plano Pizza
 Plano Realtors
 Plano Restaurants
 Plano Storage
 Plano Tax Preparation
 Plano Travel
 Featured
 More...