WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
A retired special education teacher’s used her inheritance to create a not-for-profit coffee shop employing developmentally disabled workers, some of them her former students. The operation’s proved so successful that work’s underway to expand on the retailing concept that grew out of her teaching experiences.
SLEEPY HOLLOW, N.Y. -- It came last summer in a white envelope she couldn’t wait to open.
Hillary Barber, 29, had already interviewed for a position at a soon-to-open coffee house, 45 minutes north of Manhattan, but didn’t know if she earned a spot.
Barber has cerebral palsy, a condition that limits her mobility and makes it difficult for her to speak. Like so many other developmentally disabled adults across the country, she had trouble finding work.
That letter, she hoped, could change everything.
“It is with great pleasure that I extend the following employment offer to you,” read the invitation from the nonprofit Sleepy Coffee, Too, founded by former special education teacher Kim Kaczmarek.
“I’m so happy,” Barber told an aide that night. “My life is complete.”
It would mark Barber’s first-ever paid work, an enormous victory for a young woman who was too often underestimated: Just 21.3% of people with a disability were employed in 2022, up from 19.1% the year before, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For those without a disability, the figure was 65.4% in 2022.
A smaller offshoot of what will soon be Sleepy Coffee, Too — called The Little Shop of Coffee and Dry Goods — opened in a cozy 700-square-foot storefront in June 2023, employing Barber and 16 other adults with developmental disabilities. Kaczmarek, 64, came out of retirement to open the store, staking $125,000 of her own money on the venture.
Many of her employees are her former students. The staff is devoted and eager to take on the working world’s challenges. That exposure has greatly improved their communication skills.
“I had some kids who were virtually nonverbal who are now some of my best customer service employees,” Kaczmarek said. “They found their voice.”
As the employees are growing, so is the business. Sleepy Coffee, Too is poised to move to an adjacent downtown location in the next few months that will double its size and allow the shop to expand its hours.
On a recent rainy Sunday afternoon, customer traffic was slow but employee Maggie Collier, 21, was ready to help anyone who walked through the door.
The store, neatly stocked with all manner of coffee, is packed with other items, too, including books written by and on behalf of disabled adults and socks sold by the family of a Long Island man with Down syndrome.
Undoing a downside of COVID-19
Kaczmarek has long known her students had a hard time beating employment odds. The pandemic made their plight even more difficult. During that dark time, the former teacher’s heart would break when she saw her former students on the streets of this Hudson River village.
Their regression was stark, Kaczmarek said. Young people whom she coached for years to meet her gaze and engage in polite conversation were now averting their eyes. The educator didn’t want further isolation to undermine any more of her — or her students’ — good work. But she didn’t immediately know how to help.
The teacher reflected on the successful coffee cart she and her students opened — she used it to help them learn about operating a small business and to fundraise for their field trips — in her district’s administrative office in 2016 and how it grew even more popular at the high school.
Students and staff proved devoted patrons: Sleepy Coffee’s brownies would sell out in minutes each morning.
“There was a respect toward my students that had never been there before,” Kaczmarek recalled. “I think it really changed the culture of school.”
“The more they were out doing things that everyone else did, it made not just the students, but the staff realize we are more the same than different,” she said. “It took the stigma away. The other students got it very quickly.”
But how could she translate that sense of fairness and inclusion to the outside world? Would the general public have the same goodwill? Sure, she had seen it done before. But it had been decades.
Kaczmarek was 11 years old when a developmentally disabled boy was born to a family across the street in her hometown just north of Sleepy Hollow. This was the 1960s, an era when many such children were immediately sent off to live in institutions.
Not Adam.
His family wanted to keep him close, but they couldn’t care for him alone. So, they invited friends and family to work and play with him each day in shifts.
“His mother had a big schedule in the house and people signed up and were given fast training,” said Kaczmarek, who was among the volunteers.
“It really had an impact on me, watching my neighborhood come together like that,” Kaczmarek said. “It was an incredible time.”
And it taught her a lesson that would become her mantra.
“There is always a way to solve any problem,” she said. “When people work together, miracles can happen.”
‘It turned out to be good’
Kaczmarek went on to earn a bachelor’s in special education from Syracuse University and a master’s from Fordham University. Adam eventually became one of her students.
She approached her former students to gauge their interest in opening a brick-and-mortar coffee shop. They were elated at the thought.
Kaczmarek inherited the $125,000 seed money from her parents. She’s raised an additional $200,000 through grants, donations and fundraising and she’s always looking for more to add staff and expand their hours.
“They are stimulated every day. They have an obligation. They are part of a business,” said Kaczmarek of her workers.
Hillary Barber, the young woman who got her first paying job at 29 and who uses adaptive technology to communicate, treats her job with the same dedication.
Though it was a challenge, she was determined to operate the register from her wheelchair and after a few modifications to the store, she did just that. Her mother Janis, also a retired special education teacher, is grateful that Kaczmarek gave her daughter a chance.
“This was really her first opportunity to work,” the mother said of Hillary. “I’m so grateful for Kim.”
This story comes from our partner, The 74. The 74 is an independent, nonprofit national education news website dedicated to covering issues affecting America’s 74 million children. Visit them online at The74Million.org.
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