During October we celebrated National Disability Employment Awareness month. Transition Services are provided in the following 3 areas: Post-Secondary Training, Employment, and Independent Living. We are proud to share that Focus Beyond provides employment skills experiences at 30 volunteer work sites in which a job coach supports students in learning and exploring skills in a variety of career areas. Our Work Coordinators and teams work closely with Vocational Rehabilitation Services as well as students moving to prepare for, find, and keep a job and live independently as possible.

This year we have two program goals connected to employment. Goal 1: 50% of Focus Beyond students will engage in community-based vocational activities such as: Vocational Rehabilitation Services, exploration of day/work programs, and independent work experiences. Goal 2: The percentage of students participating in independent work experiences will increase from 39% to 42%.

The average national employee rate for persons with disabilities was 22.5% in 2023. Focus Beyond is working to impact that rate.

The following are images of students engaging at our volunteer worksites including, Repowered- Electronics Recycling and Retail Store, Lighthouse Coffee, Urban Boatbuilders, and SPNN.

At Focus Beyond, we strive to help all students gain a deeper understanding of and passion for life-long learning. To accomplish that goal, we rely on community partnerships and the expertise and experience of our staff. Our students quickly learn that there are many training and career preparation opportunities in addition to college.

Today, the focus is: Humphrey Job Corps.

The Humphrey Job Corp is one of 120 campuses across the U.S. where students gain the experience needed to begin a career or apprenticeship, advance to higher education, join the military, enter the work force, etc. Job Corps is free and available for 16-to-24-year-olds. The Job Corps campus in Minnesota is in St. Paul, located on Snelling Avenue across the street from the State Fair grounds.

In addition to career training, Job Corps offers students with in-depth career planning, on-the-job training, job placement assistance, housing, food, health and dental care, a biweekly basic living allowance, and basic uniforms and equipment for career training.

Over the years, many students from Focus Beyond have enrolled at the Humphrey Job Corp. One student completed the Advanced Training Course, leading to a job at the airport refueling planes.

On November 22nd, 2024, a group of students from Focus Beyond will visit the Humphrey Job Corp for their fall open house.

If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to contact Craig Olsen at craig.olsen@spps.org

Check out lots of great activities to practice this in the virtual room.

Every Wednesday, Abdi participates in an AAC Reading Club. He goes to Bridge View School to read books to younger students using his communication device. Abdi begins the reading club by greeting the children, introducing himself, and asking questions such as "When is your birthday?". In the photo Abdi has just read the book "No, David!" Congratulations Abdi!

They are a joy in the pathway always greeting everyone. They are willing to volunteer in classes and help where they can. If you want to know more about Pokémon or Beyblades they have a wealth of knowledge. They have worked at Urban Boat Builders as an apprentice and currently have a job at Jimmy Johns. Congratulations Gemma!!

Family Engagement Plan

Families Right to Know

Focus Beyond School Report Card

All school documents can be translated or interpreters made available upon request. Please contact Micaela.Smith@spps.org

SPANISH

Todos los documentos pueden ser traducidos o interpretados oralmente si usted lo solicita

HMONG

Tej ntaub ntawv tom tsev kawm ntawv uas xa los rau nej, peb yuav pab txhais thiab nrhiav neeg txhais lus rau nej yog nej hais qhia peb

SOMALI

"Dhammaan dukumiintiyada iskuulka waa la turjumi karaa ama waxaa la heli karaa turjumaan haddii la codsado"

KAREN

Newsletter Translation

Prefer a language other than English? You can open the newsletter link and click a button on the right (on a computer) or at the bottom (on a mobile device) to have it translated into many different languages. Please know that the translation function may be inaccurate or incomplete. If you have any questions, please call us at 651-293-5997.

SPANISH

¿Prefiere un idioma que no sea inglés? Puede abrir el enlace del boletín y hacer clic en el botón a la derecha (en una computadora) o en la parte inferior (en un dispositivo móvil) para traducirlo a muchos idiomas diferentes. Tenga en cuenta que la función de traducción puede ser inexacta o incompleta. Si tiene alguna pregunta, llámenos al 651-293-5997.

SOMALI

Ma waxaad doorbideysaa luuqad aan aheyn af-Ingiriis? Waxaad furi kartaa lifaaqa wargeysyada oo guji batoonka midigta (ee kumbiyuutarkaaga) ama xagga hoose (ee taleefankaaga gacanta) si aad wargeyska ugu tarjuntid luuqado badan oo kala duwan. Fadlan ogow in natiijada turjumaaddu ay noqon karto mid aan sax ahayn ama aan dhammaystirnayn. Haddii aad wax su'aalo ah qabtid, fadlan naga soo wac 651-293-5997.

HMONG

Puas xav tau ua lwm hom lus? Nej qhib txoj kab mus rau hauv daim ntawv xov xwm thiab nias lub pob ntawm sab xis hauv lub koos pis tawj, los sis yog lwm hom twj no ces nyob hauv qab, ces yuav muaj txhais ua ntau hom lus. Nco ntsoov tias cov lus txhais no yuav tsis raug txhua lo los sis txhais tiav tiav. Yog nej muaj lus nug, thov hu rau peb ntawm 651-293-5997.

KAREN

ကျိာ်ဂုၤဂၤတခါလၢနအဲၣ်ဒိးအီၤ လၢအတမ့ၢ် အဲကလံးကျိာ်န့ၣ်အိၣ်ဧါ. နအိးထီၣ်ကွၢ်လံာ်တၢ်ကစီၣ်ပှာ်ဘျးစဲ ဒီးစံၢ်လီၤဖဲ ပှာ်ဘျးစဲအဖီခိၣ်ဖဲစုထွဲတကပၤ(လၢခီၣ်ဖၠူထၢၣ်ဖီခိၣ်) မ့တမ့ၢ် စံၢ်လီၤဖဲတၢ်ဖီလာ် (လၢနလီတဲစိ ဖီခိၣ်) ဒ်သိး တၢ်ကကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအီၤလၢကျိာ်အဂုၤအဂၤအဂီၢ်သ့ဝဲဒၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဝံသးစူၤသ့ၣ်ညါလၢ လံာ်လၢ တၢ်ကွဲးကျိာ်ထံအီၤန့ၣ် ကအိၣ်ဝဲဒီး တၢ်အကမၣ် မ့တမ့ၢ် တၢ်တလၢတပှဲၤသ့ဝဲဒၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. နမ့ၢ်အိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်သံကွၢ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်, ဝံသးစူၤကိးပှၤဖဲ 651-293-5997 န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်.