Kentucky School Advocate

May 2024

By Brenna R. Kelly

Staff writer

Hunter Davis wanted to take the agricultural structures and designs class at Woodford County High School because it included welding and working with concrete. 

“I was expecting, going to high school, to get my grades done and go on to welding,” he said. But what he and the other students learned in the class goes far beyond those technical skills. 

The students spent seven months building a workstation which allows people with multiple types of disabilities to work at Parker Hannifin, a global manufacturing company with a facility in Lexington. The months of work also taught them how to communicate, be empathic, work as a team, fail and, ultimately, to succeed. 

The students’ final design will not only be used at Hannifin’s factories around the world, but at the high school where disabled students will learn to use it in hopes of securing jobs with the company.

“Hearing about (the impact of) this project,” Davis said, “it just all hits you and then you realize, I’m making an impact. I’m making the world how I want to make the world.” 

The project, the outcome of the Purpose in Action grant funded by the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) with COVID-19 relief money, earned Woodford County Schools KSBA’s 2024 PEAK (Public Education Achieves in Kentucky) Award. 

KSBA Executive Director Kerri Schelling presented the award at an April ceremony at the school. The award, the association’s highest district honor, is designed to highlight outstanding public school efforts in the state and promote the positive impact of public education. 

“Our panel of judges was so impressed with this program because it’s a true collaboration of the local community, public education and the private sector,” Schelling said. “This is the type of transformative educational programming that the PEAK Award was created for, the type of learning experience that is possible in our public schools.” 

Woodford County Schools was one of two schools to receive a $217,000 Purpose in Action grant from KDE in 2022. The goal of the program, which was a collaboration of KDE’s Office of Special Education and Early Learning, Eastern Kentucky University, Parker Hannifin and the Berea Makerspace, was to have students design a work cell that was compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act – therefore leading Parker Hannifin to have a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

Special Education Director Tracey Francis worked with agriculture teacher Conner Richardson and then-special education lead teacher Susan Godman to combine students from the career and technical education program with special education students to take on the project. 

They soon expanded the team to include other staff. 

“The biggest part of this project was the collaboration within our own district, with our related services team, our speech pathologists, our occupational therapists, physical therapists, our vision impairment team and our hearing impairment specialist,” Francis said. 

The final staff team included Kristin Garffie, teacher for the visually impaired, Jennie Hayes, physical therapist, Rhonda Wade, occupational therapist and Courtney Nuckols, speech language pathologist. 

The objective was for the work cell, at which employees inspect and sort O-rings, to accommodate 14 disability categories and be ADA compliant. 

But students took it a step further. 

“We soon realized compliant also does not mean accessible,” Davis said. The students, including those with disabilities, toured Parker Hannifin’s Lexington factory twice and met to get a better idea of how the work cell would integrate into the factory. 

For example, they noticed that when workers sorted the O rings, they had to take them to be weighed and then get a printout of the weights. 

“With a factory setting, we felt like that would be kind of hard for someone in a wheelchair or having mobility issues, so we decided to make it an all-in-one work cell where you can print and weigh at the same place,” he said. 

For the visually impaired, they used a camera and screen to enlarge the rings. There are also features for colorblindness, and a way to slide the rings for those with mobility issues. They also added additional supports, such as a visual schedule and timer. 

Weslee Sturgill, a senior, said the project taught him that some people may have disabilities that impact their ability to work but are not obvious. 

“What impacted me the most of this project is the fact that not every disability may be able to be seen from the naked eye,” he said. 

Gabby Villarreal, a senior who uses a wheelchair, said the project opened her eyes to the realities of how inaccessible the world still is for people like her. 

“It shouldn’t be that hard to accommodate a blind person, or a person in a wheelchair, or a color-blind person,” she said. “It makes me feel really good that I finally did something that contributes to making things better.” 

Richardson said the project gave CTE students a chance to interact with their disabled peers in ways they hadn’t before. They had to work together to problem-solve, collaborate and communicate, he said. 

“They had never had a place to foster those conversations about what struggles they face or what it looks like to go out into the real world,” he said. “They had to think about solutions, change those solutions, go back to the drawing board and then eventually present something that they could be proud of.”

The project impacted Richardson just as much as the students, he said, because he was able to work with colleagues that he typically would not get to interact with, such as the related services team. 

“I became a teacher because I wanted students to know that they had the ability to really make a change and to give them a place to go and make that change while they’re here in high school, but also once they leave,” he said. “This project was the absolute epitome of that.” 

When the workstation was complete, Woodford students competed against Berea Independent, which was also awarded the grant, to see which district created the most accommodating work cell. 

At the Purpose in Action event at EKU in April 2023, students presented their project to the judges and demonstrated how the workstation accommodates those with disabilities. 

The judges ranked the project based on how effective they were at addressing issues like color blindness, wheelchair accessibility, dyslexia, blindness and cognitive disabilities. Woodford County won the competition and $30,000 to be used for postsecondary planning at the school. 

“Me and Weslee, we jumped up, hugged each other,” Davis said. “And then I turned around and I see Mr. Richardson, his face is blood red from screaming and jumping around. It was just amazing.” 

Francis said she believes the project was more impactful than anything she’s been involved with in her 22 years in public education. 

“The advocacy skills, the inclusion of all and the self-confidence this project has given all of our students due to Universal Design of Learning, it’s really unprecedented in any other project I’ve ever participated in,” she said.

Reaching the PEAK

About a year after that win, in March 2024, Woodford County Schools officials learned that the project had also won KSBA’s PEAK Award. The award was first announced at KSBA’s Annual Conference in Louisville. 

While accepting the award, Superintendent Danny Adkins said the project helped students become resilient learners because it required trial and error, and it allowed them to acquire skills they will need to succeed after high school. 

“They learned how to collaborate and cooperate with each other. They learned empathy. They learned all the things that make us good citizens,” Adkins said. “So, this project was not just a learning project, it was a life project.”

In the district’s award application, board member Amanda Glass, who voted to approve the grant, said she did not anticipate how much the project would impact students.

When it was complete, Glass said she was amazed at the professionalism of the students as they presented the project to the board. 

“Students, who prior to the project shied away from opportunities to speak about their experiences and opinions, now presented confidently to rooms full of adults,” she said. “This growth and maturity we saw in the students involved is without question evidence of why it is essential for the board to support programs and projects in which our students become involved.”  

The parent of a student with cerebral palsy who uses a wheelchair shared a similar sentiment about the project in the award application. She also thanked Parker Hannifin for seeking to have an inclusive workstation built for its factories because it showed students with disabilities that they are valued. 

“This experience has changed the course of my son’s life because of this message. He has since went on to college, found a job, and is living independently on campus,” she said. “I’m not sure if he would have had the confidence to do this without the Parker Hannifin Project and the positive experience it was that validated him as a person.”