ONTOP is an alternative school in Burlington, Vermont for students in grades 6-12 with emotional disabilities and is part of the Burlington School District.  ONTOP was established in 1980 and has been serving students from Burlington and surrounding school districts since that time.  The goal for our younger students is for them to learn the academic and social skills they need to reintegrate back into their sending schools; for our older students, our goal is for them to work toward earning their high school diploma.  

The small, structured setting and the opportunity for individualized and small group instruction make ONTOP an ideal school for students with behavioral or academic challenges.  Ongoing positive and negative feedback is an important component at ONTOP.  We have an extensive behavior management system which allows us to record student behavior and give feedback at the same time.  Our goal is that students will learn to use and apply social skills across all areas of their lives, making it easier for them to be in a less structured school setting and making it easier for them in the world outside of school.

At ONTOP there is a student to staff ratio of 3:1 which provides students with the opportunity to receive more individualized instruction.  Academic accommodations are an important part of the program.  Students receive instruction in basic academic areas necessary for high school graduation such as English, math, science, history,  and art.  We also offer Affective education, lifeskills training and study skills training as well as intensive reading and spelling instruction with the Wilson Reading Program.  Further, we do fluency training and reading comprehension instruction for students who need work in those areas.

ONTOP students and their families and/or support people are required to attend a Home Conference meeting every two weeks. The team discusses the student's behavior and academic performance for that time period.  This is an essential part of the program since it promotes close communication between school and home.  It is also a time for the team to establish goals for the student to return to a mainstream environment.

Affective education is a part of every ONTOP student's school day. This is a class in social skills training, problem solving and making healthy choices.  In this class students also work on building self-esteem and reducing stress.  The social skills that we address include:  anger management, giving and receiving positive and negative feedback, conversation, following instructions and resisting peer pressure.

Advocacy is another component of our program.  Each student participates in an advocacy relationship with one ONTOP staff member. The purpose of this relationship is to be an additional support for the student.  Advocates help students with their educational and personal goals, and the advocate can sometimes offer the rest of the staff a more insightful perspective into the student and his or her choices; all of the staff at ONTOP work closely with and get to establish working relationships with students, but the student's advocate is someone the student gets to know and work with individually.