Job opportunities can be scarce for people with disabilities. How some schools are trying to fix that

At the Embassy Suites hotel in Cary, just south of the airport, visitors can find 10 Wake County Public School System students with intellectual disabilities working independently.

It’s a major step toward employment for a group of people who remain chronically underemployed, even in an employees’ market.

“They don't have a lot of opportunities to go into the workforce,” Wake Superintendent Robert Taylor said. Taylor served as an exceptional children’s director in another school system for eight years. “Many businesses may be reluctant as to whether or not these students can actually be productive in that business.”

But programs like Project Search prove that people with intellectual disabilities can fill needed roles and that companies can find them to be indispensable employees, Taylor said.

Taylor toured the program Wednesday, talking with interns helping with laundry and food preparation and cleaning. He even ran into a few former interns who have now worked at the hotel for a few years. The visit is part of his plan to visit every school in Wake County this year, just after being hired Oct. 1.

Taylor spoke with the head chef at the hotel, who said even the interns help the kitchen run more smoothly. When schools were closed on Election Day, and the interns stayed home, the chef noticed their absence, Taylor said.

The Project Search program in Wake County is one of about a dozen statewide and hundreds worldwide, enrolling up to 12 students each. They provide students and adults with exposure to jobs in the hopes they’ll learn enough about what work is like, and what they enjoy and don’t enjoy, to be workforce-ready.

Wake County’s program places high school students in different parts of the hotel on rotating bases. They sort laundry, peel onions, wash dishes, organize files, make beds, answer guests’ questions, and do many other tasks. It’s a partnership between the school system, Embassy Suites, Community Partnership Inc., Alliance Health and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

The students seem to like helping out at the hotel. One, who works in the kitchen, said he likes to pick up trash and break down boxes. He also prepares vegetables for chopping.

North Carolina has more than 211,000 students with disabilities enrolled in special education — about 1 in every 7 students. Tens of thousands more have disabilities but have less intensive accommodations.

For this population, employment in adulthood remains the exception rather than the rule.

According to the Center on Disability, just 31.9% of North Carolinians with a disability, aged 18 years old to 64 years old, are employed. At the same time, 74.4% of North Carolinians without a disability, between those ages, are employed.

That’s not because they can’t work; many without jobs could work. But many can’t find openings, can’t easily commute to a job, or have misinformation about how earning wages will impact their federal benefits. While earning money reduces benefit checks, people will always earn more money working than not working, experts say.

Barriers to employment

Twenty-year-old Jedi Hunda, a Wake County student with an intellectual disability, enjoys making beds and vacuuming at the Embassy Suites in Cary.

“I like being a room attendant,“ Hunda said. He hopes to rotate next into dishwashing or the kitchen. He likes cooking. His mom taught him to cook eggs. His brother taught him to cook pasta.

Hunda could probably get a job at the Embassy Suites, working part-time and earning an income while he prepares for life after high school.

But Brandi Pittman, the Project Search program's instructor, says it will be tricky, even though the hotel loves having him intern there.

He lives in Raleigh, about 30 minutes away, and would have to take Go Wake to get to and from work. It doesn’t run Sundays, and he might have to work Sunday shifts. She’s thinking of finding him a hotel job closer to home instead. She wants him to have a job, and Jedi wants a job, too.

Embassy Suites has hired five program interns for part-time paid work, including one student who’s still an intern, Pittman said. But he lives only seven minutes away, so it’s easier for him to get there.

“Transportation is a huge issue, and it’s one of the biggest barriers to employment,” Pittman said.

Employers are another barrier, experts have said. Many companies, like the Embassy Suites, have learned how to find work for people with intellectual disabilities. Others aren’t as open to the idea.

But companies often have many tasks that can be redistributed from overqualified employees to a new employee, said Tim Blekicki, director Project Search’s Biltmore Estates program in Asheville. Many workers with disabilities only work part-time, so they’re not major financial investments, Blekicki said. “But businesses, especially at an entry level, need workers,” he said.

Public-private partnerships allow prospective workers to get familiar with employment before jumping in. Sometimes they need help.

“You can't just sit in a classroom and tell these folks, ‘Well, this is what it looks like if you're going to go into hospitality,’” Blekicki said. You have to show them, “This is what customer service looks like. This is what this looks like. They have to actually experience it. They have to get the dirt under their fingernails, their boots have to hit the ground.”

The payoff is there, he said. Before Project Search partnered with Biltmore Estates, the program operated out of Mission Health hospital in Asheville. There, interns performed many tasks, including preparing surgery trays.

“At the height of our program at Mission, we were putting together surgery kits, and a quarter of the babies born at Mission Hospital, were born with a surgery kit that one of our students put together,” Blekicki said.

Services to help

Schools are required to create transition plans for students with individualized education programs who are between the ages of 14 and 22. Those include goals for when they exit school, as well as services needed for the students to move on to work, college or independent living, when appropriate.

Wake County can only serve up to 12 students at a time in the Project Search programming. School officials are working with partners to open a second program in 2025.

If a student isn’t accepted into the program, there are other resources to help them train for jobs. Every county has a vocational rehabilitation office that works with adults with disabilities toward employment, though employment won’t be immediate and some jobs can require certain coursework or certification first, beyond just shadowing or training.

The assistance can seem piecemeal, and not every family is prepared for their children exiting high school.

“There's not just like a gradual off-ramp of public schooling services,” Blekicki said. “It's a precipitous 90-degree cliff.”

Many families don’t begin preparing for what’s next until their children are 17 or 18 years old, he said. Then, they realize it’s not as easy as they thought it would be to make a plan for their student.

Wake County’s Project Search program started in 2019 and has had 42 interns.

Embassy Suites interns have gone on to work in competitive jobs outside of the hotel industry, Pittman said. Restaurants, grocery stores. Someone just got hired at the YMCA.

“We have a plan for all of our students to be productive citizens,” Taylor said. “And this is a great opportunity to get that kind of experience, regardless of what a disability might be. So I truly believe that every kid has a place in our society.”