Sierra Program at 27J Schools
Sierra Program at 27J Schools is a partnership with 27J Schools, which serves more than 18,000 students in Aurora, Brighton, Commerce City, Lochbuie and Thornton, Colorado. We measure success in a variety of ways, including successful transition back to a general education setting, progress on Individualized Education Program (IEP) goals, academic achievement as measured by formal assessments, and most importantly, student reports of learning to love school again.
- (P) 303.655.2532
- Sakata Education Center 89 North Sixth Avenue
Brighton, CO 80601
At Sierra Program at 27J Schools, we focus on teaching children how to learn so they can acquire the necessary skills to help them experience positive outcomes and fulfilling futures. Our child-centered approach aims to foster emotional growth; increase academic, language, and behavioral competencies, and enhance students’ natural strengths. Our prime objective is to help shape students into independent young adults who can productively interact in a variety of mainstream social settings and situations. We accomplish this by providing individualized programming to teach to each child’s skill set and adapt to each child’s learning style. Our collaboration with 27J Schools is an effective alternative for their students to achieve their potential.
Our Students
Students are referred by the school district to attend Sierra Program at 27J Schools and are generally in grades K–12 (aged 5 to 21). They face disabilities in a variety of areas, including Autism, Emotional Disability (ED), Specific Learning Disability (SLD) , Intellectual Disability (ID), and Other Health Impairment (OHI).
Our Staff
We are proud to employ special education teachers who are certified through the Colorado Department of Education. 27J Schools provides related services such as speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and counseling. All Sierra Program staff are trained in Handle With Care for crisis intervention.
By focusing on key areas — academics, behavior modifications, support services, and transition / life planning services — we are able to meet the individual needs of all students through these varied approaches to instruction. Through collaboration with a student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) team, we are able to choose the most appropriate learning model based on a given student’s present levels of performance, social capabilities, motor coordination, and ability to learn in a group setting.
Utilizing four specific instructional rotations, students are assessed academically, gain self-regulation skills, learn with district-aligned academic curriculums, and utilize integrated technology.
Serving students with significant autism and developmental disabilities, our model takes learned skills and practically applies them to the multiple environments in which a student would use those skills. Students spends portions of their day rotating through different modalities of instruction, the length and the frequency of each rotation is individuality designed for each learner and based on their current skills and future goals.
Each student enrolled in the model has individualized behavior programming which is driven by Functional Behavioral Assessments (FBA). We aim to identify the behaviors that continue to disrupt our student’s ability to access their environment and learning. We then use the data collected from the FBA and classroom data to device strategies that get to the root function of the students disrupted behaviors.