This suburban district opted to serve its highest needs special education students in-house

In a quiet wing of Fridley High School, a group of educators is reimagining what a school day can look and feel like for teenagers who need the most special education services.

Classrooms are intentionally flexible, with whiteboard tables, sensory tools and individualized workstations that, for at least one student, look like a stack of bean bags in a cozy corner.

Fridley’s model is unusual in Minnesota, where most districts rely on intermediate districts, which function as special education service cooperatives, to serve the highest-needs special education students.

But in Fridley, the vision for VISTA Education Center was to offer a space that feels calm and welcoming for students with an in-district special education program that meets requirements for a restrictive placement known as Federal Setting IV.

The VISTA center, which stands for “valuing individual student talents and abilities,” offers intensive services and high student-to-staff ratios for children who need to spend more than half of their school day in the separate setting.

The program opened to a small group of elementary students last year in a separate district building and this year, it expanded to serve teenagers in a section of the high school. The middle school site is set to open in the fall.

So far, Fridley’s model is proving popular. The program is at capacity, serving students from Fridley and nine other districts. Districts from across Minnesota have toured the VISTA program and are considering trying to replicate the program, Superintendent Brenda Lewis said.

Its success, Lewis said, is due in large part to the district’s international recruiting — a strategy that has helped Fridley ensure its special education department stays fully staffed. Building an in-house Setting IV program requires both significant staffing and sustained funding because of high student-to-staff ratios.

Recent fee hikes for H1-B visas — which allow U.S. employers like Fridley Public Schools to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations — as well as ongoing uncertainty about federal cuts to special education funding, could make such a move harder.

“Without the international visa programming, we wouldn’t be able to operate this facility, period,” Lewis said. “Full stop.”

The goal for the VISTA space was to provide safety and accommodations for students while preserving the feeling of a learning environment.

“We want to provide students with the most typical school experience they can have,” said Principal Matthew Engelhardt.

VISTA students, for example, can practice walking through hallways or standing in the lunch line with their peers. And if they get overwhelmed, they can quickly return to the privacy, safety and flexibility of the VISTA classrooms.

“It’s all about that adaptability and skill-building,” Assistant Superintendent Rochelle Cox said.

Engelhardt said his priority is to create a sense of belonging with students and their families. Family fun nights at VISTA involve considerations about safety and how to split students up based on who they’re comfortable with and what might overstimulate them, but such gatherings are important parts of the school experience, Engelhardt said.

At a recent event, a mom came up to Engelhardt with tears in her eyes.

“She told me ‘My son has never felt this before,’” Engelhardt said. “It was the first time, she said, that he’d really felt part of a community.”

The school intentionally moves away from isolation rooms or restraint tactics that many students experienced elsewhere. Staff are trained in the Ukeru approach, which relies on padded shields, breathing tools and visual supports rather than physical holds.

“We have a lot of students who come to us from other settings who very openly talk about feeling like they were just stuck in rooms all day,” Engelhardt said. “We don’t want our students to feel that way.”

Suspensions are also avoided, as is sending students home for behaviors. Instead, teachers are trained in de-escalation tactics and work to help students reflect on their behavior and talk through ways to regulate in the future.

“It doesn’t make you feel a part of the community if we’re just kind of kicking you out,” Engelhardt said. “That’s a game changer for a lot of our students.”

Even with its successes, staff say the work of VISTA requires constant reinvention. “The strategies we use today might work for a week, but then we’ve got to come up with something new,” Cox said.

Plans for more renovation to the high school wing are underway. The lockers lining the hallways will be removed for more calming spaces, and entrances and classrooms will be redesigned for added safety and flexibility.