Lionheart School Champions Education For Autistic

By MICHELLE E. SHAW / www.ajc.com

Learning disabilities don’t translate into impossibilities at the Lionheart School in Alpharetta.
At this private school for children with autism and other communicative disorders, patience, flexibility and determination have taken the students, staff and school a long way.

Those attributes came in handy recently as the school, which serves students between the ages of 6 and 21 years old, sought accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and the Southern Association of Independent Schools. The word came earlier this month that the three-year process paid off.

“This means when a parent looks for somewhere to place their child, that they don’t have to do all of the research themselves,” said Victoria McBride, the director of special services and a founding staff member. “This accreditation means our curriculum and our staff have been checked out and approved by a well-respected group.”

When the not-for-profit school began in 2000, accreditation wasn’t a major issue, said Elizabeth Litten Dulin, the director of education and admissions and a founding staff member. The focus was getting parents and their children in the door who believed in the school’s philosophy, which was heavily based on relationships, she said.

“Once we worked out all of the kinks, we knew we had a great program,” McBride said. “Then we realized we had to legitimize what we were doing. That meant accreditation.”

Lionheart’s curriculum and staff are the reasons Robbie Mayer and her family moved to Atlanta from Miami. The Mayers were unable to find a suitable educational environment in Florida for their 8-year-old daughter, Victoria.“We came and visited and I just knew this was it,” Mayer said. “It took us a little more than a year to get everything in place, but it’s a move we had to make.”

Annual tuition is $25,000, but that’s not the “true cost,” Dulin said. She said it costs the school upward of $46,000 to educate each student, but fund-raising, grants and other donations help offset the cost for all families.

The benefits of SACS and SAIS accreditation are far-reaching, said Tamara Spafford, a founding parent and acting executive director of the school. The designation not only confirms the curriculum and staff, but it opens doors for funding because there are groups and foundations that will only award money to accredited schools, she said.

The school has outgrown the three trailers it occupies behind Alpharetta Presbyterian Church. The two are not affiliated, said Todd Sentell, a spokesman for the school. The school’s property, about a half mile from the church, has already been purchased and plans have been drawn up. The new building will allow the school to enroll more students and broaden its educational offerings.

The accreditation coupled with the plans for a campus of its own lets the public know what Lionheart families and staffers have known all along, said Kati Keyes, a development assistant for the school. “We’ve known we’re making a difference, but now everybody can know,” she said.