While the blog goes on summer vacation, we’ll spend the coming weeks sharing past blog posts about how City Connects helps students thrive.
This week’s roundup looks at the role City Connects plays in cities like Poughkeepsie where implementation is relatively new and in St. Paul, Minn., and Salem, Mass., where City Connects and its community partners have been in place for years.
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Strengthening the historic community at the St. Peter Claver School
October 5, 2023
Sarah Jackson is the City Connects Coordinator at the St. Peter Claver Catholic School in the Rondo neighborhood of St. Paul, Minn., which puts her in the stream of part of the city’s African American history.
In 1950, the local parish built St. Peter Claver to serve black families. Back then, Rondo was where most of the city’s black residents lived. And the school was run by a group of black nuns, the Oblate Sisters of Providence from Baltimore, Maryland.
“The Rondo neighborhood was a historically thriving black community,” Jackson says. “Then it was disrupted by the construction of Highway 94.” Construction on the new interstate was approved in 1956 and completed in the 1960s. The project closed businesses and forced hundreds of families to move out of Rondo. Across the country, highway construction had a similar effect on other black neighborhoods.
Today, 98 percent of the school’s 90 students are black and come from all over the city.
“It’s one of the few schools that kids can go to where they’re not the minority. It’s a place where students can be themselves and feel comfortable and thrive,” Jackson says. “It’s a big family, and the community that kids build here is pretty awesome.”
As all City Connects Coordinators do, Jackson is working with community partners who can meet her students’ needs and build on their strengths. This includes coping with the aftermath of pandemic and helping students get back to grade-level performance as well as getting through the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, which took place in nearby Minneapolis.
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Poughkeepsie is using a federal grant to expand student support
March 8, 2024
Thanks to a federal grant, the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., school district is expanding integrated student support and implementing City Connects in five of its elementary schools.
The Poughkeepsie City School District (PCSD) worked with City Connects and other partners to apply for the funding, a $2.5 million, five-year Full-Service Community Schools (FSCS) grant that’s being used to expand the district’s Community Schools Initiative.
“This funding will help expand on our school, home, and community approach to addressing the academic, social, emotional, and wellness needs of our students,” School Superintendent Eric Jay Rosser says.
“The framework for our Community Schools initiative is solid and it has been producing great outputs such as meaningful Saturday and summer student extended learning opportunities, annual parent and community engagement functions, and integrated student support, to name a few,” Rosser tells the Mid Hudson News. “What is needed to continuously improve our impact is strategic planning and action that is aligned to metrics that support the larger student outcomes we all strive for.”
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Connecting a Family Resource Center to the Salem community
April 12, 2024
Last year, when Pathways Family Resource Center opened its second space in Salem, Mass., some of the first visitors to arrive were City Connects Coordinators who wanted to see what the organization could offer Salem students.
“It was very exciting,” Christina Sakelakos says. She’s one of the City Connects Coordinators at Salem’s Collins Middle School. “The Family Resource Center offers parent support groups and classes. They connect parents to other community resources, and they provide on-site child care while parents attend meetings at the center.”
“We often partner with them when we are concerned about a student’s attendance or their behavior in school. Or if we’re noticing that a parent is struggling with getting a student to go to school.”
Pathways Family Resource Center offers support groups for fathers and grandparents as well as nutrition programs and support groups for Spanish-speaking families. The center also provides services to children who are being supervised by the Massachusetts Court System or who are at risk of being supervised.
Over time, The Family Resource Center’s work with City Connects has deepened, enabling City Connects to serve as a conduit between the Family Resource Center and local children and families.
