Photo Provided Bridgeport High School sophomores Jeremey Lovell, left, and John Hall get some help from intervention specialist Johanna Vincenzo. Some students will benefit from a new job coaching program this year, made possible by a state grant.

BRIDGEPORT — Bridgeport High School added a resource this year to help students with special needs build skills to transition from school to employment after graduation.

Special Education Director Beverly Prati said the district has been awarded a Job Coach/Skills Trainer Project Grant of $11,000 for this school year from the Secondary Transition and Workforce Development for Students with Disabilities initiative through the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. This is Bridgeport schools’ first time receiving the grant.

The funding is geared toward students with individualized education plans.

The Bridgeport Exempted Village School District is contracting with Goodwill Industries to work with students.

“This money will cover for four of our students to work with them. They’re going to come into the district,” Prati said.

Goodwill personnel will begin with an assessment for each of the students, then commence with job development.

“They’re going to provide them with on-the-job supports,” she added.

The purpose is to help students with disabilities who are close to graduating find likely employers.

“So that once they graduate, they are walking out of our doors with a job that they enjoy, a job that they are good at,” she said. “They already have that set up and they can go right into the workforce once they graduate from us.”

The four students will be selected from among those who need to develop their job skills. The assessment will look at the students’ interests and strengths. Goodwill personnel will also help with their weak points.

“Goodwill is going to have the ability to focus on those students and give them the attention that they’re going to need,” Prati said. “They’re going to take them off-site to an actual job site to work on those job skills within that placement.”

Prati said Goodwill’s connections will be another benefit, and students will have a wide variety of placement options.

“They have relationships with businesses all over the valley, so I think they’re really going to be able to individualize the plan for (the students) and really hone in on their strengths.”

Prati expects the four students will be selected and in training by the end of October.

“We have a lot of opportunities here within the district. We have pre-apprenticeship programs, but we really are looking at our students, which ones would benefit the most from this placement,” she said. “We’re looking at our older students.”

This follows the school district’s philosophy of helping students with disabilities build skills for the future.

“We want to make sure that when they leave us, they have that job placement,” she said.

A key element is practicality.

“We have worked very hard in our middle school and in our high school to give our students opportunities for involvement in the community outside of the classroom, outside of the school district,” she said.

Within the school, students with IEPs often get experience working with maintenance personnel and in the kitchen. They are also active in the community. Students with special needs are taken to exercise at a local gym. They also learn lessons such as how to handle money. Prati said the job coaching program will incorporate and enhance these lessons.

“We’re using the resources that we have here within the school to help build those skills for jobs after high school,” she said. “This is going to take it even further.”

She hopes to continue job coaching in upcoming years.

Intervention specialist Joanna Vincenzo also worked on the grant application. She said the schools have always been committed to transitioning students to employment, and job coaching takes this approach on a broader scale. Her classes put a premium on community involvement and teaching money management, self-advocacy, self-determination, independent living and other life skills. Lessons also include time management and mock job interviews.

“Transition is the biggest focus I have in my high school classroom,” she said. “This grant will be an awesome way of tying everything that we’re trying to do here in the schools and putting it out to practice. It will hopefully get their foot in the door and help prepare them for life after school.”

Vincenzo looks forward to introducing her students to job coaching.

“We’re excited to get them out into the community and involved.”