Wings Academy

07/28/2026

🐝💛 EXCITING NEWS FOR WINGS ACADEMY! 💛🐝

We are thrilled to announce that Wings Academy has been awarded a $5,000 Envision Equity Grant from the NEA Foundation! 🎉👏

This generous grant will help fund CALM training for our Wings Academy staff—an essential part of building the supportive, relationship-centered environment we want for every student who walks through our doors.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 What is CALM?

Originating in Scotland, CALM is a relationship-based approach focused on understanding behavior, building trusting relationships, supporting emotional regulation, and responding to individuals in ways that promote safety, dignity, respect, and well-being.

For our students, relationships come first. By equipping our staff with CALM strategies and a deeper understanding of the needs behind behavior, we can create an environment where students feel safe, understood, supported, and ready to grow. 🪽💛

We are incredibly grateful to the NEA Foundation for investing in our vision and helping us bring this specialized training to the Wings Academy team!

🐝 $5,000 invested in our staff.
🪽 Skills that will impact our students every single day.
💛 Another step toward building something truly special at Wings Academy!

Thank you, NEA Foundation, for helping our students spread their WINGS and SOAR! 🐝🪽

07/23/2026

🐝💛 OUR COMMUNITY IS AMAZING! 💛🐝

A HUGE THANK YOU to the Street Cruisers Car Club and Gustafson Ford for their generous $520 donation to Wings Academy! 🎉👏

Each year, they host an awesome 4th of July Car Show & Vendor Fair at Francis Park, and we are SO excited and grateful that Wings Academy was chosen as one of this year’s recipients! 🚗🇺🇸🐝

Support like this means so much to our students, staff, and the entire Wings Academy family. We are incredibly fortunate to have local organizations and businesses that believe in our mission and want to help create amazing opportunities for our students! 💛

🚗 Street Cruisers Car Club & Gustafson Ford — THANK YOU for supporting our students and helping them spread their WINGS and SOAR! 🪽🐝

We are so proud to have you as part of our HIVE! 🍯💛

Send a message to learn more

07/20/2026

💙 The Wings Academy community continues to amaze us!

From the encouragement, excitement, and generosity you've already shown, we truly feel surrounded by an incredible community. Thank you for believing in our students and our mission.

As we prepare to welcome our first students, we've created an Amazon Wish List with classroom materials and sensory items that will help make our learning spaces even more engaging and supportive.

We know many of you have already given so much, and we truly hesitate to ask for anything more. However, if you have been looking for another way to support Wings Academy and are able to purchase an item from our wish list, we would be incredibly grateful. Every item—big or small—helps us create the best possible environment for our students.

Thank you for being part of this journey with us. Your kindness, encouragement, and generosity mean more than words can express. We can't wait to open our doors and show you all that Wings Academy will become! 💙✈️

07/06/2026

We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Chrissy Smith and her son, Dylan, for their incredibly generous $5,000 donation to Wings Academy, made on behalf of their family in Dylan's name.

This gift is so much more than a donation—it is an investment in the future of our students and in the mission of Wings Academy. Because of Dylan's family's kindness, we will be able to continue creating opportunities for our students to learn, grow, and thrive.

As part of our sponsorship program, individual gifts of $5,000 or more receive naming rights for a dedicated space at Wings Academy. We are especially excited to recognize Dylan in a place that holds special meaning to him. The playground—one of his favorite places, where he has spent countless happy moments enjoying one of his favorite activities, swinging—will proudly be named, in part, in his honor.

We hope that every child who plays there will experience the same joy, laughter, and sense of freedom that Dylan has found on those swings. It is a beautiful way to celebrate him while inspiring future generations of students.

From everyone at Wings Academy, thank you for your extraordinary generosity, your belief in our mission, and for allowing us to honor Dylan in such a meaningful way. Your family's kindness will be reflected in the smiles of our students for years to come. 💙🛝🐝

Pictured: Kim Johnson, Wings Administrator
Dylan Tibbs, Honoree
Casey Miller, Executive Director, Henry Stark Counties Special Education

07/01/2026

Visit hscsed.org to apply!

Join our team and make a difference in the lives of students every day! We are currently hiring Paraprofessionals & Teachers for school year 2026-2027.

If you're passionate about supporting students, working alongside dedicated educators, and making a positive impact in your community, we'd love to hear from you!

✅ Competitive benefits
✅ Meaningful work
✅ Supportive team environment
✅ Opportunities to make a lasting difference

Apply today and help us inspire, support, and empower every student.

📍 Positions available Co-op Wide!

Visit our website at hscsed.org and select Jobs to view the dashboard and apply. We can't wait to welcome you to our team!

05/13/2026

🚧✨ BIG things are happening at Wings! ✨🚧

Our addition is really starting to come to life, and we couldn’t be more excited to share the latest progress with our community!

✅ Cabinets have been installed in classrooms and most shared spaces
✅ Kitchen flooring is in
✅ White boards are up and ready for learning
📺 Smart boards will be installed as soon as they arrive
✅ Ceiling grids are in progress
✅ Carpet, doors, and hardware installation has officially begun
✅ Tile work in the bathrooms and nurses office is complete — and it looks AMAZING!

Every day, the addition looks less like a construction zone and more like a welcoming, usable space for our students and staff. It’s exciting to see the vision becoming reality right before our eyes!

And one more exciting update… 🛝
The playground will be delivered and installed just after Memorial Day!

A huge THANK YOU to Dewberry and Ringland-Johnson Construction for their continued hard work and partnership throughout this project. We appreciate everything your team is doing to help bring this space to life for our students and community! We will be welcoming our families and community members to visit before we know it! Stay tuned for upcoming invitations to check out the HIVE!

We can’t wait to share more updates soon! 💙 🐝 🩵 🐝 💙

05/07/2026

As promised, we are also recognizing our two other students who supported our Honey Helps! fundraiser:

💛 Alonzo Woolsey, a student in Mrs. Ellie Hendrix’s class
💛 Angel Astorga, a student in Mrs. Michelle Hulstrom’s classroom

Thank you to Alonzo, Angel, and their families for your invaluable support with this campaign. We truly could not have done it without all of you!

04/20/2026

🐝💛 Honey Helps! Fundraiser Update 💛🐝

We are thrilled to share that, through sales and cash donations, we raised just over $15,800 for our sensory room campaign! This incredible milestone was made possible by our exceptionally generous community members—we are beyond grateful for your support.

With these funds, along with additional grant money we’ve been awarded, our director, Mr. Miller has graciously approved funding for the remaining balance of the sensory room. We did it!!! 🎉

This dream has become a reality because of YOU. We truly cannot express our gratitude enough—THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

We would also like to recognize four outstanding students who, with the help of their families, were our top student salespeople. Two of those students are pictured here with their teachers:

Mrs. Nicole Nelson, Kewanee High School Life Skills teacher
Camden McMillen, 11th grade student from Toulon
Tessa Anderson, 9th grade student from Kewanee
Mrs. Brooke Esquer, Kewanee High School Life Skills teacher
Camden and Tessa were celebrated with bumble bee-themed gifts, including socks, a stuffed bee, and Crazy Aaron’s Honey Hive Thinking Putty. 🐝

Thank you more than you know, Camden and Tessa!

Stay tuned for our next post as we recognize the other two top student sellers from the Wethersfield Elementary Life Skills program!

04/12/2026

𝑺𝑷𝑶𝑵𝑺𝑶𝑹 𝑺𝑷𝑶𝑻𝑳𝑰𝑮𝑯𝑻!
Thank you to Amber Patch-Troxell, Farmers Insurance for being a Hive Hero sponsor for Wings Academy this year!

04/08/2026

Blown. Away. 🤩

The team at Ringland-Johnson Construction continues to amaze us with the incredible progress being made on the new Wings Academy building! Each time we do a monthly walk through, we are stunned by how much has changed. It’s truly starting to look and feel like a school.

Many of the windows are now installed, and the difference they make inside the classrooms and office spaces is remarkable. LET THERE BE LIGHT!!! 🌞 The elevator shaft is complete, and the exterior walls for the two-story addition are going up. Steel for the addition will be delivered and erected in just a couple of weeks!

Inside the building, the interior stairs (where the ramp used to be) are now finished, and the drywall, mudding, and taping in the stairway are nearly complete. Even more exciting — every classroom and most office spaces have already been painted (with the exception of the offices in the new addition). Ceiling grids in all classrooms are up and wall tile in restrooms is starting to be installed.

Seeing these spaces come to life is simply astounding. While we know the cooperative weather has helped keep things moving smoothly, we also know this level of progress would not be possible without the efficiency, dedication, and expertise of Ringland-Johnson Construction. We truly could not have chosen a better partner for a project that means so much to our students, staff, and families.

We cannot wait to share the finished project with our school districts and community members. Stay tuned for information about upcoming open house invitations in the next few months— we look forward to welcoming you into the new Wings Academy! 🐝