While the Monarch School of New England in Rochester is celebrating its 50th anniversary, its history of serving children with disabilities actually dates to the early 1960s when parents formed a playgroup for support and socialization.
It was formally established as a nonprofit and a school in 1974—a year before the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) became law. Then, people with disabilities were typically institutionalized or kept at home.
Today, the nonprofit school serves 64 students with developmental, physical and medical disabilities, ages five to 22 from over 30 school districts across the region.“It was in the 2000s that Monarch School of New England became our name,” says Executive Director Jeanette Souther. “Locations have changed, titles have changed, but the mission and the vision of the organization has
never changed”
Amanda Martineau, director of community engagement, notes Monarch School has always been ahead of the curve in serving children with special needs. “It’s really remarkable the amount of vision our founder in the Rochester community showed,” Martineau says. “They were creating something when there was no framework or laws saying this had to be done.”
The acquisition of land and the construction of a building in the 1980s on Eastern Avenue, named after founder Carrie Foss, was pivotal, says Souther. “It was home base. It’s a structure that became a place for all the services to be delivered,” she says, adding that today the building houses its elementary and middle school students.
After a lengthy capital campaign, Monarch opened the Williams Campus, a high school and vocational center in 2017, nearly doubling the number of students it could serve.
Beyond buildings, Monarch expanded its services and programs. One of those is a horticultural therapy program that began in a greenhouse on the Foss campus in the early 2000s.
“We’re really proud that we have the only program in New Hampshire overseen by a registered horticultural therapist,” says Martineau. “More recently, we have a partnership that just wrapped up with UNC Chapel Hill working around best practices in comprehensive literacy instruction for individuals with complex disabilities and communication challenges.”
Looking ahead, Souther wants to continue expanding partnerships with school districts to support students attending public schools with Monarch School staff with specialized training and skills, such as feeding and swallowing. “That’s an area where I feel we could be a larger resource in the community,” says Souther. “Right now, students come to us, and we serve them very well while they’re here for the school day, but there’s an expansion that we can do beyond our walls in partnership with our districts.”
“We really do try to promote that mindset of unlimited potential,” she says. “It goes beyond the school day into interactions out in the community.”