Students With Disabilities Struggle After High School. One Wa District Is Trying To Change That.

Job coach Feliecia Mulder helps student Kaden Taylor find the drinks he needs to restock shelves at Haggen in Bellingham. Taylor is a part of Bellingham's Community Transitions program, which helps students in special education transition out of high school. (Laurel Demkovich/Washington State Standard)

BELLINGHAM – Kaden Taylor and Wyatt Beaudry are ready to go for their shift at Haggen. 

Standing before the grocery store’s soda aisle, they each look down at the list of drinks they need to pull to restock the front refrigerators. 

“Excuse me,” Taylor says, reaching past a customer to grab a Poppi. Up next: a Jarritos and a Gatorade. 

The drink restock is Taylor and Beaudry’s first task of the day as part of Bellingham Public Schools’ Community Transitions program, which helps special education students move beyond high school. It’s also the most difficult task of the shift, Taylor said. Finding all of the different drinks and then organizing them in the cooler is time-consuming, he said. 

If Taylor has enough time after restocking, he’ll go through the shelves and reorder the drinks so the oldest ones are at the front. Once that’s done, Taylor and Beaudry will move onto breaking down all of the cardboard that has piled up at the store throughout the day.

Federal law requires school districts to provide instruction to students with disabilities until they turn 22. For students, reaching that endpoint can feel like “a cliff,” said Tania May, Washington’s assistant superintendent of special education. And statewide, outcomes after high school for students with disabilities are dismal. 

A survey released earlier this year from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction found that 54% of Washington graduates with intellectual disabilities and 41% of those with autism are not engaging in employment or higher education within a year.

The state is working on new ways to better prepare students for life after high school, and Bellingham’s program is one of the most robust, offering students a breather to figure out what might come next.

Students in the program learn independent living skills, like how to open a bank account or find rental housing. They get some extra help applying to college. Or they practice interviewing and building up job experience, like Taylor and Beaudry with their two-hour shifts at Haggen.

Students start the program after their senior year of high school. Those who opt to take part still walk with their senior year class at graduation but won’t receive their diploma until they finish their transitions coursework, which is normally three years. At the end of their time in the program, students leave with a diploma and a plan for what comes next.

“We just meet the student and family where they are and provide the support that they need,” said Bellingham special education teacher Dominique Lantagne. “We’re always looking at them individually and trying to map things out to figure out what works long term, what’s healthy for them.”

Other districts in the state have started looking to Bellingham as an example of how to help students with disabilities after high school. But this often comes down to funding, which is in limited supply for special education in Washington.

“These are expensive programs,” Lantagne said. “Our district has agreed to just foot the bill. They’ve committed to it because they have seen the product of it.”  

State emphasis on school-to-work programs

May and others at the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction are working to improve outcomes for students with disabilities. She said 10 or 15 years ago, Washington was at the forefront of inclusive practices, but has slowed down since. 

“By 2018, we realized we were in the bottom few states in terms of inclusion,” she said. “It’s not that we became less inclusive, we just kind of stayed where we were.” 

When a student with an individualized education program, or IEP, which outlines the special education services a child can receive, is entering their final years at school, they begin having conversations with their teachers, families and counselors about what services they may qualify for after their senior year. 

A poster inside a classroom in Bellingham Public Schools Community Transitions Program teaches students about the different circles of relationships.  (Laurel Demkovich/Washington State Standard)

Some students begin discussing their goals as soon as fourth grade. By the time they turn 16, all students with an IEP are required to have a post-graduation transition plan. This can provide a roadmap toward objectives like going to college, getting a full-time job or moving out of their parents’ homes.

The Legislature passed a law in 2021 that requires the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to provide specific employment support to these students – like job coaches and assessments for job readiness – so that counselors could know what skills students should focus on in their final year of school. 

As part of that work, Washington is in the process of rolling out a lot more school-to-work programs, which allow students to start working before they leave the school system. Students who go through a school-to-work program often have much better outcomes than those who don’t, May said, though she acknowledged it depends on where a student lives because some smaller counties don’t yet have access to these services.

Although some districts, like Bellingham, have a lot of local and federal funding to run transition programs, other districts aren’t as lucky. The Legislature last year worked to increase special education funding statewide but only did so much.  

“We always, always need more funding,” said Bethany Verner, Bellingham Public Schools special education assistant director of teaching and learning. “Local funding has had to supplement for a long time.”

Dreaming big with few resources

Jen Chong Jewell started talking to her son Gabriel, who has an intellectual disability, about what comes after school early. She talked through going to college, getting a job and buying a house.

“I want him to dream big,” she said. 

Jewell, who lives in Snohomish County, helped him learn reading and writing and started having him do chores around the house at a young age. “I always have high expectations for him, but I want him to have high expectations for himself, too,” she said. 

When Gabriel started public school, Jewell knew she wanted to learn everything she possibly could about how the school system treats students with disabilities and their families.

But the support for families is still lacking, she said, and navigating the system can be overwhelming, even for the well-informed.

In a student’s final year of school, counselors will start looking to see if they have all of their credits completed and, if they do, if they would still benefit from additional transition services after their senior year. 

As part of the 2021 law, Alexandra Toney, OSPI’s special education program supervisor, said school districts are starting to provide more resources to families who are going through the transition process. That can look like a one-page outline of all the different options for transitioning out of school or it can involve meetings with counselors or others.

But Jewell said the support a student gets can vary widely depending on the school district that they are in, and she said OSPI and districts can all be doing better to reduce the administrative burden for families and help students achieve their dreams. 

Jewell, who helps other families go through the school transition process, said she tries to make sure parents know what services their children are entitled to receive, and she encourages them to have conversations early with their kids about what they want. 

“You’re always focused on fighting for your child’s rights and getting these services,” she said. “It’s so consuming that you forget to live other parts of your life.”

‘First day of the rest of their life’

Verner, with Bellingham Public Schools, helped write a federal grant application decades ago seeking funding for a program to help students with disabilities transition out of high school.

Students entering adulthood, she said, shouldn’t be spending all of their time in the same classes as 15 year olds. 

Years later, Verner’s initial idea has evolved into the district’s Community Transitions program, which serves about 80 students and focuses on four tenets: work, learn, live and play.

“We want their last day of school to look like the first day of the rest of their life,” Verner said.

In addition to skill-building, students during their three years in the program hear from people in various jobs – like police officers or bankers. 

Every student’s path is different.

A sign-in sheet at Bellingham’s Community Transitions program asks students and teachers how they arrived at school during an annual bike-to-school event. (Laurel Demkovich/Washington State Standard)

Some, like Don Thompson, want to move out of their parents house and live independently. He wants help finding a job, maybe something in entertainment. 

For 19-year-old Arjun Singh, the program will help him apply to college. He wants to do something related to technology or aerospace. 

Emma G, who’s in her second year in the program, wants to work outdoors, something with biking or hiking, or possibly in a library. Emma helped set up the program’s bike-to-school day, which encouraged students and teachers to bike to school instead of driving.

Emma also sits on a committee that is helping the program expand into a new building on the Whatcom Community College campus. In the new location, students will have access to college courses and resources. Construction should start in June of next year, and the building should open to students by fall of 2026.

“Every single student, regardless of what their barriers are, sees immense growth from year one to year three,” said Liz Madden, the district’s community transitions special education teacher. 

Another day of the program completed

After their shifts at Haggen, Taylor and Beaudry stop back at the nearby Community Transitions center, which is housed in an old credit union building. On the lobby walls is a calendar with important dates, a sign-up sheet for those who took part in Emma’s bike-to-school day and a poster talking about different types of relationships.

Taylor and Beaudry grab their belongings before getting ready to head home for the weekend.

A yellow school bus arrives, and they wave goodbye to the job coach who they spent the morning with at Haggen. 

Next week, they’ll be back to work for their next two-hour shift. And in a few years, when they complete the program, they will join dozens of other students to walk across a stage, grab their diplomas, and step into the first day of the rest of their life — whatever they choose that to be.