When City Connects began in the Boston Public Schools 25 years ago, no one knew with certainty what outcomes would follow from tailoring student support to the strengths and needs of each child. Once evaluations made clear that students who received City Connects significantly outperformed peers academically, City Connects began to scale. First, to other schools in Massachusetts, and then to many states and countries.
To scale, City Connects faced challenges common to many successful interventions: How could it support local staff in implementing the City Connects model with fidelity? And could positive student outcomes be replicated?
In its initial phases, City Connects developed a software system to help support local Coordinators to implement the practice, created professional development resources that could be accessed online, and developed a detailed fidelity of implementation monitoring system that would inform how City Connects Coaches and Program Managers could best support each Coordinator within each unique school setting.
By building and refining these elements and learning that positive impacts on students are, in fact, replicated in new sites, City Connects set the stage for more rapid, high-quality implementation with visionary, committed partners in Indiana and Ireland.
Over the last five years, City Connects has developed Technical Assistance Centers in partnership with Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, Ireland, and Marian University in Indianapolis, Indiana. Each Technical Assistance Center supports local Program Managers and Coordinators to implement the City Connects practice in schools while relying on City Connects’ professional development, fidelity monitoring, software, and ongoing coaching and support to ensure that students are receiving the high-quality, evidence-based student support that City Connects provides.
City Connects and its partners are dedicated to ensuring that students benefit and are accountable for student outcomes.
“Our partners understand the importance of evidence in the practice,” City Connects Executive Director Mary Walsh said. “We can’t simply invent solutions and strategies to promote the development of children: we have to have evidence that they work. That’s critical. We implement in a way that allows us to get evidence so that we can see whether we are actually making a difference for students. Schools value and appreciate that.”
City Connects expands to Indiana
City Connects’ presence in Indiana was bolstered by working with both the Indianapolis Mayor’s office and with Marian University. Through this collaboration, City Connects scaled from three schools in 2018 to 61 schools in communities across Indiana by 2024. These communities include Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Gary, Shakamak, Muncie, South Bend, and Warren.
“Through City Connects, we’re talking about addressing the needs and strengths of every single student,” City Connects Midwest Director Jillian Lain said. “To date, more than 26,000 Indiana students have been served through City Connects. We’re hoping to create long-term impacts in the Indianapolis and Indiana communities, which is aligned with the mission of Marian University and continues to propel that mission forward in a new way.”
Because Indiana is a strong school choice state, City Connects has adapted to work with public, private, charter, and private schools. Indiana also provided an opportunity to learn about how City Connects – despite its name – can work in a rural school district.
While this growth provided unique challenges, having a committed local partner in Marian helped.
“Our partners are willing to work through solutions to scaling challenges,” Walsh said. “They’re pioneers in many ways, and they have that spirit. Because we are working in schools with geographic diversity as well as several different types of schools, we are often confronted with questions we don’t anticipate. Our partners are always very willing and able to co-strategize and co-think about solutions. They work with us to come to a new resolution.”
National Centre for City Connects Ireland
Scaling in Ireland began with a postdoctoral researcher who worked at the Boston College Center for Thriving Children returning home to Ireland to talk about City Connects and its impacts.
After further investigation, a delegation visited Boston to explore City Connects. Led by Mary Immaculate College’s former president Eugene Wall, the delegation included representatives from the Irish Department of Education, the Irish Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, and Mary Immaculate College faculty and staff. This delegation was impressed by what they saw. A year later, in 2020, a pilot program was launched in 10 schools in Dublin, Ireland’s North East Inner City (NEIC).
Dublin’s NEIC is home to families that disproportionately experience disadvantage and marginalization, including generational poverty. To address this, the Irish government launched the NEIC Initiative, which “works towards making the North East Inner City a safe, attractive and vibrant living and working environment for the community and its families, with opportunities for all to lead full lives,” according to its website. City Connects was piloted to see if it could help the NEIC achieve its aims.
The City Connects pilot was a success, so much so that the Irish government decided to create a national center to help widely implement City Connects in schools serving children in poverty. In 2024, the National Centre for City Connects Ireland (NCCCI) was launched in partnership with the Irish Department of Education, Mary Immaculate College, and Boston College. The NCCCI will support the expansion of City Connects in Ireland, including to secondary schools this coming fall.
“NCCCI’s launch is the culmination of five years of piloting, testing, and refining the City Connects model,” said Walsh. “The Irish educational community widely acknowledges the program’s success in providing every student a tailored plan of services and enrichments to address the student’s needs, strengths, and interests. We are delighted to share this approach to ‘whole child education,’ and to bring it to bear on poverty’s impact within Ireland’s high performing school system.”
At the launch event, Irish Education Minister Norma Foley spoke about the importance of the City Connects program.
“The North East Inner City’s City Connects pilot project organizes student support and leverages existing school and community-based resources in order to improve students’ academic and social-emotional outcomes, and is one of its big success stories. City Connects does not target specific students or groups of students within a school. City Connects is for all students.”
City Connects is for all students
All students deserve to be seen, known, and supported by family, school, and community. By expanding City Connects into new communities and countries, more and more students receive the support they need to learn and thrive. Scaling, in all its complexity, simply allows City Connects and its partners to make this possible for more students.
