NDEAM 2026 Event

GRADS Meeting August 27, 2026

Middlebrook Community Room at 6:30 PM

Four people attended the Grant Roberts Area Disability Supports meeting.

ADA Exit Report

Rachael Johnson shared the Americans with Disabilities Act Celebration Exit Report. Discussion followed. We may order less sandwiches (3 to 31/2 party trays) as we usually serve 38-40 people. We should try to have more winners at Bingo to distribute prizes more evenly. We had good news coverage fron the Sisseton Courier and The Grant County Review. Thanks to Diane Stewart and MaryLou Bullert for their help in advertising our event. Kudos to First Bank & Trust, Voc. Rehab., and the staff at the Milbank Visitor Center for all the help in making the evening so successful.

Knights of Columbus Donation

We thank Duane Tillman for the fantastic work in calling Bingo. Even more, we are grateful for the generous donation he presented to GRADS on behalf of the Milbank Knights of Columbus.

NDEAM/Sisseton

The National Disability Employment Awareness Month event will be on Tuesday, October 13, 2026 at the Family Life Center, 404 W. Hickory Street, Sisseton, SD. A catered meal will be served at 6:00 p.m. followed by featured speaker, Julie Johnson Dresbach. The evening will conclude with recognition of Project Skills participants. RSVP to Rachael at 605-698-7445 or email striping@venturecomm.net by October 9. We discussed providing gift cards to the honored Project Skills employees who are in attendance. Char Athey will contact Laura Maag about bringing a group from LifeQuest to this event.

Financial Report

The current checking account balance in First Bank& Trust I Milbank is $4,177.06.

Group Text Messages

Rachael Johnson will make a group text contact list to use in addition to the current email distribution list.

Next Meeting

The next GRADS meeting will be on November 19, 2026 at 6:30 p.m. at the Middlebrook Community Room, 402 E. Milbank Ave., Milbank. We will focus on doing GRADS history utilizing photos of past events. Subsequent GRADS meetings will be in February and April of 2027.

Boost for Teachers/Mentors Grant Recipient Summaries

Dear GRADS board members,

I am May Amodia and one of the recipients of GRADS’s Boast for Teachers project. I am excited to tell you how happy my students are as they can print the design; they want to be in their T-shirt printing project. With your support I was able to buy sublimation ink for the printer they needed for my students’ projects.

Thank you very much.

MAY AMODIA

Sped Teacher-Transition Class

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Hello, I just wanted to say a huge thank you to the Grant Roberts Area Disability Support Group, for the teacher mentor boost grant I received. I used the money for our Project Skills program. I have a total of 10 participants in the project skills program this year, that work throughout our community. We have attended 2 job fairs throughout this school year.
We used the grant money to make goodie baskets for the businesses in our community at Christmas time. We also used the grant money towards snacks and meals when we attended job fairs.
This grant is great for our community and for our students with disabilities as it gives them more opportunities to get involved in out towns and school and to get out and meet other students from the area.
Thank you so very much!!

Sincerely,
Wendy Iverson
Sisseton School District Project Skills Coordinator
SPED Administrative Assistant Sisseton School

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The Connection Crew participants collaborated to make a logo for our group. The design was sent to a company that made the logo into iron-on transfers. The grant was used to purchase t-shirts and the iron-on logos. The Connection Crew made our custom t-shirts for a weekly activity.

Michelle Greseth

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Thank you very much for the grant for the air fryer. They are very easy to use and are relatively safe. As you know this allows people with a variety of disabilities to be more independent in the kitchen. That is what we have been working on, independence.

Thank you again.

Lori Borgen
Special Education Teacher
Tiospa Zina Tribal School