SSI Community Partnerships grantees leverage resources to support students in a variety of ways. Learn how past and current grantees accomplish this in their communities.
In 2019, the collaborative efforts of the Houston Independent School District (HISD), Texas Senator Borris Miles, and the Texas Education Agency led to the creation of the Miles Ahead Scholars (MAS) Program. This groundbreaking initiative is dedicated to improving educational outcomes for Black and Latino boys currently enrolled in 3 select high schools within HISD - Wheatley, Worthing, and Kashmere.
The primary goal of the MAS Program is to address the educational disparities faced by Black and Latino boys. By focusing on three key areas - academic achievement, college and academic advising, and exposure opportunities - we aim to empower our scholars to become leaders and fulfill their aspirations of attending and graduating from highly selective colleges and universities. Through our program, we are committed to transforming the lives of our scholars and creating a brighter future for our communities.
In Pleasant Grove, a neighborhood of Dallas ISD, we seek to empower students and families with economic and educational opportunities, and social and academic development through intentional and connected partnerships. We strive to strengthen our community by providing families with effective schools and access to high-quality coordinated programs for social services, health, and academic support. The SSI Community Partnership Grant has been vital in the development of a resource center to achieve our mission.
The resource center is a hub for our community's social services and academic programs. Our Pleasant Grove Family Resource Center nourishes partnerships with different non-profit mentoring organizations including LACROSSE for Dallas, Texas Soccer Revels, VOX INVICTUS Basketball Program, and Boy Scouts of Texas. Our partnering organizations work hand-in-hand with our schools to offer free afterschool programs. One significant partnership is with Boy Scouts of America who work to build our scholars' social-emotional skills and leadership capacity throughout our vertical team. Our high school Boy Scout Troop mentors our middle school students, who in turn mentor the elementary school students.
In addition, we have designed academic family events focused on presenting our curriculum in a fun way to our families. Our yearly Pumpkin Math & Science Night was held on Halloween, which served over 1,000 participants. The elementary schools harvested the pumpkins for the event and a middle school hosted and organized the event. The middle school and high school teachers designed and ran the academic stations that were open to all schools in our area. Other community academic events include our Young Men's Leadership Academy (YMLA) Lego Masters Reading Night, "Me Enloteces Loteria Night," FAM JAM, and many others.
The aligning of our feeder pattern partnerships and academic events among the grant-partnering schools has also increased our parent involvement. This increase has translated to gains in our state academic scores. This all possible because of the support of the SSI Community and Partnership Grant, which allows us to purchase all the required equipment needed to support our school community engagement and programs. Upcoming in our next cycle are the development and implementation of mental health support through the activation of sensory rooms.
Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD (PSJA ISD) is a school district in southern Texas serving nearly 30,000 students. In 2018, PSJA ISD received the SSI Community Partnerships Grant (CPG) through the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to support the development and expansion of partnerships between the district and community organizations.
PSJA ISD identified and worked to achieve the following goals under the grant by 2022:
- Increase the percent of 3 and 4-year-old children accessing high-quality Pre-K programs by 10%
- Increase the capacity of new or existing high-quality programs made available by 10%
- Ensure that 75% of children are kinder-ready.
We set out to increase the quality of services being delivered to children by participating in Texas Rising Stars, providing district educators, community partners, and leaders with training and professional development, and using developmentally appropriate practices to support learning outcomes. We evaluated our outreach and engagement methods to identify and implement best practices related to family engagement and provide resources to support learning across environments. We also created an advisory committee to support developing strong community partnerships. We partner with governmental agencies, a higher education institution, community childcare, faith-based organizations, and others to provide wraparound and holistic services for children and families.
PSJA ISD has become a state leader in creating an early childhood one stop hub. The PSJA ISD values various high-quality school readiness initiatives and a brand of excellence within our community and childcare partners. Due to these remarkable accolades, leaders from across the state of Texas are drawn each year to tour the PSJA ISD Early Childhood Initiatives.