Thanks to Assistant Superintendent of Student Services Sara Stetson and a $345,000 grant from Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital–Needham, City Connects has been implemented in Dedham’s early childhood center and in its four elementary schools.
Stetson started working in Dedham in 2022-23, and she was working with Dedham’s student services team to achieve the goal of increasing students’ sense of belonging in ways that could be measured by mental health screening tools like the Metro-West Adolescent Health Survey.
“We reviewed district data and developed a strategic plan with specific action steps,” Stetson says. And along the way, Stetson discovered City Connects.
“Our action steps included many elements that are embodied by the City Connects model. For example, we had an action step for acuity mapping in each school, which is similar to the City Connects’ protocol for interviewing teachers to conduct whole class reviews.”
The City Connects model also meets other needs, helping to achieve Dedham’s goals of being proactive, improving family engagement, increasing cultural competence, and creating a global system that would provide a structure for the district’s existing Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS).
“We had a lot of interventions but there was no organization structure,” Stetson says. “This raised concerns about efficiency and the management of resources, but more importantly it raised concerns about equity.”
“City Connects encapsulated everything we were trying to do in one model.”
Dedham is providing City Connects with more insight about how the model can be used in an urban ring community.
Dedham has a strong economic profile. In 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Dedham’s median household income was $118,877, which is higher than the state average of $96,505.
However, economic well-being is not spread evenly across the city. There are also health disparities. And just over 40% of students are in the state’s “High Needs” category, meaning they live in low income households or have disabilities or are English language learners.
Another challenge, Stetson says, is that the city’s population of Multilingual Learners has doubled. And Stetson wants to avoid the problem of “overidentification,” which can happen when students who would benefit from support are referred to special education programs because there is nowhere else to send students.
City Connects addresses this problem by identifying each students’ strengths and needs and ensuring that students are referred to a range of customized services and opportunities. Recruiting community partners who can provide these services and opportunities is a key part of our model.
Stetson says City Connects helps Dedham track the impact of the student support that it provides at the individual level, the school level, and over time — all to help create a stronger school culture that boosts students’ success.
One advantage Dedham has in this work, Stetson says, is a “talented and well staffed mental health team, led by clinician Dr. Ashley Dube. Because we have existing staff in all schools, we are able to incorporate the City Connects model.”
Another advantage is Dedham’s strong commitment to students.
“Dedham’s leadership is just wonderful,” Cynthia Scheller says. She is City Connects’ Director of Student Support Programs and Practice. “They want to ensure that their students have what they need to succeed and thrive academically. And to do that, they’re looking at the whole child, and they are excited about supporting all students and about supporting students with the most intensive needs.”
And a third advantage is local knowledge. As it turns out, Dedham’s City Connects coach is Jillian O’Neil, who grew up in Dedham. O’Neil is City Connect’s Senior Manager of Coaching and School Partnerships. She is also a former principal and the City Connects coach in Salem and Springfield.
One early sign of success in Dedham, Scheller says, is that school leaders are already asking powerful questions.
“We met with principals, and they didn’t just want to hear about City Connects’ overall success. They wanted to know how, specifically, on a daily basis, City Connects would help them make a difference for their students.”
