Yuma's September storms caused a lot of damage throughout the county, and one local microschool is still dealing with the aftermath.
Positive Expressionz — a microschool combining Montessori-inspired play with Applied Behavior Analysis support — started about eight years ago as a tutoring service for special education students.
"I've seen that there is a huge need for, like, behavioral support, so I started doing, like, ABA therapy, more strategies," said Heather Acosta, founder of Positive Expressionz. "I'm a behavioral analyst—but not board certified, so I have to clarify that—but from there, then, I noticed that, you know what? There's just more students that need help, and I can't necessarily help if I do one-on-one. So then that's when I opened up a microschool."
But what's a microschool? As the name implies, microschools are very small schools. They provide personalized learning to a limited number of students, usually no more than a dozen or so.
Positive Expressionz takes about 10 students, and they offer A.M. sessions, P.M. sessions and a few full-time openings. Acosta shared that most of her students are on the spectrum or in need of some behavioral support, but she takes a few general education students, too.
“I firmly believe in meeting the student where they're at and going into their world to teach about our world," she said. "I'm not taking them out of their comfort zone, and I'm allowing them to be ready to learn."
Acosta explained that she curates her curriculum to each student's needs.
"Our micro school allows us to meet the student where they're at and to have them enjoy learning, have them learn what they want to learn at their pace," she continued. "And it's okay if it's slow. It's okay if it's fast. It's okay if you're not learning exactly what we're learning right now. It's okay if you opt out of this activity and do it later.
"It's really just an environment that caters to all the students and makes it where learning is not a chore; learning is something I want to do and have fun with it.”
Positive Expressionz had only just spent a few weeks in its new building before the storms hit in the beginning of September.
"We flooded all the way up to about above our ankles, and so it went into the building and it destroyed everything in that building," Acosta said. "So what happened is they, they basically cut however high the water went, they cut the wall out, so there's no walling. They had to pull the carpet. They had to pull the toilet out. And all the cabinets were molded out because now we got black mold growing in there. And it's just, it's just devastating."
Further compounding the issue was a lack of insurance because prospective insurers weren’t familiar with the concept of microschools. Acosta had spent considerable effort trying to insure the school, but she kept getting passed on from one company to another.
"By the time the flood hits and I finally found somebody who knew what a microschool was, the flood already hit," Acosta said. "I had no chance of getting any type of insurance."
When KAWC first reached out to Acosta, the kids were still waiting for the microschool to reopen.
"...Unfortunately due to the flood, we've been out for three and a half, almost three and a half weeks because we don't have a building," she said on Sept. 24. "We have bills going out, but no finances going in because we had to put everything on standstill. So our students, our special needs students are now at home waiting for our school to reopen and to continue on with their education."
That's when Positive Expressionz created a GoFundMe asking the community for donations to help them rebuild. Although the initial ask was $1,600, Acosta shared in her interview that they really needed $5,000.
"Even if it's a dollar, it means a lot, like, we celebrate every dollar that comes in," she said. "I just scream out loud like, 'Oh my gosh! We got another one!' Because it's just closer to our goal to be able to open up the school for our students to start again."
Despite not reaching their goal yet, however, Acosta realized she couldn't keep the kids waiting any longer. So she decided to take the plunge and reopen at great personal cost.
She interviewed again with KAWC on Sept. 30, one day after reopening.
"... I decided just to go with it," she said. "The good thing is — thank you, Jesus — we only lost one student and then we're hoping, like today, I have someone coming and I think that's what really pushed me to go is, like, I have all these families asking, right, for the place; I just couldn't show them anything."
That's when Acosta sought support from her family.
"Luckily, I have a very close family, and I said 'I'm going to be, basically, in the negative in the bank account, and we're going to hurt for a little bit, but it'll be a good thing,'" she said. "And so that's when we all compiled our money together and was offered a very nice place, and that's where we got the current place that we're in."
Now, Positive Expressionz has reopened in a house near Avenue C and 16th Street. Acosta shared that a family had offered up the house and she was able to get it approved so that she could run the microschool from there.
Although it's been stressful for Acosta to see her bank account in the negative when she hasn't been in that situation for decades, the kids coming back have made it worthwhile in her eyes.
"Seeing the kids come in and seeing their smiles and getting back into the routine, that was the reward of all that," she said.
The kids, she reports, seem very happy.
"... They are, naturally, with their disability, a little anxious because it is a new place, but once they saw us, they came right in with smiles," she added. "I'm thinking within the end of this week, we should be back into routine and back to them ready to learn and do fun things again."
It may take a while before funds start flowing back in, but Acosta and her workers are hopeful things will work out.
"We're doing the best we can with what we have, and we're just super happy to be open and semi-functional," she said.
Acosta hopes to be able to continue offer a functional, safe place for the kids to be able to learn, socialize and grow. And more broadly, she hopes she can keep passing on her knowledge by helping students and other schools in the Yuma area.
Although she's written off the GoFundMe as a flop, Acosta has followed advice to create an Amazon wishlist of items that were destroyed in the flood. That list can be found here, and more information about the microschool can be accessed on Facebook and their website.
This reporting is supported by a grant from the Arizona Local News Foundation.
