Pennsylvania schools must help 14-year-old students with IEPs to plan their future. In a state with 500 school districts, that process is far from uniform. A state panel aims to compel improvements.
An excerpt from Public Source | Rich Lord | Published March 10, 2025
‘Real employment experience is so critical’
A person with a disability who gets paid workplace experience as a student is four times as likely to become employed as someone who does not, according to Ryan Hyde, executive director of the state’s Office of Vocational Rehabilitation [OVR].
“Your last day of school should look like your first day of adult life,” said Mary Hartley, a former chair of Pennsylvania’s Employment First Oversight Commission [EFOC] and president of
The Arc of Greater Pittsburgh, an affiliate of the disability advocacy group Achieva. “We believe people with disabilities can work, and that they should be moving toward employment.”
The six-year-old
oversight commission advocates that people with disabilities get help toward regular work earning at least minimum wage.
EFOC wants the General Assembly to require that all districts have at least one full-time transition coordinator, and to allocate funding to pay for that.
Without that, students are “not getting the support they need to really access the community,” said Hartley. “A lot of these kids are going to fall through the cracks and not get that experience. That real employment experience is so critical.”
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