"They weren’t cruel or mean. They just didn’t approach her," Piro recalled. "I thought it was sad that the kids seemed interested in her but didn’t know what to do."

Piro asked the teacher if she could read a book on autism to the class. She selected a story, "Captain Tommy," about kids at a camp learning how to interact with a little autistic boy.

On the day she read the book, Piro asked that Jamie be removed from the classroom so she wouldn’t feel uncomfortable being the subject of the discussion.

After reading the book, Piro asked if there were any questions, and, she recalled, "twenty-four little hands went up.

"They asked me everything about her. Does she eat the same foods we do? They couldn’t believe that she rode a scooter and ate ice cream.

"The next time I volunteered, I saw a big difference in the way they treated her. They had learned why she screamed, that she uses her voice differently. They accepted her. They couldn’t wait to tell me that they were doing things with her. I think it gave them permission to make mistakes with her. They had been afraid to upset her," Piro said.

At the end of that school year, Piro shared her story at a special education PAC meeting at which Superintendent John Moretti was present. The other parents and Moretti "jumped on the idea" of recreating the situation in other classrooms. Piro met with Moretti several times that summer and with the principals that fall.

The fall of 2003 was taken up with the planning process, and the actual program got off the ground, with Piro and 50 other volunteers visiting and reading to every elementary school classroom, in January of 2004.

Piro did the research and found books on a whole host of special needs, including autism, Down’s syndrome, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, kids in wheelchairs, and more. She is working on expanding the collection and is currently researching books on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), blindness, and physical deformities.

In obtaining the books, Piro visits hospitals, book stores, the Kennedy-Donovan early intervention center, and other places. Doctors who work with Jamie have recommended books as well.

The books are available in a special teachers’ section at the school libraries. Piro, along with a volunteer who had been a teacher, prepared an index card for the back of each book with appropriate questions to stimulate discussion with the class after the book is read.

Those have been invaluable to the volunteers, who have reported that having the list of questions makes the process easy. First the volunteer reads the story to the class, then they go over the questions with the class so the kids can get answers to their own questions.

The seed money to purchase the books came from funds donated to the special education department by the Gallagher family. Since that time, Piro’s neighbors held a fund-raiser — named the Jamie Fund — and raised $8,000 in just one year. That money, Piro said, has really freed her up to buy books whenever she can.

Piro had 50 volunteers last year and has about 50 this year, 30 of whom are returning volunteers. She welcomes volunteers and never turns anyone away, she said.

This year’s I CARE reading started in the classrooms earlier this month. The schedule is to finish all the Robinson and Roland Green classrooms by February vacation, and to visit the Jordan/Jackson classrooms after vacation and into March.

Piro is hoping that, as I CARE progresses, it can expand from a reading program to include other awareness activities, perhaps role-playing, as well. She is also mulling ways to introduce the I CARE program into the middle and high schools. She said that perhaps Project Teammate, a program at the high school in which regular education students help special education students, may be a place to start.

She said she is "open to ideas" on how to proceed with the upper grades.

"We have to educate our kids on how to treat the special ed kids. We need to help them understand," she said.