A two-decade partnership helps students with learning disabilities transition to adulthood

Partnership helps students with learning disabilities transition to adulthood

Students at Pepin Academies Transition Program have called a first-floor room in the Hillsborough County Public Defender's Office home for the past 20 years.

TAMPA - Jonathan Temaul is the go-to guy for all things mail-related at the Hillsborough County Public Defender's Office. 

"I like to meter mail. That's my favorite part when it goes through the machine. There's a zoom, zoom," Temaul said. 

The long-time employee is a graduate of the Pepin Academies Transition Program. Downstairs on the first floor of the Public Defender's Office, current Pepin students are going through much of the same training he did. They are learning financial stability, professional etiquette and life skills like cooking. 

"This idea that Pepin is training these young people to transition into the community, to get jobs, to learn to engage with public transportation, to learn interview skills, we're so excited to see the work that they're doing and how important it is," Hillsborough County Public Defender Lisa McLean said. 

Dig deeper:

"The program is for students who have deferred their high school diploma, and they come into this program to get workforce and life skills training. What we do is kind of a flipped model of a traditional classroom. Instead of being in class every day, our students are in class one day a week getting all the life skills curriculum, and they're out in the community two to four days at different sites learning different skills and different tasks across our partners in Hillsborough County," Pepin Academies Executive Director Jeff Skowronek said. 

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Many times, students end up with jobs at community partners like Publix, the Pet Resource Center, Tampa General Hospital and AdventHealth. 

What they're saying:

"Even in today's society, as embracing as we are of individuals with disabilities, it's still difficult," Skowronek said. "There's no more sense of pride for this program than to know that our students are getting placed. Our students being able to hold those careers and be embraced by the company in the same way that you embrace any other person is just so rewarding and so refreshing, and it gives me hope that we can get that throughout this community at large."

What's next:

Hillsborough County has allocated $800,000 to build a fully-functioning kitchen for the Pepin students to train on.