Fortune Academy

I looked into this school for my son and was very hopeful. It was extremely hard to get anyone to respond. Multiple voice mails went unanswered. I emailed the address on the website for admission at least twice without a response. I finally got a response through Facebook. I realize COVID complicated things, but I still had to constantly reach out far more than any other entity during this. I would be told someone would reach out to me at certain dates and, instead, I had to follow-up constantly. I did ask for my application and financial aid info to be returned since it was clear it wasn’t going to work out because we couldn’t get a shadow day. I got only part of my son’s application back. All his evaluations are MIA. They apparently lost my entire finical aid paperwork. They said they mailed it, but it never arrived. With my prior experience with things not being followed through, I am doubting it got lost in the mail and I’m sure they misplaced it like they did half my son’s admission application. So somewhere out there is all our SS#, tax returns, full credit report, etc. I now am paying for a program to closely monitor whether or not myself and my kids are victims of identity theft. I’ve been emailing weekly trying to figure it out. I was also told they would refund my application fee. That was 6/15. Although it took forever, and multiple times of me reaching out, to get a response I will say that they were certainly able to cash my application check within days of my son’s application being sent. They claim to have sent it to me with the other paperwork. As much as it seemed this would be a great fit for my son, I am glad it didn’t work out because of how hard communication and follow-up has been with just the application process. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to have to communicate about other things if he was a student.

The Fortune Academy is a wonderful located in Indianapolis/Lawrence on Lawton Loop Drive. It is a small school that is focused on teaching about 80-100 students who have dyslexia. This learning difference affects 1 in 5 people, so having a school like this is very important to start overcoming the challenges as early as possible.nI am a substitute teacher here and have been for five years. Fortune Academy is housed in an old church building in Ft. Harrison in Lawrence, which gives it a certain homey feel. The atmosphere is very inviting and friendly and you can tell as soon as you walk in the doors that you are in a good place. Teachers and students alike are friendly and you are treated as an equal no matter who you are. The building is very clean and well kept and everyone really takes pride in keeping it that way. When you enter the front door you are in the main office and will be greeted by a friendly receptionist or maybe a teacher or student helper.nThe main difference between Fortune Academy and other schools is that, because they only teach students who have dyslexia, they teach using the Orton-Gillingham approach, which involves hands on learning as well as repetition and other visual and auditory styles. The classrooms are small, which lends to small class sizes--no more than about 5 in the lower school and no more than 9-10 in the high school. This allows teachers to be able to focus more attention on helping students in specific areas and give one-on-one attention where needed. The students learn all of the usual subjects--math, science, social studies, art, music, etc., but they also have daily lessons in Orton-Gillingham (OG), where they focus on learning and practicing letter sounds/blends, spelling, reading and how words are formed (morphology of words). This gives them a good foundation to be able to form thoughts and sharpen skills in writing and reading. I highly recommend this school for any student who struggles with language/word recognition and speech.