JACKSONVILLE, Texas — Four Jacksonville ISD schools have a new tool to improve students’ communication thanks to grant funds from the Jacksonville Education Foundation.
The foundation has provided boards with words and corresponding pictures — called core communication boards — for playgrounds at East Side, West Side and Fred Douglass elementary schools and Nichols Intermediate School through an annual grant of more than $30,000 given to teachers in the district.
Speech-Language Pathologist Rebecca Meads, who is assigned to East Side elementary and Jacksonville Middle schools, said the idea came about after seeing a Facebook post.
“Ileana Torres and I, as well as the other assistants, work with students who are minimally verbal to non-verbal and provide core communication boards to them and their teachers for classroom use,” she said. “We had discussed different ways to make the core boards available to them in a variety of settings to help with their communication with teachers and peers. We are part of Facebook groups targeting school-based SLPs (speech-language pathologists) and saw a post with a playground communication board and thought that would be a wonderful addition to our playgrounds.”
Meads said the boards are a valuable asset to have on campuses and playgrounds.
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