2008 Woodie Awards
Cleta Harder Makes Every Day Count
The Cleta Harder Development School asks for volunteers to be the change they wish to see in the world.
Jessica Chen
Issue date: 9/13/06 Section: Local
Large colorful maps of the world and the 50 states hang on the walls. A square computer monitor sits on a glossy white table as various students take turns playing the interactive media games.
Stocked in the shelves are puzzles, bricks, and other learning gadgets. From the outside, it seems like a typical school, but anyone who has been inside here knows there is one thing that makes this place stand out significantly from the rest.
Cleta Harder Developmental School also known as the Help for Brain Injured Children, is a non-public certified school. It serves the moderate to severe cases of kids with cognitive developmental delay, physical impairments, and behavioral problems. Fifty percent of the students are severely autistic, with IQs between 50 and 85. The students' ages range anywhere between four and fourty-four years old.
Anxious parents who have unsuccessfully placed their children in other schools come here through school district referrals or word-of-mouth. Cleta Harder opened the schools in 1967, after seeing the kids from two of her closest friends suffer from mental disability. She still works there today and has seen the school from when it started at a La Habra hospital, to its current location located off Euclid Avenue, adjacent to San Miguel Park. At the time, Harder and her staff made due with what they had, a converted house built in the 1930s and minimal funds.
As success of the school spread throughout the community, the HBIC facility became too small to accommodate the students. In June 2002, Harder, volunteers, and community philanthropists joined efforts and raised $1 million to construct a brand new facility. Although newer and more improved, the school maintains the same home-style look. One reason for this was to blend into the neighboring residential community. More importantly, however, the home-feel would allow students there to feel as comfortable as if they were at home.
Jason Cecil, the program supervisor at HBIC has worked at the school for over 14 years. He began there through a physical education/kineisiology program at Cal State University, Long Beach. Specializing in sports injury and rehabilitation, Cecil applied his degree to the Cleta Harder philosophy.
Stocked in the shelves are puzzles, bricks, and other learning gadgets. From the outside, it seems like a typical school, but anyone who has been inside here knows there is one thing that makes this place stand out significantly from the rest.
Cleta Harder Developmental School also known as the Help for Brain Injured Children, is a non-public certified school. It serves the moderate to severe cases of kids with cognitive developmental delay, physical impairments, and behavioral problems. Fifty percent of the students are severely autistic, with IQs between 50 and 85. The students' ages range anywhere between four and fourty-four years old.
Anxious parents who have unsuccessfully placed their children in other schools come here through school district referrals or word-of-mouth. Cleta Harder opened the schools in 1967, after seeing the kids from two of her closest friends suffer from mental disability. She still works there today and has seen the school from when it started at a La Habra hospital, to its current location located off Euclid Avenue, adjacent to San Miguel Park. At the time, Harder and her staff made due with what they had, a converted house built in the 1930s and minimal funds.
As success of the school spread throughout the community, the HBIC facility became too small to accommodate the students. In June 2002, Harder, volunteers, and community philanthropists joined efforts and raised $1 million to construct a brand new facility. Although newer and more improved, the school maintains the same home-style look. One reason for this was to blend into the neighboring residential community. More importantly, however, the home-feel would allow students there to feel as comfortable as if they were at home.
Jason Cecil, the program supervisor at HBIC has worked at the school for over 14 years. He began there through a physical education/kineisiology program at Cal State University, Long Beach. Specializing in sports injury and rehabilitation, Cecil applied his degree to the Cleta Harder philosophy.
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