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Raising a child with special needs is difficult for all parents faced with the circumstance. But doing it alone can be “overwhelming.”
Daisy Alviar is a teacher who is especially passionate about helping children with autism and autism-related disorders. Alviar opened the Stella Learning Center in Houma two-and-a-half years ago to provide a much needed service to parents faced with the challenges of raising an autistic child.
“There was nothing in this area of this magnitude for parents to consider,” she said. “There was just a great need for something like this in this area.”
Stella Learning Center, which Alviar named after her mother, is the first school certified in the tri-parish area certified by the state in applied behavior analysis, which is the a systematic process of applying interventions based on the latest learning theories and the quantitative analysis of their effects.
Stella Learning Center is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
Public schools do offer educational programs for students with developmental disorders like autism or autism-related disorders, but they may fall short of parents’ expectations. Teacher-to-student ratios tend to be very high for the level of individual attention that these students really need.
Alviar spent 12 years teaching at Mulberry Elementary School in Houma and was named Teacher of the Year twice. For five of her 12 years there, she taught children with autism and other special needs.
Alviar left the Terrebonne public school system in 2012 to open the Stella Learning Center.
Alviar has a master’s degree in curriculum, high incidence disabilities, with an emphasis in applied behavior analysis.
Stella accepts students from ages two to 18 with a range of disabilities year round and currently has nine full-time students.
“We are a school for children with autism and related disorders,” Alviar said. “We have children here who have auditory processing [disorders]; some of them might have ADHD. We have children with muscular dystrophy.”
The best thing that SLC offers students is a low teacher-to-student ratio. There are two students to each teacher. This allows for more individualized attention. Each student has a curriculum tailored to his specific needs. If the child has a more severe condition, the instruction can be one-on-one.
The school is private, so there is tuition. Just over $15,000 will cover the regular school year, but there is a summer program.
“Since we have such a low student-to-teacher ratio, we have to charge more,” Alviar said. “We do give institutional scholarships to our families to help with the expense of tuition because tuition is high.”
Scholarships range from $2,500 to $5,000 per family. They try to give as many families scholarships as they can, but funds are limited.
Stella Learning Center is continuously fundraising and always accepts donations, which can be deducted as the school is a bona fide non-profit organization.
“We would love for businesses to be able to sponsor children at one point,” Alviar said. “That’s one of our big goals.”
Alviar is studying for a certification that will qualify her as a board-certified behavior analyst. Stella Learning Center must have a BCBA in order to use the applied behavior analysis curriculum. The current BCBA for Stella Learning Center has opted not to charge Medicaid and health insurance, but once Alviar is board certified, she will begin accepting both.
She expects to be certified by the summer.
Zachary Hotard, 12, a student at Stella, is autistic, and in the middle of the spectrum between high- and low-functioning.
His father, Robbie Hotard, said his son was miserable in public school.
“When he would come home from public school, he was just upset,” Robbie said. “He couldn’t wind down. It would take an hour for him to calm down. The difference with Stella is that he’s happy to go to school in the morning, he’s happy to come home and he’s happy when he’s home.”
Zachary’s mother, Karina Hotard, described the straw that broke the camel’s back when it came to pursuing a public education for her son.
One day the teacher called Karina to come to the school because Zachary was misbehaving. But when Karina arrived, Zachary was sitting quietly, not misbehaving at all. The teacher told her that Zachary was taking off his shoes, and Karina thought, “Really? You’re calling me over here for this?”
Then the teacher explained what had happened. She wanted Zachary to read.
“The thing is that she was sitting behind him restraining him by the arms,” Karina said. “For whatever reason, she decided to actually tell me this.”
She asked him to read again and “at this point he closed his eyes,” the mother said. Zachary closed his eyes in protest of the teacher that he viewed as being “mean.”
“So she tried to make him open his eyes and at that point he had enough and he just threw the book on the floor and he had a melt down and took his shoes off,” Karina explained.
Karina said that this was not the first incident and she decided that she had had enough. She withdrew her son from public school and decided to home school him. Zachary did well at first, but wearing multiple hats became too much for Karina and she felt that he needed more than what she had to offer.
Karina described Zachary as being “strong-minded.” There’s little question, she said, if Zachary is unhappy with his environment. He settled in at Stella almost immediately.
“I just knew it was the right place for him,” Karina said. “It even surprised me, I have to say, to be honest with you, that [Alviar] had this ability to act like that with him because up until then, I felt like I was the only person in the world who was that strong figure for him; someone that he absolutely listened to because he knew I mean well. It was interesting for me to witness it on the other end.”
The Stella Learning Center is holding a Trivia Night fundraiser March 7 at the Municipal Auditorium in Houma. Anyone interested in participating should call 985-226-5677 or email etssg1@yahoo.com for more information.
Karen McGowan, a volunteer with Creative U, helps Klay Bergeron, 9, paint a painting to be auctioned at a Trivia Night fundraiser for the Stella Learning Center in Houma. The school continuously fundraises to offer scholarships to help parents shoulder the cost of tuition at the school for the developmentally challenged.
