Over 35 years, the Shelton School has grown from a small group of learning-disabled students whose parents asked a respected educator to start her own school to a full campus with 860 students.Among the many milestones, one that stands out for Betty Glasheen, the unofficial school historian, is when parents began to show pride in their Shelton affiliation.

“People will put a Shelton sticker on their cars now,” said Glasheen, noting that the stigma of learning disabilities is fading.

The private, nonprofit school is celebrating its 35th anniversary this school year, and it is looking to the future to find ways to replicate its success.

The school caters to students with normal intelligence who have neurological differences that make it difficult to learn. It uses an individualized multisensory approach to help students learn despite the effects of dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and speech and language disorders.

The school is supported by the parents, who pay up to $20,000 in annual tuition and help raise additional funds to provide a range of classes and activities, including sports, band and theater, from pre-K through high school.

But it’s the student-teacher ratio of 6-to-1 that produces the results, said executive director Suzanne Stell. The teachers, many of whom have master’s degrees and doctorates, receive two years of additional training at Shelton to work with kids who have learning disabilities.

The program is so well-respected, Stell said, that Shelton is on the rotation list for second-year pediatric residents from UT Southwestern at Children’s Medical Center. The residents spend two weeks at the school to gain insight into learning disabilities.

Glasheen noted that pediatricians are often the first professionals parents turn to when they suspect their children might have problems.

Many of the kids who attend Shelton stay three or four years, and the school helps them find other schools once they’re ready to move on. “If we see the child can make it in another school, we say, ‘You’re ready to go,’ ” Glasheen said.

Students choose to mainstream into regular schools for various reasons – bigger sports programs, larger schools, to catch up with friends or to cut costs – but others decide to stay and graduate from Shelton. And then the school helps them find the right college.

Shelton administrators are aware that the school is financially or geographically out of reach for many parents. However, the school’s testing services are available to the public, and the school offers Saturday programs with one-on-one tutoring for students from other schools. In addition, the school helps conduct research that includes students from outside the school.

Administrators also consult with other educators seeking to replicate the Shelton model. Recent inquiries have come from locations as disparate as Barcelona, Spain, and Oklahoma City.

Shelton is one of four established private schools in Dallas for learning-disabled children. The others are Dallas Academy, the Winston School and Fairhill School.

“There’s a nice array so that we have choices. We’re not all things to all men,” Glasheen said.

The school was founded in 1976 by June Shelton, a speech and language therapist with Montessori training who saw the need for a multisensory approach to help learning-disabled kids.

According to the school’s history, Shelton was approached by a group of parents who asked her to establish a school. Over the years, the parents were the ones who kept the school going, particularly by finding and paying for facilities to accommodate the growing operation. Glasheen said some families took out second mortgages on their homes to help pay for an old church building on Lovers Lane in 1981.

In 1999, Shelton moved into the massive Far North Dallas campus at Hillcrest and Arapaho roads that had housed Prestonwood Baptist Church. It had room for the lower, middle and high schools, a gym, a cafeteria, a staff nursery, administrative offices, a testing center and more.

Shelton has been around so long now that some of the current teachers were students there.

The school’s 35th anniversary will be celebrated at an April benefit at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas. Honorary co-chairs are former Dallas Cowboy Lee Roy Jordan and his wife, Biddie, who have a grandson at Shelton.

Biddie Jordan said one of their sons attended Shelton through eighth grade, then went to Winston and on to the University of Alabama. Now, he has a 4-year-old son in preschool at Shelton.

“When I walked in that door again, I got goosebumps,” Biddie Jordan said. “It was like coming home.”

She found that some of the teachers who had taught her son are still working at the school.

And when the staff approached the Jordans about being honorary co-chairs for the benefit, they didn’t hesitate to sign on.

“I can’t speak highly enough what it means for our family to have a place like Shelton,” Biddie Jordan said.

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