This year, as schools navigate what’s left of the pandemic, City Connects Coordinators are placing a special focus on health — one of City Connects’ four domains.
“Schools look at students’ academics and at their social-emotional behavior under the Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS)” Cynthia Scheller says. She’s the Director of Student Support Programs and Practice at the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, the home of City Connects. “But one of the things that doesn’t always get taken into consideration is students’ physical health.”
“Now, because of the pandemic, some of the families in our schools have had disruptions in routine medical visits, like yearly doctor’s visits and dental check-ups. Some kids are anxious about going to the doctor or dentist after all this time. And some parents need help reconnecting to and navigating the healthcare system.”
Scheller points to other health challenges, including the toll the pandemic took on physical activity, limiting kids’ access to sports and play. Nutrition was also compromised during the worst of the pandemic, when it was hard to get free school meals to all the kids who needed them. And now that federal relief funding for universal, free school meals has expired, nutrition will continue to be a challenge for states that have not continued to support this program.
To sharpen City Connects’ focus on health, we are providing coordinators with more tools. In November, coordinators attended a health panel discussion with panelists from the medical field, including physicians and a district nurse leader. It was a chance to discuss the needs that healthcare professionals are seeing and to talk about how coordinators can learn more about health services in their communities.
“We’re equipping coordinators to ask the right questions so they can help connect students to the services they need and that are available to their families within the community,” Scheller says.
“One thing we’re learning is that this work can’t be done by just one or two people, in isolation. It can’t just be the school nurse, or the school nurse and the coordinator. There has to be a team. There have to be conversations with teachers about whether children seem tired, and conversations with lunch aides about whether kids are eating, and conversations with families.”
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Maggie Longsdorf, the coordinator at Risen Christ Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minn., has built on the team approach by working with community partners who often deliver their services at school. Two in particular stand out among the many community partners Risen Christ works with.
“The first one is Helen Keller Intl. They are super awesome,” Longsdorf says. “And another really great service is Ready, Set, Smile.
“Helen Keller Intl comes to school and does vision screenings for all our students, which is very helpful because we only have a school nurse one day a week. So Helen Keller does the screenings, and then they come back another day, and an eye doctor does the refractory screening for kids who need glasses.”
Because this all takes place at school, parents don’t have to make appointments and transportation is not an issue.
“The kids get to pick out the frames, and they end up with a new pair of glasses.”
“And if a student breaks a pair of glasses — which just happened yesterday, a student broke her eyeglasses playing outside at recess — all I have to do is send an email, and they order a new pair of glasses and drop them off at school.”
Ready, Set, Smile has a similar approach. The organization provides dental cleanings at school for any child who signs up.
“The week before the cleanings, Ready, Set, Smile staff come to school and do dental education lessons in the classroom, so every student hears that lesson, and every student gets free toothbrushes and toothpaste. The lessons are presented in English and Spanish since we are a dual language school.”
“The kids don’t need to have insurance. They just sign up, and the registration is in several languages. Then Ready, Set, Smile comes for about a week twice a year, so the kids can see the dentist twice a year.”
For some parents, the free service sounds too good to be true, so Longsdorf reassures them.
“And one thing that’s great about Ready, Set, Smile is that they’re good at asking me when they can come to do table events at our school. So they come on conference days and back-to-school nights, so they can talk about their programs and share their expertise.”
To provide access to flu shots and vaccinations, Longsdorf welcomes St. Mary’s Health Clinics. The organization sets up clinics and serves students and their family members. This service is very useful for newly arrived families from other countries who need to catch up on vaccinations. The organization promotes its services at Risen Christ’s Fall Harvest fair, so families are having fun and learning about the vaccine clinic.
To increase physical activity, Risen Christ works with Inner City Tennis, a new community partner, and with Girls on the Run, a longtime partner of City Connects Schools.
Inner City Tennis came to a summer service fair that Longsdorf organized, and families signed up for their summer programs. Recently, the organization came to Risen Christ to run a tennis unit as part of the school’s physical education program.
This spring, Risen Christ will have three Girls on the Run teams, two third through fifth grade teams and a middle school team, as well as the teachers, staff, and parents who participate as coaches.
“I had a parent who was a coach tell me that she was frustrated about something, and that her daughter, who was in Girls on the Run, was telling the Mom how to change her self-talk to be more positive, because that’s what the daughter had been talking about in Girls on the Run,” Longsdorf says, describing the full reach of the program’s focus on health and wellbeing.
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City Connects’ focus on health is prompting questions about what “health” means now, during the current phase of the pandemic. City Connects staff are looking even more closely at health-related data that we collect to understand current needs.
“The more we know about health and what it means to be a healthy child and a healthy adolescent,” Scheller says, “the more robust City Connects will be in schools.”
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