Not By Schools Alone

The Communities In Schools program surrounds vulnerable students with coordinated support

When Ingrid deRoo, a site coordinator with Communities In Schools of Richmond, Va., discovered that Cecilia, a 3rd-grade student, already had missed 11 days during the first six weeks of school, she knew right away that even Cecilia’s skilled and dedicated teacher could not succeed with her being so hit-or-miss in her attendance.

Absence from school, at whatever level, has consequences for children. Most educators believe chronic absences even in kindergarten can lead to lower performance in grade school, which then ties to decreased attendance in 6th and 9th grades and an increased risk of dropping out.

This led deRoo to immediately invite Cecilia to join George Mason Elementary School’s Jaguars Can Attend, Achieve and Excel Announcement Team. This honor group, an initiative of Communities In Schools to raise attendance, helps children arrive early and ready to deliver the morning announcements to the school. Said Cecilia of her experience: “Miss deRoo came to my classroom because I had missed a lot of days and said I cannot miss any more days of school — and she said, ‘I am going to help you and you are going to help me.’ ”

Cecilia now is at school on time and works on using the key guide words of the announcement team: “Articulation, Enthusiasm, Speak Slowly and Loudly.”

“Cecilia has turned her participation into a great leadership opportunity,” deRoo said. “She’s even coaching another student on the team.” Significantly, CIS has engaged Cecilia’s mother, so the two work together on Cecilia’s role on the announcement team. Cecilia now also participates in one-to-one weekly tutoring in reading and the monthly Blue Sky Fund science field trips and receives benefits from CIS’s holiday assistance program.

Cecilia’s confidence has received a major boost — she now knows she has the ability to be a vital part of George Mason Elementary School.

An Enabling Role

No great schools can operate without great teachers nor can youngsters flourish in learning without support. Poverty, race and where and how children and families live all combine to compromise opportunities and access that come more easily to students with the benefits that money and stability usually provide. More than 10 million public school students nationwide lack the middle-class support system that our teachers need and especially that our newly trained teachers expect.

Blaming schools and parents accomplishes nothing, but building caring relationships with students and parents and engaging effective community partners enable schools to connect with hard-to-reach students and help them to turn themselves around.

At Wilder Middle School, also in Richmond, Rachel Klein, the CIS site coordinator, and her teacher and counselor colleagues doggedly pursue ways to enable students to resolve aggression and conflicts. They know long-term school suspensions and expulsions don’t work. In fact, providing troubled kids an unsupervised hiatus from school increases their risk of engaging in risky behaviors — exactly what they do not need.

Last year, Alex, a 7th grader at the school, was referred for discipline seven times, mainly for fighting. He was suspended a total of 10 days and served an additional eight in-school suspension days. “I got into a lot of fights and I argued with my teachers tons,” Alex said.

Klein and the teachers realized that kicking Alex out could not help him, despite the attractiveness of not having to deal with his behavior for a few days. So Klein and a teacher worked together to get Alex a role model volunteer. She contacted Volunteer Match, a mentor organization, and located a man who agreed to meet with Alex weekly for the remainder of the school year.

That first connection between Alex and his mentor was a hit. They then met each week to talk about life while building a rocket. His mentor served as Alex’s male representative for CIS’s Donuts with Dads event. Combined with regular meetings with Klein, Alex began to make personal changes. Teachers took note of measurable gains, including improvements in behavior and day-to-day attitude.

Alex continues to visit Klein’s office at Wilder Middle School every day but not because of bad behavior. They see each other daily to check in and say hello. “I don’t know where he’d be without the connection to CIS — probably not at Wilder,” Klein says.

Alex, now an 8th grader, sized up his transformation this way: “My grades have come back up, I have made some friends, and I think things are going good. My relationship with my mom has gotten a lot better. She tells me a lot that she is proud of me. One night she woke me up and said ‘I love you.’ This is a lot better life.”

Agency Coordination

Becky Gay, executive director of Communities In Schools of Ben Hill County, Ga., serves the county’s five public schools in a south Georgia school district with 3,365 students. CIS, through Gay and her enthusiastic board of directors, aims to overcome some of the associated ills of poverty, mainly family failure, low expectations, gang activity and high levels of distrust of the schools, particularly from within the Hispanic community.

Last year the school district teamed up with Communities In Schools to concentrate on 134 elementary school students considered to be most in danger of failing and falling far behind their peers. Through countless meetings with parents and by engaging other private and state-funded organizations in the area, including the county welfare and state labor departments, all but 14 students attained grade promotions.

Similarly, in Ben Hill’s lone middle school, 49 of the 51 most socially and academically vulnerable students gained promotion to the next grade. And at Ben Hill High School, 991 hours of services coordinated by CIS contributed directly to 74 of 78 students shown to be most in danger of retention or dropping out, enabling them to be promoted or achieve their high school diplomas.

Dawn Clements, the first-year principal of Ben Hill Middle School in 2014-15, reported that Kimberly Bryant, the CIS site coordinator, helped her staff reach their most at-risk youth and provide resources that the school did not have. Bryant built partnerships with school staff members and service providers, and she created positive, professional relationships with students.

Expanded Capacity

Schools should not attempt to overcome alone the noninstructional barriers and stressors facing large numbers of children from poorer families. By joining forces with community organizations with track records of success with the same or similar children, schools increase their capacity to reach their most vulnerable students.

This positions schools to focus on their strength — high-quality academics, leading to improved learning and increased opportunities for low-income students. Today, about 2,400 schools supported by CIS are contributing to positive outcomes for children beset by the ills associated with poverty. These schools, for the most part, have lower failure rates, higher promotion rates and better graduation rates compared to non-CIS schools with students similarly situated.

Dana T. Bedden, superintendent of the Richmond, Va., Public Schools, where 48 schools are affiliated with Communities In Schools, knows the partnership has paid off in the lives of the most vulnerable. “CIS is making sure that children and families have opportunities to get needed resources to remove barriers so they can have effective teaching and learning,” he said.