MIDDLEBORO– Fifty years since it was founded, the READS Collaborative, a regional academy with an office in Middleboro that offers academic programs for students with special needs, remains true to its mission. 

The program was created with the goal of providing schools all over Southeastern Massachusetts with access to specialized services to aid students with particular needs that school districts wouldn’t be able to afford on their own, said READS Executive Director Dina Medeiros. 

Since then, the collaborative’s model has only grown in scope.  

“Over the past 50 years, we’ve grown to be able to expand our services and provide a real wealth of specialized intervention, services and consultations to serve high-need students who may otherwise have difficulty making the achievements they’ve made,” said Medeiros. 

Schools can contract READS for services such as highly-specialized evaluations and interpreters for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community, said Medeiros. 

In light of the 50-year anniversary, one of the Collaborative’s founders recently expressed his excitement that the collaborative “continues to thrive,” she said. 

A key part in the Collaborative model’s success is having its own diagnostics clinic, said READS neuropsychologist John Dorn. 

Dorn said the program has the “most efficient” clinic in terms of diagnostic testing and evaluations that he knows of, because it only serves the program’s students. 

The clinic even offers bilingual evaluations in mandarin and english, conducted by Dr. Ching-min Chang. This service, Chang said, has been vital in helping address language barriers and behavioral challenges in Chinese immigrants. 

The Deaf and Hard of Hearing program at READS has given student Charlie Marchilena the opportunity to learn amongst peers that he can communicate with, and most importantly, make friends, he said. 

For Erinn Fauteux, Director of the pre-K-12 program at READS, the reason behind the Collaborative’s success is because “READS does school differently.” 

The Collaborative builds schools around student’s needs, not the other way around, she said. 

“We really tailor [school] to what they need, and it’s awesome to be able to see the kids succeed.”