by Sarah DeMaranville
Geneseo Current
Wings Academy celebrates its grand opening and ribbon cutting today, Wednesday, Nov. 4, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at its school at 1509 Railroad Ave. in Kewanee.
The ceremony comes about two months after the school opened to students on Sept. 8. Wings Academy is a specialized public school operated by Henry-Stark Counties Special Education District #801 for students with significant disabilities, including autism, complex communication needs, physical and medical challenges, and social-emotional, sensory, and behavioral needs.
Executive Director Casey Miller said the start of the school year has been "very positive," with great feedback from parents. The school now enrolls 27 students, with room for 40 to 45 depending on need. Students come from Stark County, Bradford, Kewanee, Wethersfield, Annawan, Galva, Cambridge, and Geneseo.
Some Henry-Stark students remain in other outplacement facilities, Miller said, and the district's goal is to bring as many of them as possible to Wings by the end of the school year.
A building designed around regulation, not just renovation
Wings Academy is housed in the former American Legion Post 31 building in Kewanee, renovated with a 1,200-square-foot front addition, an elevator, and redesigned interior space.
Wings Academy Coordinator Kim Johnson said the building was intentionally designed for its students, not simply renovated as general classrooms. It includes sensory spaces in each classroom, in the hallways, and on the playground, plus a dedicated sensory room, areas for therapeutic intervention, and spaces for teaching functional life skills.
"We recognize that students cannot learn effectively when they are overwhelmed, dysregulated, or unable to access their environment," Johnson said. "Our goal was never simply to create a beautiful new school. It was to create an environment where students who may have struggled in more traditional educational settings could feel safe, accepted, supported, and successful."
A school day built around therapy, not around a bell schedule
The school day runs from 8:15 a.m. to 2:15 p.m., and Johnson said there is no single typical day, because students' needs differ so widely — even within the same classroom.
Instruction includes individualized academics, communication development, social-emotional learning, sensory regulation, functional life skills, adapted physical education, and practice in independence. Therapy is woven through the day rather than treated as a separate block: communication is practiced when a student requests a snack, makes a choice, or interacts with another person, and occupational therapy skills are reinforced during meals, dressing, and daily routines.
Staff includes special education teachers, paraprofessionals, a school nurse, a behavior analyst, a social worker, a speech-language pathologist, a certified occupational therapy assistant, and a physical therapist. Johnson said recruiting and retaining specialists for students with significant and complex needs remains challenging, as it is for many specialized programs.
For some students, success may mean returning to a home-district classroom with supports. For others, Johnson said, it may mean communicating a need independently, tolerating a transition, developing a friendship, or preparing for supported employment and adult life. Placement and return decisions are made individually by each student's Individualized Education Program team, which includes parents, educators, related service providers, and representatives from the home district.
"We don't view a student's return to their home district as the only measure of success," Johnson said. "Success looks different for every student."
Why the district built its own school
Before Wings Academy, some Henry-Stark students were placed in private facilities in Moline, Galesburg, and Peoria. Miller said that in past years, outplacement could cost $85,000 to $115,000 per student per year in tuition, plus transportation, for close to $2 million across the cooperative.
"The goal of Wings is to be able to deliver the same type of programming as those private facilities but at a fraction of the total cost to our districts," Miller said.
Miller also called Senate Bill 3606, which expanded state reimbursement to public district-run programs like Wings, "a big win" for the cooperative's districts, and said he hopes the state adds additional funding to that category in the future.
Geneseo Community Unit School District #228 is one of the eight member districts behind Wings Academy, and Geneseo students are among the 27 now enrolled there.
Before Wings, the cooperative's highest-need students were sent to private facilities in Moline, Galesburg, and Peoria. Wings, in Kewanee, keeps those students closer to home, in the Henry-Stark region, where they can practice daily living skills in the communities they will actually use as adults.
Those placements were also paid for by the member districts, at $85,000 to $115,000 per student per year in tuition plus transportation in past years. Keeping that programming inside the cooperative, at what Miller describes as a fraction of that cost, touches the same district budgets Geneseo taxpayers fund.
Wings does not replace Geneseo's existing life-skills classrooms. It serves students whose needs exceed what a traditional school building can provide, with each student's IEP team determining the least restrictive environment where that student can succeed.
The district has not provided a Geneseo-only enrollment figure, so this article does not state how many of the 27 students are from Geneseo specifically.
What has surprised Johnson most in the first semester, she said, is how quickly Wings has begun to feel like a family — students and staff from multiple districts, many of whom had never met before September, building relationships and celebrating milestones that might look small from the outside but represent enormous growth.
"We could have the most beautiful, technologically advanced school building imaginable, but without the people who walk through its doors every day to care for, teach, encourage, and love our students, the building itself would mean very little," Johnson said. "Our staff members are the heart of Wings Academy."
The school's motto is "Many Bees, One Hive."
