Menta Yuma Academy ready to serve special needs children

After about 18 months of meetings, planning, filing documents and hiring staff, the Menta Yuma Academy is ready to serve special needs children in Yuma County.

“From the very beginning what we heard loud and clear from our very first meeting is, whatever we do in the community needs to serve the entire community,” said Lindsay St. Clair, regional director of development for Menta’s Arizona/Southwest region. “It has to serve any child that needs our help in the entire Yuma community. So we’ve stood true to that because that’s what we said we would do.”

The Menta Group, which was founded in Illinois in 1973 and now also has schools in that state and the Phoenix area, is partnering with Yuma County Schools to provide an educational model that provides flexible methods, materials and assessments to assist teachers in differentiating instruction to meet students, the agency said in a news release. The group is setup to work out of Pecan Grove Elementary School.

The agency helps parents, guardians or caregivers find solutions for their child, said Stacy Jantzi, Menta Yuma Academy program director, because each child’s needs are different.

The program’s mantra is “We don’t give up,” Dr. Beth Conran, the group’s president and CEO, told the District One governing board in May.

“We believe strongly in never giving up on a child...,” Conran said at that time. “We’ll figure it out. We will bring in experts from the outside, we’ll seek out information, but we will figure out how to educate that child and help that child succeed.”

Yuma County has about 4,600 to 5,000 (or more) special needs students ages 3-21, according to the Oct. 1, 2016, Special Education Count by Public Education Agency, which included public and charter schools, compiled by the Arizona Department of Education. Data from private schools was not available.

Menta will at first focus on serving autism students, said Stacy Jantzi, Menta Yuma Academy program director, because that is what was expressed as the most essential need by parents when Menta started researching whether to come to Yuma County. Other fo-

cus areas may be added in the future.

The path Menta took to Yuma started with a conversation with a speech pathologist who worked both here and in Phoenix, St. Clair said. The group organized a meeting with a local charter school, but the school emphasized the need went beyond its own doors. Menta then helped organize a community informational meeting, and organizers were blown away by the response — more than 70 people showed up.

Menta listened to the community “basically crying for help,” St. Clair said, and set out figure out how to meet those needs.

Since that community meeting, Menta has forged partnerships with Yuma District One and is looking to make connections with other school districts and agencies in the area, Jantzi said.

“We’re looking for opportunities to build bridges, to collaborate with as many people as we can to support these students, their parents, their educators because we’re part of serving them now and how they’re growing into the future.”

The group recently got its Arizona Department of Education approval and is now looking to serve students in area school districts, part of the Menta philosophy is to help students stay within their home school, St. Clair said. Menta works to assist students to be college, career or citizenship ready upon completion of their high school educations.

“We want it to be a partnership because our ultimate goal with all of the students is that they end up back in their home school. That’s where we feel is the best place for them, if that is indeed the best place for them,” she said.

The group is innovative, St. Clair and Jantzi said, using latest research and proven practices. For example, the group implemented Trauma Informed Practices after data from the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study showed that traumatic experiences during childhood influence adult health and behaviors. About one-third of Arizona’s children ages 0 to 17 have experienced at least two or more such traumatic events, according to data from the 2011-2012 National Survey of Children’s Health.

Menta is student driven, Jantzi said, and its workers and founders believe in supporting the best outcome they can for children.

“We’re changing lives one day at a time,” she said, “but we’re making sure that we’re providing all the support to every component that we can be a part of for each child.”