Education – City Connects Blog

The Weekly Connect 3/27/23

Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!

Here are some of the things we’ve been reading about this week:

Less sleep during the pandemic linked to students’ poor mental health and to more difficulty with schoolwork.

States are spending federal Covid relief funds on accelerated and extended learning time, such as tutoring and after-school programming.

Even in the shadow of debates about book banning and LGBTQ rights, schools can do more to promote positive engagements with families.

To read more, click on the following links.

Expanding Catie’s Closet in Springfield

City Connects Coordinators always ask the same important questions: What do students need? How can Coordinators help? How can community partners help?

Asking these questions at the Indian Orchard Elementary School in Springfield, Mass., led to a productive partnership.

“We’ve collected clothing donations on our own, and we still do,” Shandria McCoy says. McCoy and Alaina Lyman are Indian Orchard’s City Connects Coordinators. “But last year our principal asked me about bringing Catie’s Closet to our school.”

It’s a great match. Catie’s Closet is a nonprofit organization that provides students with donated clothes by setting up spaces in schools where students can go to get these clothes. And students at Indian Orchard sometimes need clothes, especially since they wear school uniforms – khaki or navy blue pants and blue or white shirts. Springfield Public Schools started requiring school uniforms in 2008 to help students stay focused on schoolwork.

But for some families, affording clothes can be a challenge.

The Weekly Connect 3/20/23

Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!

Here are some of the things we’ve been reading about this week:

Despite national efforts, tutoring only reaches a fraction of students.

Rural areas lag in funding to help homeless students.

Rhode Island uses federal Covid aid to help students who are English learners.

To read more, click on the following links.

Teaming up to connect students to sports

The pandemic didn’t just shut down schools, it also shut down team sports.

Now, Joy Richmond-Smith and Brad Maloon, two City Connects Coordinators in Salem, Mass., are working together to bring sports back to students.

“Last year, I connected several kids to the Jr. Celtics program,” Richmond-Smith, the coordinator at the Saltonstall School says. “They were limited English speakers, and they had never had the chance to play on an organized team, and they really wanted to.”

The Jr. Celtics Academy is a basketball program for middle school students run by the YMCA in Marblehead and the Boston Celtics.

“Some of the kids have never been to Marblehead,” a wealthy town next door to Salem, “and they had never been to that Y.”

The Weekly Connect 3/13/23

Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!

Here are some of the things we’ve been reading about this week:

Black and Latino children often don’t receive Early Intervention services.

Because of different federal definitions of homelessness, many kids are falling through the cracks.

Even as the pandemic wanes, chronic absenteeism remains a problem.

To read more, click on the following links.

From the archives: Our community partners

City Connects Coordinators and our community partners work together to create wonderful opportunities for students. Here’s a roundup of past blog posts about their work.

* * * *

Dayton Flight: a community partnership that connects students to African-American men
City Connects Blog, October 27, 2022

Keisha Anderson is working to engage more African-American men and bring them into her school.

“I want to open school spaces to dads, uncles, male mentors, pastors, barbers, whoever has a positive male influence in students’ lives. I am opening doors so they can come into our building.”

Anderson is the City Connects Coordinator at Belle Haven Elementary School in Dayton, Ohio, and although she’s excited about having mothers, aunts, and female mentors in her school, she says that these women already show up. Teachers are already comfortable reaching out to mothers. And there are already a number of programs that focus on girls.

To be inclusive and focus on boys, Anderson reached out and formed a community partnership with Dayton Flight, a professional basketball team.

The Weekly Connect 3/6/23

Here’s the new edition of The Weekly Connect. Check it out and sign up to have it delivered to your inbox!

Here are some of the things we’ve been reading about this week:

Because of the pandemic and other factors, more collaboration on student mental health is needed.

Policymakers should monitor the quality of student support services as schools rush to implement these programs.

The job turnover rate for teachers and principals exceeds pre-pandemic levels.

To read more, click on the following links.

A lesson for policymakers: when it comes to student support, quality matters

A new article published by the Washington, D.C., think tank Brookings, highlights the dynamic market for “student support” services that’s emerging as public funding increases to help schools address students’ social service and mental health needs, many of which were aggravated by the pandemic.

“School districts are now inundated with ‘student support’ service providers but have little guidance on how to select or manage them,” Joan Wassser Gish and Haibin Jiang write in the article, “Amid rush of school support vendors, policymakers must monitor quality.”

Wasser Gish is the Director of Systemic Impact, at the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, the home of City Connects, and Jiang is one of the center’s Research Associates.

“With the field’s increasing understanding of what effective student support strategies look like, policymakers should establish quality benchmarks to help districts ensure a minimum, evidence-based standard of care for students,” Wasser Gish and Jiang explain.

“Just as the Food and Drug Administration strives to ensure that the health benefits of a new treatment outweigh potential harms, policymakers in education can use evidence to minimize potential risks and maximize the benefits of student support interventions.”

Among the risks that local, state, and federal policymakers can minimize are:

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