Jake Tucker, a new pre-K student at Whitesburg Elementary School, toured the school during its open house on Wednesday just as excited as all the other new preschool children who will start today. But Jake he is the school’s first quadriplegic preschool student and his attendance required some extra accommodations.

The staff has been at work all summer preparing for some new students with special needs. They put in a new sidewalk that will allow Jake to get to the preschool playground in his wheelchair and are adding a swing that will hold his wheelchair. A trailer has been moved in to house a classroom but also to house the occupational therapist, speech therapist and other specialists who will be working with Jake and the other children.

So that his ventilator can be plugged into a dedicated plug, the maintenance crew added some electrical outlets to the classroom Jake will attend and in a small break room where he will rest during the day.

The preschool room also had to be opened up to allow for Jake to get to all the different work stations, including art, math manipulatives and reading. Even the books and toys had to be modified for his use.

Connie Mount, an instructional facilitator, has worked with Jake to make the toys easy for him to use. She added magnets to puzzle pieces so he could use a magnetic wand in his mouth to move them. She put file tabs with paper clips in them on the edge of pages in a book so he could turn the pages with the wand.

“The whole school’s really worked together to make all these accommodations,” said Principal Joyce Davis. “We’re excited to have him. He’s very bright.”

Kitty Cleghorn, prekindergarten family and parenting consultant at Whitesburg, said Jake is one of four new students at the school who will have special needs. A blind child, an autistic child and a child on a feeding tube will also be attending school there this year.

“It’s a little new to us,” Davis said.

The county has special facilities at Central Elementary School for students with special needs, and that is where Jake went to school last year. But his parents wanted him to go to school in Whitesburg, where he lives, and where his sister Kaitlyn attends school. Katie Tucker was impressed with the Whitesburg school program and asked them at the end of last year if they could accommodate Jake.

“They’re super close,” Katie Tucker said of her children. “I want them to be together. I want him to have the same opportunities and stuff that she had – to get to go ride the buses together, be in the same school, do the same activities.”

The school worked with Katie Tucker and with Jake’s nurse, Donna Billstrom, to make the modifications necessary to allow Jake to come to school at Whitesburg.

“They hadn’t had a child like this ever in the school here,” Billstrom said. “They have really from maintenance to teachers to the staff in the office, they’ve all just, ‘What do you need we’ll get it for you?’”

Even at the open house Billstrom noticed Jake squinting in the bright sun and asked if there was shade on the playground. Cleghorn immediately started brainstorming about how they could protect him from the sun.

The other parents are also going to have to actively protect Jake. An illness that most children could easily fight off could have serious repercussions for him, Cleghorn said.

“I’m asking the parents to make sure that they don’t send their children even with a slight bit of temperature,” she said. “We want them to be extra, extra (careful).”

Katie Tucker has been very impressed and grateful for all the support Jake has received not only from the school staff but also from the community. When he was just 1 year old, the doctors told her they didn’t think he’d survive injuries from an auto accident just two months prior to his first birthday. Now he is starting school.

“(Thursday) for us is going to be huge because he’s going to be in real pre-K,” she said. “People never thought he’d talk or do anything. He’s come a long way.”