Grandparents fund dyslexia academy in Florida

From The Ledger in Florida:

LAKELAND, Fla. -- Hal and Marjorie Roberts have good reason to be concerned about children with dyslexia. They have two grandchildren with the condition.

The Robertses' grandchildren were fortunate. They enrolled in a special school in
Atlanta that taught them how to compensate for their difficulty in reading. But the Robertses decided there needed to be a similar school here.

On Friday, Florida Southern College President Anne Kerr announced the Lakeland couple has donated $3.5 million, which will be used to create the Roberts Academy, a transitional school for intellectually gifted children with dyslexia.

The money will purchase and renovate two buildings that house the headquarters of the Florida United Methodist Conference, near the campus on MacDonald Street. The facility will contain the new academy, the Florida Southern Department of Education, the college's demonstration preschool and kindergarten, the Hollis-Hays Children's Library and the Roberts Center for Learning and Literacy, which trains teachers to identify learning difficulties, especially in reading and literacy.

The buildings are expected to be ready for their new use in August 2010.

In remarks delivered during a news conference on campus, Hal Roberts became emotional as he recounted how his granddaughter was teased because she could not read.

"She would cry on Mondays because she had to go to school," he said. "This will enable parents to understand their children and advocate for their children."

The Roberts Academy will be a full-day program offering reading, math, science and other elementary-school level subjects. Teachers will be trained in a special method of multisensory reading instruction that has proved successful in teaching dyslexics. The academy will also provide counseling, support and training programs for families.

The Robertses stressed the academy will be a transitional school, with children spending two or three years there and eventually returning to regular schools. The academy will start with one grade level, probably third grade, and add other grades each year.

"It's heartbreaking to hear parents ask, 'What can I do for my child?' You can't just say, 'Your child has dyslexia, goodbye,'" said Marjorie Roberts, who is a member of the FSC Board of Trustees.

Hal Roberts is a former city attorney for Lakeland and currently the chief executive of Earthlinked Technologies, which manufactures geothermal heat pumps. The Robertses had three children who are graduates of FSC.

Kerr said the academy will be a model for the teaching of dyslexic children.

Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability in which students experience difficulties with skills such as spelling, writing and pronouncing words, according to the International Dyslexia Association. As much as 20 percent of the population has some form of reading difficulty, and about 75 percent of those have symptoms of dyslexia. The cause is unknown, but students can be taught to compensate, and the condition tends to be coupled with high intelligence.