When we were preparing to register our daughter, Nora, for kindergarten, many people told us that we had a difficult choice to make.  It was a choice that, for many years, faithful Catholic parents of children with special learning needs had to make: either send their child to a public school that had specialized intervention services but no faith formation or send their child to a Catholic school that had high academic standards and faith formation but lacked specialized intervention services.  However, as we know, our God and our Catholic faith are not either-or entities, but rather they emanate both -- and generosity.  Hence while researching area schools, we read about SPiCE, Special People in Catholic Education, at St. Brigid.  What a blessing to find a Catholic school that had both high academic standards and also specialized intervention services including both additional intervention staff and also adaptive spaces, technology, and equipment!

St. Brigid's SPiCE program has benefited Nora in more ways than we can count.  Nora loves taking breaks in the multi-sensory room to calm down and burn off extra energy.  SPiCE provides additional staff such as the Educational Support Assistants who enable Nora to receive lots of small group and individualized help that she would not otherwise have available to her in the regular classroom environment.  Most importantly, everyone in the St. Brigid family -- staff and students alike -- care for Nora as a unique daughter of God who "in virtue of her dignity as a human person, has an inalienable right to education, adapted to her ability" (Vatican II document Gravissimum Educationis).  Because of the funding that the SPiCE program is able to provide, we, as her parents, feel blessed by the opportunities Nora has at St. Brigid both to participate in a Christ-centered education and to receive amazing intervention services.

Sincerely,

Tom & Karri  Brady,  Nora (5th Grade),  Joe (2nd Grade)