For more than a year.

Madison Central High School of Richmond has hosted a unique program called the Inspire Academy at Inspire students with moderate to severe disabilities are prep for a career following graduation.

And is a career development center for students with moderate to severe disabilities.

There are four pathways that would be food, clerical, janitorial and retail.

In ninth grade, we kind of start instilling these vocational skills as soon as they come to the high school.

It just looks different and really they're working on independent work skills, being able to focus on a specific task for a certain amount of time and getting those work skills built in the classroom.

And then in 10th and 11th grade, they start to kind of go out more into the community with our employment specialists.

Hey, thank you so much.

By the time they reach 12th grade, they get to choose a pathway into the Inspire Academy.

And then that's when we really focus on that specific skill set.

If they really like food service, we'll put them in the food service pathway and then they get to practice those skills.

Three days out of the week and we also get them a employment placement kind of job training, you would say, And then hopefully they get to have a paid position.

The skills that they obtain in a lab setting is something that you cannot acquire when you're behind a desk.

Before we started the program, we only had two students that were in paid positions and currently we have eight.

I then working at a job right now, being making money itself at a time that feels awesome and feel like the best feeling in the whole world.

I feel like for our students who, you know, most of the time they're having decisions made for them or they're limited in their choices because a lot of times people won't take them seriously or they don't think that they know what they want to do.

But our students are just like everybody else.

They want.

They have a sense of belonging and they want to belong and they want to serve a purpose.

And so having them get to choose helps them to really take on that role and stick with it after they leave here.

My experience is I'm just like, You just want to do things on my own.

If I need help with something, I can just ask like just be independent and just say what I need or what I want.

I think it's a good thing that they're doing here, that people understand how they work and I interact with them and I like interacting with other students.

I think it builds up confidence for both of us.

We see the confidence within our students.

We see leadership skills.

They aren't timid.

I can't wait to see what they do.

Once they do graduate, they have the tools and they feel very empowered and ready to take on the world.

Bright futures ahead.

Indeed.

At ten, students are enrolled in the Aspire Academy program.