Students with disabilities from twenty LaSalle County school districts go to Lighted Way Children’s Development Center in LaSalle to learn life skills and get different therapies. Executive Director Jessica Kreiser says right now the center has forty-five students and fifty staff members. But with all the people in the original building from 1963, it’s becoming tougher to have so many kids in some classrooms. So the organization purchased the Heritage Manor building to allow for more kids to be in classrooms safely. Kreiser says it’s been a fantastic journey so far. Not only for the students but for the families.
She says the organization will be able to triple the square footage and create more areas in the building that helps specific students.
Students learn from age three where they will start in the program until age 22 when the can transition out of the program into another organization like Ottawa Friendship House or Streator Unlimited. You can listen to the interview we did with Jessica Kreiser here: