Jacob’s Ladder teacher Sandra Brooks stands by her personal vehicle, which she has been using to drive students around town.(Jon Giffin The Vicksburg Post)

[7/27/04]Jacob’s Ladder Learning Center has grown, and so have the students. So after four years of using their teacher’s car for transportation, they need a bigger vehicle.

Thanks to the Vicksburg Kiwanis Club, help is on the way.

The school opened in fall 2001, and six mentally challenged young people immediately called it home, completing daily learning tasks such as sweeping, cleaning, washing clothes and dishes and shopping for groceries.

Now the students range in age from 13 to 16, and two more have joined. There’s even a waiting list for enrollment.

The students go to the YMCA three times a week for fitness training and participate in Special Olympics, and better transportation is needed.

Local Kiwanians are responding and the group has planned a golf ball drop at the close of a citywide back-to-school pep rally Aug. 7 to help the school buy a 12-passenger van.

“It’s such a wonderful thing that they do there in trying to make the students grow into a highly functional part of society,” said Donna Osburn, secretary-treasurer of the civic club. “We want to help them in any way we can.”

She said she and her fellow Kiwanis members have already raised $6,500 for the van through such fund-raisers as a chili dinner, and she hopes to raise about $6,000 through the ball drop.

“The way it will work is we’ll number all the balls and drop them from the WLBT-TV3 helicopter onto a simulated green. The one closest to the hole wins $1,500, second closest wins $750 and third closest wins $250. Tickets are only $5,” Osburn said.

Sandra Brooks, the only teacher at Jacob’s Ladder, said she couldn’t be more excited about the fund-raiser.

“The Vicksburg Kiwanis Club has taken us under their wing from the very beginning, and we really appreciate everything they’ve done for us,” she said.

Brooks said the van will be a tremendous benefit to the school.

“We have two students on the waiting list, and the van will allow us to enroll a few more students. Our entire curriculum is based on hands-on learning through daily tasks, and we’re out of the classroom and on the road more than we’re inside the classroom,” she said. Jacob’s Ladder is a Christian-based learning environment for mentally challenged adolescents funded through tuition, scholarships and memorial donations. It’s the only school of its kind in the western part of the state.