Students are learning how to work in a restaurant — learning about everything from taking food orders to cooking and then serving the food — as part of a program for those with special needs. Called RISE (Reaching Individual Student Excellence), the program, run through the Woodbridge school district, serves 18- to 21-year-olds. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the program is including 22-year-olds over a three-year span.
The program is celebrating the reopening of Mayor Mac’s Café in the Port Reading section of Woodbridge. The café is a partnership between the school district and the municipality, where the students serve breakfast and lunch to the community.
Program coordinator Julie Bair said that by the time students graduate from the program, “They’ve already received a paycheck … they know how to open an account in a bank and what’s a savings account, what’s a checking account, they learn public transportation, they learn how to vote, the whole democratic process. They can get their driver’s license. We facilitate all of that to prepare them to be active members of society.”
