Anchorage Daily News

PALMER -- Every weekday during the school year, a group of about a half dozen young adults gathers in the basement of the St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church near downtown Palmer. With planners and picture lists in hand, they go over their goals and obligations for the day ahead.

"Your hair looks good today -- you washed and brushed it, right?" teacher Larry Oulette asks Sam Coberley, 21. Oulette and an assistant Anna Pitts, put a plus sign in each category column, indicating that Sam, and the other six 19-to-22 year-olds, accomplished their tasks.

This is the second year for Next Step, a Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District program for developmentally delayed young adults.

The Wasilla program, which meets in donated space at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, started six years ago, Oulette said. The program has a mix of kids from those with Down Syndrome to those with autism.

With the goal of helping students transition successfully into the adult world via a paying job, the teachers of both the Palmer and Wasilla programs emphasize employment and personal skills through community service and part-time employment.

"We try to do one service job and one work experience in a business," Oulette said. "We've done food service, laundry, variations of janitorial work -- like at Meiers Lake (Conference Center) we pull in floats and clear brush, vacuum floors."

The class's schedule varies daily. They visit the United Protestant Presbyterian Church, which pays them a small stipend in exchange for janitorial work.

A few students work at the Palmer Senior Citizens Center and Profiles of Excellence for Learning preschool where they do odd jobs.

They helped with harvest this year at Stockwell Farms, which is run by a relative of one of the students, and they clean the floors at the AT&T Sports Center.

On Wednesdays, they head to an Episcopal church conference center at Meier Lake off Wasilla-Fishhook Road.

There they do work supervised by board member Glenn Galloway.

Galloway is the on-site caretaker and said he really appreciates having a weekly work crew to help out.

Galloway reeled off a list of tasks he's assigned to the class -- washing windows and chairs, shoveling snow, cleaning the commercial kitchen.

"They do a lot of time consuming maintenance that needs to be done," Galloway said.

Oulette also introduces his class to various community groups, including Rotary Clubs and Secret Santa.

They mentor through the Special Olympics school partnership program and attend workshops on the fine point of disability law.

They learn how to manage money and other day-to-day tasks.

"Last year when this program started, some of them had never made a purchase on their own, never made their own sandwich," said Pitts, who calls her job the "best ever." "They've come a long way -- this is a program that definitely gets results."

The group also visits small business owners regularly, which is how Denise Statz, owner of NonEssentials in Palmer, met Pearl Weaver, a Next Step graduate.

Statz said Weaver introduced herself by saying how much she wanted to work at the shop.

Although initially cautious about hiring someone with Down Syndrome, Statz now says she can't say enough good things about her star employee.

"She's proven to be a tremendous asset to my business on a number of levels. First of all, everybody seems to know Pearl and so her being here has actually improved my bottom line," Statz said.

"She's fearless, she'll take on projects I'm confident no one would ever assume she was right for. She's the hardest worker I've ever known."

Weaver is Oulette's success story, one he hopes to duplicate for each graduate he sends into the world.

"Their goal is they're employed," Oulette said of his students' dreams. "We want life to begin before the bus stops, like the next day they've got something meaningful going on in their lives."

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