Page 23 - August Report

CLARKE SCHOOLS LETTER
July 31, 2023
Mr. Robert A. Krause
Chief Executive Officer
Johnson Scholarship Foundation
1 North Clematis Street, Suite 307 West Palm Beach, FL 33401-5551
Dear Bobby,
As we begin a new (fiscal) year at Clarke Schools for Hearing and Speech, we like to take time to reflect on the past year. While 2022 was officially the year we met the $1 million fundraising challenge of the Johnson Scholarship Foundation grant, its impact continues, as I am sure was your intent. Our 2022 reports focused on successfully making the match, but now I would like to tell you what your support has meant to the families we serve.
Clarke ushered in a new chapter. With the conclusion of Clarke’s five-year strategic plan, programs across our five locations have implemented shared best practices including assessments and a three-year literacy initiative. These efforts are made possible with collaborative support from Clarke’s interdisciplinary team of teachers, hearing loss professionals and administrative staff—who are among the most dedicated you will ever meet. Eleven of our current 15 Leadership Team members have been with Clarke for more than 10 years, and two key leaders, our Director of Child and Family Services and Director of Early Childhood Services, have been with Clarke for more than 25 years. Clearly, Clarke is a calling for them, not just a profession.
Clarke has leaned into this dedication because the shortage of teachers in the field (endemic to education, not only our work) has meant that administrators have been in the classroom and teachers have worked long hours to make sure children have had uninterrupted learning. In turn, Clarke provided our teachers of the deaf, speech-language pathologists, audiologists and other program team members with exceptional professional development, including several sessions about the Science of Reading. Clarke has never strayed far from the tenets of this curriculum, but with the new focus on the Science of reading, we are enriching our curriculum based on current research and available tools. Similarly, we have reinforced our focus on Social- Emotional Learning (SEL) as it is important to instill in our students these life skills even as we are training them academically.
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Page 21 HORIZONS
With the growth of our tVisit® Teleservices Program, Clarke’s reach extended to nine states and three countries. Our reach was strong, and even greater was our ability to withstand the pandemic not just returning to “normal,” but returning to an even more robust set of offerings for children. Clarke’s site-based work was supplemented with the expansion of virtual services