We’ve made a break-through for the field of education: a research-backed and neuroscience-based approach that’s proving effective at reducing or even removing learning disabilities and some social-emotional difficulties.

Now we need your help to broaden its impact to help more kids.

Cajal Academy is an innovative, non-profit school for twice exceptional kids and their bright and gifted peers, at the heart of an organization dedicated to developing new educational approaches that align with current neuroscience. We’re redefining what’s possible through a whole new approach to education, based on the science of how children learn, socialize and grow.

We’ve made a paradigm shift in how we understand & treat learning, social-emotional & physio needs. We get behind the labels and dig into the data that drives them to identify the specific neurocognitive or neurophysiological difference that’s holding a child back. Then we work back down the neuro-developmental chain to find the missing or deficient link & repair it – all while teaching math, science, and all the other things that go into a K-12 education.

The results have been transformative for the kids in our program, often in less than a single school year. Like a 7th grader who went from a 1st grade level in both reading & writing to on grade level in just 6 months’ time. Or a middle schooler who went from hiding in a closet to sleep away camp in a bunk with 30 peers in just one school year. Or our first graduate, who found his passion for industrial design while overcoming a life-threatening medical crisis with a two year recovery, severe social anxiety, ADHD & expressive language challenges—and is now thriving academically and socially at a top college for his chosen field. These are just a few of the transformations our students have experienced at Cajal Academy.

We’re at an inflection point, which doubles the impact of your donation.

We developed these exciting approaches working with 5-10 kids at a time: just the way you’d want to re-engineer education from the ground up. Over the course of 2024, we reached an exciting inflection point: ready to start publishing case studies disseminating our findings on the one hand, and in a beautiful new building that allows us to scale the size of our cohort. As we do, the research value of our work will increase as well, by enabling us to prove out these methodologies and the new educational model at their core across a larger group of students.

This means that each donation to our scholarship fund has a double impact. First, it helps gives a child in our community access Cajal Academy’s transformational program. Cajal Academy is the only school of any kind across Connecticut that caters to the needs of kids who have very high analytical abilities paired with a learning, social, emotional, physio or chronic medical difference. We are also the only school anywhere in the world that provides specialized instruction empowering kids who have connective tissue disorders such as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome to manage their complex co-morbidities. So for families who lack the financial means to access our program, homeschooling is the only option when the public schools prove unable to meet their needs.

Second, your donation to our scholarship fund also helps broaden the impact of our work. With a greater scope of students, our research can make a greater impact, and help change the conversation for the millions of children with special needs beyond our walls by proving out what’s possible when we approach special education through a new, neuroscience-informed approach.

Your chance to make a mark on education.

When you focus your giving dollars at Cajal Academy, you have the chance to catapult our findings into a new revolution that can impact millions of children by modernizing education to match modern neuroscience. These break-throughs didn’t come from a big research institution or a million dollar foundation; they started as one mom’s determination that her kids’ futures shouldn’t be limited by learning, social-emotional or even medical obstacles that science showed ways to address. Joined by a visionary OT and an internationally-recognized neuropsychologist, we started over with current neuroscience and redesigned every aspect of “school” from there. Together with a passionate team of educators and licensed therapists, we centered this work within a K-12 school, propelling both academic and social-emotional growth by integrating the strategies into the real world scenarios where students need them most.

We continue to be a lean team doing this extraordinary work through our entirely tuition-funded school program. That means that your donation can have an immediate and concrete impact by helping us expand the reach of a program that has already developed a research-backed approach with proven, transformational effects. It won’t get lost in the bucket of large research institutions that are working on important foundational science but are still years away from bringing that work into the classroom.

Please make a donation today to support our work, or contact us to find out how you can support our work through a named scholarship, research chair position or other large gift to Cajal Academy.

Please make a donation to help support our work to modernize education to match modern neuroscience!

100% of our donations goes directly to supporting our kids. Here is how your donation will help:

One time donations:

$50 will provide adaptive seating for a child so they can focus their energies on their work

$200 will cover the supplies for a child to complete 3 project-based learning units

$1200 will cover a month of counseling sessions for a child's social-emotional needs

$7500 will cover a year of Neuroplasticity Interventions enhancing a skill that's holding a child back

Monthly donations:

$20 will provide a child's supplies for the community-wide sensory sessions that start each day

$50 will cover a child's curriculum costs for the year

$300 will provide a transportation scholarship for a child

$1000 will empower a child through work with our licensed therapists on how to self-monitor, self-manage and self-advocate for their needs

Contact us if you would like to volunteer your professional services to support our work!

Here are some of the volunteer positions we are hoping to fill - please help us spread the word if you know of someone who is looking for an opportunity to give back!

• Board members

• Fundraisers

• Bookkeepers or accountants (CPA) experienced with non-profit accounting

• Digital marketers and/or social media managers

• Graphic designers

• Pro bono nonprofit corporate governance and/or education law legal counsel

• Grant writing, or help to identify appropriate grant opportunities

• Software developers

We are interested in hearing from experienced educators and licensed therapists who share our passion and would like to be considered for positions as we grow our team. Please contact us to find out more.

Thank you!