With grand plans on her mind for an autism resource center for families, Florida resident Sandy Slomin contacted her alma mater, Ohio State, for resources to help get her started.

The school's development department put her in touch with Rebecca Morrison, CEO of Oakstone Academy, an autism inclusion school based in Westerville.

During a visit to the school two years ago, Slomin said she became entranced with the way Oakstone makes it impossible to distinguish between its typically developing students and students on the autism spectrum.

"Something kept making me go back to that school and knowing that was the direction I wanted our center to go," Slomin said. "The acceptance there - it's just a beautiful thing. I just couldn't get it out of my mind and my heart. I knew it was the right thing."

Through the Sandra C. Slomin Foundation and Family Center for Autism and Related Disabilities, Slomin already has raised $9-million to put toward the $18-million Roslyn and Raymond Slomin Campus, which will house an autism school that mirrors Oakstone, along with buildings offering resources to families dealing with autism.

Plans are to break ground on the facility in January 2011. The campus would open in January 2013, and the school would follow later that year, Slomin said.

Morrison has traveled to Boynton Beach, Fla., where the campus will be built, several times to help coach Slomin on replicating Oakstone. She's traveled with parents of students and Oakstone teachers, who she said will be instrumental in teaching others to do what they do.

For Morrison, working with Slomin to re-create Oakstone's environment has been a dream come true: More children with autism can be offered the opportunity of learning in a traditional school environment with typically developing students."I always envisioned that we would replicate our program," she said. "Initially, from the very beginning, I thought that we would do that by cultivating buy-in from school district so that kids could have services within their own districts. That has been a lot harder and slower to develop than I have anticipated.

"The fact that Sandy came in two years early with a serious commitment - I just felt that we couldn't miss this opportunity."

In her travels to Palm Beach County, where Boynton Beach is located, Morrison said she has seen a need similar to what she and Oakstone's founders saw when they established the Westerville school a decade ago.

"What I found (there) is what I found with parents here. Parents are dying for opportunities for social interactions for students with autism," Morrison said. "The demand, the urgency, the desperateness. You never know when you're going to a whole region you're not familiar with; I think the need is almost as great anywhere in the country."

Slomin, said she, too, has witnessed that need.

She has had no personal connection to autism, but since taking on the cause, she said people she knows have come forward to share their stories and struggles.

"When you get involved with something, people start to talk about what they haven't talked about before," Slomin said.

From the stories she heard, she conceptualized a plan for a campus that would offer a variety of resources for families dealing with autism.

The center would include everything from parent training classes to a hair salon and dental clinic in which employees would be accepting and understanding when working with people with autism.

She didn't decide to add a school until she visited Oakstone, she said.

Though it changed her vision extensively, Slomin said she knows replicating Oakstone is the right thing to do.

"Sometimes you know in your heart and in your mind what's right, even if it's from outer space. You just have to go with your heart," Slomin said.

The reception her idea has seen in Florida, from families dealing with autism and experts in the field, has bolstered her confidence in the plan.

Pledges for half of the projects rolled in before the capital campaign for the foundation has even begun, and parents already are asking her to create a waiting list for the school, Slomin said.

Overall, she said, the project is a personal call to increase acceptance of those dealing with autism by giving children on the autism spectrum the opportunity to be included in typical social settings.

"It's a whole new world, and someone has to go out there and be avant garde and try something different," she said. "To me, acceptance is the most important thing."