Fitchburg School Uses Training Device to Help Students With Disabilities — But Fears Losing It

A school in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, that has intensive programs for students with disabilities is asking for help.

The Keystone Educational Collaborative won a state-of-the-art gait trainer to help kids who have trouble moving around, but time is running out before they have to return it.

Since coming here, she's a whole new kid," mom Kayla Morgann said about five-year-old Mia McGann. "This poor little girl has gone through more surgeries than I have in my entire life. Yeah, she's had open hip reduction three times. She's had club feet repaired several times, tubes three times."

That's what brought Mia to the Keystone Educational Collaborative, where she was introduced to the Trexo gait trainer.

"It’s life-changing," Morgann said. "It's teaching her how to walk."

Lead physical therapist Amanda Costella said that gait trainers are basically fancy walkers that take multiple staff members to operate, but the Trexo takes it to a different level.

"It's a robot, it's an exoskeleton," Costella said. "It attaches to the user and it moves their legs through the gate cycle for them to lay down that pathway so that they can learn how to walk."

It's already made a difference for two-year-old Myles LeBlanc, who suffers from a rare neurodevelopmental disorder.

"He went from doing like 100 steps," Kaitlin LeBlanc said. "He did a thousand steps one day."

The Trexo has a lot of special features, like uploading progress right into an electronic tablet.

“We'll start to see 10% initiation, 20% initiation, 30% initiation. So it tells us how much they're contributing to the process," Costello said.

It's been an amazing gift for students and surprise for the school when they won the gait trainer for one year at no cost in a Trexo contest giveaway.

The problem now is that the lease is coming up and in order to keep it, they need $75,000. The school doesn't have that funding, and is asking for donations.

"I desperately want to keep it," Costello said.

"Mia needs this," McGann said. "And unfortunately, health insurance doesn't cover it, so we can't get one at home."

If you want to donate to help, you can visit the school's website here.