The Calais School has grown very much through the past 50 years — not only in size but also in unique program offerings to provide the best academic, social, and emotional support possible to students with special needs.  Get an inside look at the early days and see how Calais has emerged as a leading special education provider in North Jersey. 

The Calais School is celebrating its 50th birthday! That’s 50 years of helping young minds gain confidence and job skills and reach their fullest potential in life. To celebrate, we are launching a new four-part blog series! We are excited to tell the story of our school’s founding and history.

The Calais School was founded in 1970 by Mr. and Mrs. Lionel and Charlotte Leitner. Ms. Charlotte Leitner had longed to help children with special needs since 1948, when she was studying psychology at Hunter College. While working as a school psychologist, she saw firsthand the limited resources for children with special needs. She and her husband talked about the issue and decided to resolve it by building their own program so that students with special needs could build confidence and achieve their fullest potential.

Timeline of The Calais School's History

In 1970, Mr. and Mrs. Leitner founded a school at the Ackerman Hotel on Calais Road in Randolph, which is how The Calais School got its name. Teachers packed their supplies and worked out of suitcases all week so that the hotel could carry out its usual operations on the weekends. 

After only two years, the school’s enrollment grew so much that it relocated to a larger space within the campus of the College of Saint Elizabeth. From the beginning, The Calais School’s academic programs and therapeutic programs have helped to set us apart. This can be seen today in our staff’s dedication and flexibility in meeting the various needs of our students.

As both the school population and the needs of the community grew, Calais moved once again and began renting the current building in Whippany, New Jersey in 1978. The Calais School went on to purchase this building in 1991. 

After learning workplace behavior and interviewing skills in the classroom, our Upper School students put these skills into practice when The Calais School began offering unpaid internship opportunities at job sites in the community in 2002. This has evolved into the Calais Transition Program that goes even beyond traditional K-12 schooling. 

By 2006, the school’s student enrollment had again outgrown the building. Therefore, an expansion was built to provide additional space that included a more welcoming front entrance, a wheelchair-accessible entrance, conference rooms, a nurse’s office, and a science lab. Additionally, this expansion allowed us to reconfigure our gymnasium space and add a multipurpose room on the lower level.

We have added many new and innovative programs for our students in recent years, including our Twice Exceptional Program. Also, 2013 marked the beginning of our  Animal Assisted Interventions (AAI) program, which has been featured by major news outlets. The integration of AAI with our counseling and therapeutic support services not only has improved student motivation but also has created a noticeable decrease in anxiety as well as improvement in communication, anger management, and peer relations among participating students.  Then, in 2015, we expanded the Calais Transition Program by partnering with County College of Morris (CCM) to give our 12 Plus students an opportunity to explore interests and earn college credit while receiving support from a highly qualified member of our Transition team.

As we look back on The Calais School’s history, we are grateful for all of the people that have helped make it happen — students, faculty, staff, parents, supporters, and school districts alike. Helping students and young adults with special needs exceed their possibilities has been our passion for over fifty years. We certainly have had a wonderful half-century with many triumphs and many important lessons both in and out of the classroom, and we cannot wait to see what lies ahead!

To learn more about referring a student or about the services we provide, consider attending a Virtual Open House. Check our school calendar for upcoming dates.