School for dyslexic students on the way
The Ruston Learning Pod will be the fourth campus for Louisiana Key Academy, which specializes in educating students with dyslexia. Photo courtesy of Louisiana Key Academy
Ruston resident Jenny Morse is on a mission to educate the community about dyslexia and about a new school scheduled to open here next fall exclusively for dyslexic students.
“It’s going to be amazing,” Morse said about the Louisiana Key Academy Ruston Learning Pod. Morse is the school’s director.
The new school is a tuition-free charter school for dyslexic students in third through fifth grades. Those are the grades where dyslexia is hard to ignore, she said.
LKA uses small-group instruction that Morse said helps give readingchallenged students the tools they need to succeed.
Each grade is limited to 18 students taught by teachers specially trained in dyslexic students, Morse said.
According to the National Institute of Health, dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities that affect children. NIH estimates 1 in 5 people has some form of the condition generally characterized by difficulties with reading and processing written language.
LKA Ruston will follow Louisiana academic standards and have a curriculum that includes language arts, math, science, social studies, physical education, and art.
“It’s a normal school,” LKA statewide co-founder Laura Cassidy, wife of U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, said.
The Ruston site will be LKA’s fourth campus. Other sites are Shreveport, Baton Rouge, and Covington. The Baton Rouge campus, LKA’s first, opened in 2013, and now includes grades K-10.
The Ruston campus is open to students from throughout North Central Louisiana.
Both Morse and Cassidy are moms of dyslexic daughters. The two women, who didn’t know each other at the time, recount similar stories of frustration for themselves and their children prior to their daughters’ diagnoses.
“We were told you can’t be diagnosed until third grade,” Cassidy said.
Morse remembers her daughter’s pediatrician deciding nothing was wrong and saying Morse’s daughter was “a great kid.”
The two moms took their situations into their own hands. Cassidy helped found LKA; Morse got training in a dyslexia program and began tutoring her daughter.
Cassidy, a general surgeon by profession, said youngsters learn most of their fundamental reading skills in first and second grade. Consequently, if a child is dyslexic and undiagnosed, they’re behind from the start.
“We need to get these kids identified early,” she said.
Cassidy said 43% of Louisiana fourth graders read below grade level, “which means they’re functionally illiterate.” She said she suspects a “ large percent” of that number are dyslexic.
So far, the Ruston school doesn’t have a location. Cassidy and Morse were looking for sites and visiting potential investors this week. LKA Ruston had been scheduled to open this fall but got pushed back when the building the group thought it had fell through.
While they try to finalize a site — the school wants to lease an existing building suitable for classrooms — Morse is booking appearances before civic clubs and other groups as she tries to spotlight dyslexia.
“I just want to be a helpful resource,” she said.
For more information about LKA, visit LKASchools. com/ Ruston, or call (318) 805-7865.
