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Rotary Club of Coral Springs and Food for the Poor Step Up to Provide Computers for Special-Needs School

Rotary Club’s Sal Golfo and Food for the Poor’s Barbara Burns. {courtesy}

Sometimes, the best outcomes stem from chance encounters.

A routine meeting between the Rotary Club of Coral Springs and Food for the Poor, a Coconut Creek-based nonprofit, turned into a life-changing moment for students at Lion Star Academy, a private school serving children with severe disabilities.

Sal Golfo, a Coral Springs Rotary Club board member, said the club has been expanding its outreach efforts with other nonprofit organizations. The group already had a strong connection with Lion Star Academy in Coral Springs and knew of the school’s dire need for new computers.

“It’s a wonderful place,” Golfo said. “It was created by parents of really severely disabled kids. It’s small, and it’s severely underfunded.”

When Lion Star administrators met with Golfo, they told him they badly needed new computers. The computers they had in their classrooms were old and did not properly run their educational applications.

Then, during the Rotary Club’s meeting with Food for the Poor, he mentioned that to them. Call it pure luck, irony, or fate, but Food for the Poor came to the rescue.

Food for the Poor’s Senior Philanthropy Advisor Barbara Burns said when the Rotary Club members came to their facility for a tour, they discussed projects they had in mind.

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“They were trying to get help with this school’s computers,” she said, adding she was pretty sure they had a bunch of old computers in storage. “I don’t know if God prompted him, or he just asked on his own.”

Burns contacted a friend in the I.T. department, and within a day, six fully equipped laptops, keyboards, monitors, and mice were donated to Lion Star Academy.

“I can’t believe it happened so quickly,” Burns said. “It was certainly an act of God. It was something they needed and something we had.”

Lion Star Academy Therapy Director Michelle Van Niekerk Miller said the school only enrolls 15 special-needs students, ages 5 to 22. Many are classified as “medically complex,” meaning they carry more than one diagnosis. Due to the severity of their impairments, the public school system would be unable to accommodate their needs.

Britney White, office manager at Lion Star Academy, Barbara Burns Lisa Bennet and Michelle Van Niekerk Miller. {courtesy}

She said they receive some state tuition assistance under the Step Up for Students scholarship program. However, it is usually not enough based on their students’ profound needs.

The school’s board of directors, comprised of parents, has also established a “bridging the gap” in-house scholarship program funded by donations so parents do not have to pay out-of-pocket toward tuition.

Lion Star Academy Director Lisa Bennett is thankful for Golfo’s help with their school. “Sal has always been a compassionate person,” she said.

Chris Baselice has a child in the school and is their Board of Directors president. He, too, is grateful for the donated computers.

“Those types of contributions are vital,” he said. “Something like this is a huge blessing, a shot in the arm to our staff and our teachers.”

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Martin Lenkowsky

Martin Lenkowsky moved to Coral Springs from NYC in 1982. He has a bachelor’s degree from Brooklyn College. He has been both writer and editor for a number of South Florida publications since 1983. He considers features writing his specialty.