Several members of the Plant City Lions Club headed out to the Willis Peters Exceptional Center on Tuesday where they enjoyed lunch with several staff members and a tour of the facility before presenting the school with a check for $24,249.
Willis Peters Exceptional Center is part of the Hillsborough County Public School system and serves students age three through 22 with severe intellectual disabilities, limited cognitive functioning or other disabilities such as deafness and visual, language, speech and physical impairments. And while the center typically operates with a student body of around 75 students, they are currently around 60 as they rebound from a drop in enrollment during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The money was raised from a fundraiser held each year during the Florida Strawberry Festival where the Wells Memorial and Event Center allows their land to be used for parking throughout the festival, organized and worked by volunteers, with all the proceeds going toward the center. In previous years the school itself had managed the event, however liability issues posed a problem this year leading to the Lions Club and their team of volunteers spearheading the efforts.
“This is really huge,” Lions Club president Jim Sparks said. “It’s over $24,000 that goes directly to the school for their programs, to help the kids directly, and they’re doing a lot of great things here. It was a great thing and we’re just really happy to be involved with it.
Nearly all activities across campus are provided through the funds raised, including materials, behavior incentives, communication devices, cooking supplies, travel funds if they’re taking trips away from the school and more.
“I could go on and on about the needs of our students and the extra expenses of what they need,” ESE Specialist Rebecca Nance said. “For education, for social opportunities, for inclusion opportunities, for physical or mobility opportunities. So this fundraising really helps to provide for all of that. Every extra thing that we do on our campus essentially comes from this fundraising, from the fun holiday celebrations to a student who may have specific behaviors where we can’t figure out what’s what and just need to trial multiple things — be it different sensory tools or different things to sit on to give input or even just the clothing that they’re wearing is bothering them and we need to try things that aren’t irritating to them. A lot of it is trial and error and those things cost money.”
Students attend traditional classes through primary and secondary school and once they have surpassed those levels at 18 years old, they move on to the transition program where the focus begins a shift to vocational training and career prep training, if they’re able, until they age out of the center at 22 years old. In addition, the center has two classrooms with full kitchen setups as well as washers, dryers and vacuums to help assist students learn independent at-home skills.
“Our staff truly doesn’t get the recognition that they deserve on any level,” Nance added. “Be it their salary, awards, public recognition, whatever, they’re absolutely amazing. They come every day completely refreshed and reset from whatever happened the day before. We face a variety of challenges but do not let it stop us at all from celebrating every amazing accomplishment that our students do day in and day out. Most of the success that our school and our students have is due to our amazingly dedicated, selfless, wonderful staff. They’re fantastic.”
But this donation is far from a standalone effort to serve WPEC as the Plant City Lions Club has long been a supporter the center, raising $127,000 between their own club, the Lions International Foundation, Unity in the Community and several local businesses to erect a sunshade over the center’s playground as well as awnings and fans around the school in 2018.
The Lions are one of the oldest and most prolific civic groups In Plant City, celebrating the local club’s 90th anniversary in 2019, well-known for their work in the community in an effort to better the lives of others through their motto of, “We Serve.”