North Florida School Days article about our Gainesville school

The Gainesville Conductive Education Academy (GCEA), a local school that incorporates specialized rehabilitation into its everyday schedule in an effort to make children with Cerebral Palsy and other neuromuscular disabilities functional and independent, begins another semester this August. The GCEA 's goal is to motivate the students to work harder and reach for the sky through daily exercise and learning routines. Regular classroom instruction is available at the K-12 levels, and is available at no cost to qualifying Florida residents. A new pre-K toddler class is being offered in the afternoons. Both parent and child work together to learn the principles of Conductive Education. The school is open year round with classes offered during the fall, spring, and summer.

The facility applies the Conductive Education method developed in Hungary in the 1940s by Andras Peto. Over the decades, Peto's Institute in Budapest has become a popular destination for Cerebral Palsy parents from all around the world, with many witnessing great progress in their children's walking, talking and other functionality skills. The “Conductive Education” approach has been adopted worldwide. You don't have to travel to Europe to find success stories, as the Gainesville Academy has had a fair share of its own. Katalin Szvoboda, the school's head teacher/therapist says she sees kids progressing every semester, including at the annual summer program that just concluded. One of her favorite stories is of Elijah, a boy with athetoid Cerebral Palsy. Elijah could not control his movements or stop when he was walking with a walker when he first arrived at the GCEA. After his first semester he was able to take 68 steps without a walker. Now he walks without a walker and returns every summer.

Szvoboda, who is known as the academy’s "Conductor," was born, raised and trained in Hungary, and has been involved with the GCEA since it first introduced Conductive Education to Gainesville in 2005. The school is operated by the Jordan Klausner Foundation.

R. Strzalkowski, who serves as the Foundation's Associate Director and is a Florida attorney, was born with quadriplegic Cerebral Palsy and moved to America seven years ago from Poland. As a child he received years of Conductive Education therapy at the Peto Institute in Budapest, and he is now highly functional and serves as a conduit to encourage the GCEA students. Strzalkowski reminds students, “The Peto method is hard work. Pushing yourself, being pushed by others. But you do improve. You work hard, you get better and you feel like you earned it, because those moments of exhaustion and triumph are so worth it when your parents see you walking down the hall.”

The key to success in Conductive Education is having the children follow the carefully designed scripts of exercises to make them to stand, move and walk with the use of specially designed furniture that serve as rehabilitation tools. The goal is to educate children to be as independent and as functional as they can be; as school’s motto states, “Helping Special Children Help Themselves.” The Jordan Klausner Foundation was founded in 1999 by University of Florida professor James Klausner in memory of his son who had cerebral palsy. The foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization run primarily by volunteers to offer a range of services to the disabled community in North Central Florida, including educational opportunities for children, advocacy and legal services. It was founded by parents and relies on grants, donations and McKay scholarships for funding. The Gainesville Conductive Education Academy opened in 2006. It is located at 4315 N.W. 23rd Avenue on St Michaels Episcopal Church campus.

Manifesto: My dream for the Jordan Klausner Foundation

I've remained with The Jordan Klausner Foundation because I've always viewed it as a frame for the ultimate goal: doing good. It seems like it has the correct elements, a good concept and everyone's hearts are in good place. We are, it seems all on one page as to what we want to do and how we want to do it. Yes, the organization has been around for about twelve years and yes, it hasn't been very visible. As always, there are good reasons for it. The staff mostly volunteers their time and arguably, without being a lean professional machine chances are lost and opportunities are wasted. I also think that something happened between now and the time that the foundation was formed. The original volunteers, the parents that  had it started and their kids moved on. Also, years later, the initial enthusiasm of the Klausner family may have been cooled by the harsh reality: It is not that easy to help people, to reach out to those who we may benefit, but they don't know it yet, to find and inspire donors. Initial setup worked when it was about close friends and family coming together for a purpose but is limiting when we need to take the next step, open up and expand. Two concepts are key to what we do and that really speaks to me:"disability" and "community". We will always do things locally, support businesses, marketers and web designers that are from here.

  When I close my eyes I see the conductive education program growing. And I see it only as a beginning. I would like the Jordan Klausner Foundation to become a center, a hub if you will, for disability therapies and awareness. Horses and water worked wonders for me, I would like to see them as part of an inclusive, structured therapy program. As well as music and art therapy, paraffin wax heat treatment and herbal baths and massages to limit the spasticity, manual therapy and working with resistance. We need to find transportation for kids especially if they are not from here and in the future, think about accommodations for families.  I grew up with  cerebral palsy which left me with a lot of self confidence/self image  issues and phobias, so I see a strong need of having a psychologist on board. A legal assistance and civil rights program is a dream pet project of mine that I always hope to fund via a grant from the Florida Bar Foundation. I would like to work with marketers and PR experts to launch a bunch of public awareness campaigns. The problem is not only in how much or how little the disability community is aware of their rights, but how individuals with disability are perceived by the public and how visible they are. I also thought about scholarships for students in advanced degree programs to  help offset problems with standardized testing I have experienced myself. Lastly, I would like for us to be involved with socially relevant art and media projects of fresh up and coming creators.

  A lot of those things cannot be accomplished without money, because for most we can't rely on volunteers to provide them, at least in a structured, continuous manner. To do this, our Foundation needs to change. We may be small, but we have to be professional. That's why I'm seeking out help from grant writers and marketers, because I'm not qualified in those areas. Any non profit needs a continuous stream of funding to hire dedicated staff that will work just on this, all the time not just part time, to make all those things happen for us. What we need now is funding. Writing grant applications has little to do with inspiring stories and visions. It's focused, detailed, technical, repetitive. This is were my experience comes in: I'm not only an attorney, but I was a chairman of a foundation that I started for two years and being a media writer for six years exposed me to enough marketers and PR people to know what needs to happen although I can't do it myself.  We can carry James Klausner's dream further if we are open minded and adapt. But we gotta get started to get started.

Our Florida CE Summer Camp starts Monday offering hope for many kids

Monday marks the beginning of the most busy time of the year for us. We start our annual Conductive Education Summer Camp in Gainesville, with many kids coming from out of state to experience this. I know the trend is different in Europe, with many centers slowing things down a bit as they go into their summer break. And I'm sure what we do will fuel a lot of criticism from Conductive Education bloggers. Programs like this require  commitment and it takes a lot of continuous hard work to see results. I share that sentiment. My father always pushed me to stay active and do more all the time; To exercise or move a limb even as I watch TV, to never be idle. And having a summer program gives an illusion of a quick fix, that you can make up for a years worth of not doing anything just by doing a six weeks program. But I also know some rehabilitation is better than none. Many American parents can't afford Conductive Education and it's not just the price of the course alone - as ours is offered at no cost, but there's transportation, the time commitment. Yes, this is very sad, but it's a reality. A lot of parents don't  know about Conductive Education, don't trust it, many will not alter their therapy choices or change things during a busy school year. They can explore other options during summer when a lot less is going on. I like to think of Summer Camps as a preview. We do hope to have children commit to our full year program, especially since we offer it at no cost to qualifying Floridians via the McKay scholarship. Only one other center in Florida does that. And we know there are many more kids with CP because the birthrate is constant, we just don't have the resources to find them. And we know this works.  CE is an effective tool to make kids functional. I read a study lately that estimates the combined cost pf Cerebral Palsy at $900 000 a person. I will discuss it more next week, but you can't help but wonder, given those numbers, why don't the law makers from left or right stand behind programs like this.  We hope to have more kids join in permanently, but even if it's just a one off, it's still a benefit. Please share our contact details with anybody who knows anybody who could benefit from CE as we still have spots.