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A School Founded to Fulfill a Promise

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

The first thing Alex Tempel did after waking up Monday morning was to mark off the final day on the makeshift calendar he has kept next to his bed for the last 300 days. Then he flew home.

The calendar is a sheet of construction paper on which his father had written rows of numbers, from 300 to 1. At 14, Alex is still learning the concept of weeks, months and years. But by marking off each number, he knew he would be another day closer to leaving Randolph, Mass., where he has attended a school for brain-injured children, and returning home to Orange County.

Scott and Cheryl Tempel, of Laguna Niguel, gave the calendar to their son last July, promising that they would have a specialized school for him close to home at the end of the 300 days. Alex, who suffered brain damage after surgery to remove a brain tumor when he was 3, has been attending the May Center near Boston for the past three years.

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The Tempels came through on their promise. But they never found a school for their son; they founded one.

The Alex Center, the only residential school in the Western United States devoted exclusively to brain-injured children and adolescents with acquired and traumatic brain injuries, will open in Tustin today, and Alex will be its first student.

Funded in part by $350,000 raised by the Alex Foundation for Brain Injury, which the Tempels formed two years ago, the Alex Center will offer a traditional school calendar of 180 days plus a six-week summer session.

Housed in 17,000 square feet of space leased from the adjacent Tustin Rehabilitation Hospital on N. Myrtle Avenue, the Alex Center will offer nine computer-equipped classrooms for six students each. That’s in addition to a physical/occupational therapy room, a family resource room, various medical offices and other facilities.

Virtually all of the students will be placed by their home school districts, which, by law, must pay the cost of providing special education services.

The Capistrano Unified School District, which has been funding Alex’s schooling at the May Center, will continue paying for him to attend the Alex Center. School districts will contract with the center, which will charge $205 per day for basic special education and behavioral intervention. Counseling and physical, occupational and speech therapy are an additional $85 per hour.

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Certification for the Alex Center is pending. The school is a subsidiary of New Jersey-based Bancroft NeuroHealth, a nonprofit organization for people with neurological disabilities.

The Alex Center ultimately will accommodate up to 54 students ranging in age from 5 to 22. At least half of them, including Alex, who requires 24-hour care, will live in residential homes that center officials plan to rent or purchase.

Inquiries already have come in from several school districts, said director Sharon Grandinette. She expects that the center will have 12 students by September.

Wendy Aguilar of Fullerton, whose 11-year-old son, David, suffered a brain injury when he fell out of a baby walker when he was 6 months old, has her son on the waiting list.

“I couldn’t wait for the center to open because there’s nothing like this out here for children, and David is so misunderstood by the school,” she said. “They think he’s perfectly fine and should be mainstreamed.”

It’s a need many parents feel, experts said.

John Watkins, director of neuropsychology at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, said, “The Tempels have converted what was an enormous tragedy in their own life into something that will help children like their son for years to come.”

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Alex was 3 1/2 when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1989. After undergoing two surgeries, he contracted meningitis, then epilepsy, which causes him to have about 15 seizures a month.

He has trouble filtering out noises, sights and smells, and can become overstimulated by any of those, especially in crowds, his mother said. At such times, he would lose control and yell, hit and kick.

When Alex was in fifth grade, the school district hired an outside consultant, who recommended that the Tempels enroll Alex in the May Center.

“It was the hardest thing that I’ve ever had to do,” said Cheryl Tempel.

But the May Center “turned his life around,” she said. “Within a month, his aggressive and self-abusive behavior decreased by more than 90%.”

It cost the Capistrano Unified School District nearly $200,000 a year for the switch.

The Tempels decided to push for a school in this region so that California families would be spared their experience.

On the phone to his mother a few months ago, Alex quoted a line from his favorite movie, “The Wizard of Oz.”

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“I’ll never leave home again,” he told her. “Oh, mommy, I love you so. There’s no place like home.”

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