By Kathleen Acuff
 Mark Rentfro is an Achievekids graduate who is going places. |
“Imagine yourself as a kid in a class - you don’t know how it works. You feel frustrated, angry. You kick, hit, get disciplined, sent to the back of the room, suspended, expelled. This happens over and over and over again.”
So Michael Gennette summarized the typical school career of students with complex emotional and developmental disorders. The executive director of Achievekids, a non-profit organization for such children and teens, said these students respond well to the one-on-one attention they receive in the two Achievekids schools.
“Our graduates are becoming successful young adults living in their community,” Gennette told attendees of the True Colors fund-raiser held at the Crowne Plaza Cabaña last Wednesday
The organization’s focus for the next few years, he said, will be to develop a program to be implemented in public schools.
The Los Altos School District has placed students in Achievekids schools and also contracts with the organization’s behavioral specialists in some cases, said Patty Boettcher, assistant superintendent for instructional services. To save the cost of outside service providers, the district opened a center for autistic preschoolers on the Bullis-Purissima Elementary School campus last year. That program now has 13 students.
Gennette said Achievekids launched a kindergarten program this fall and hopes for a preschool program. The organization’s Palo Alto site is at capacity and the San Jose site soon will be, Gennette said.
Joanne Fraser, a realtor with Coldwell Banker, has been on the board of directors for the past two years.
“I have been trying to make the real estate community aware of this wonderful resource by going to individual offices and speaking at their weekly office meetings. In addition, I have encouraged the Silicon Valley Board of Realtors’ charitable foundation to provide a grant to Achievekids,” she said.
Mark Rentfro is an Achievekids success story and a ball of fire.
“Before Achievekids, I wasn’t learning, and I wasn’t happy,” he told his audience. “I went to leadership training in Sacramento and it changed my life.”
