Esther B. Clark School @CHC

Esther B. Clark School is a therapeutic day school for kids who struggle emotionally or behaviorally. There are two locations: Palo Alto and San Jose.

Esther B. Clark Schools provide transformative education for K-10 in a caring, therapeutic day school setting where children with emotional and behavioral challenges re-engage in learning and develop the positive behaviors necessary to transition back to a more traditional school setting. It’s one of the most successful programs of its kind. We believe in the promise and potential of every child, teen and young adult.

Kids We Serve at Esther B. Clark School
The target population at EBC is public school students in 2nd-10th grade who have a primary special education eligibility of Emotionally Disturbed (ED) or Other Health Impaired (OHI) and have not been able to derive educational benefit from their previous school setting. All students are referred from their school district and EBC is currently working with more than 30 school districts across five counties. These students are at risk for being placed out of the home due to the severity of their social or emotional challenges. Some students have become chronically truant, refusing to go to school, while others are unable to manage themselves in the classroom or playground. Many of the students are suffering from anxiety, depression or other emotional or mood dysregulation disorders that have blocked their capacity to learn and/or maintain friendships.

Students served by EBC are intellectually capable of accessing academic material at their grade level but a majority of the students at EBC manifest some kind of specific learning challenge which prevents them from performing at grade level and to their own expectation. As a result of perceiving themselves unsuccessful at school, with learning, at making friends, managing their feelings, their teachers, the families and the students themselves feel they have hit an “immovable wall.”

keywords: elementary, middle school, high school

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