Shelby County Deserves More Community Schools; Here’s How We’re Making That Happen
Thanks to a successful collaboration throughout 2022, North Shelby County communities are about to see an additional $15 million investment from the U.S. Department of Education, plus $15M in matching and in-kind dollars. Seeding Success served as the lead applicant for federal funding from the Full-Service Community Schools (FSCS) Program, bringing together the following lead partners:
Memphis-Shelby County Schools
Millington Municipal Schools
Frayser Community Schools
Memphis Business Academy
Communities In Schools Memphis
University of Memphis
The Shelby County Community Schools Partnership, made up of the partners listed above, was the first collaboration in which all of these local education agencies (LEAs) combined their efforts toward a single strategy. The result was a perfect score on the FSCS’s applicant rubric. But what does that mean in terms of day-to-day difference for the North Memphis/Shelby County corridor?
The Model
Jamilica Burke, Chief Strategy and Impact Officer for Seeding Success, explains that once this model is implemented, “what you would really see is your school as the hub of services and supports for [your] community.” The community schools model takes into account all of the outside social and economic factors that impact a student’s academic achievement; then, by partnering with local organizations and nonprofits, schools bring practical solutions into one place for easy access. Rather than expecting schools to help their students achieve despite their social and economic circumstances, this model seeks to transform those circumstances, enabling educators to focus on learning.
“It wouldn't be just the educational piece of having great teachers and great staff to support kids,” Burke adds, “but you'll also have other providers in the building. So you're going to see nurses. You're going to see improvements in mental and physical health. You're going to potentially see–if it's an elementary school–robust pre-K or early childhood programming. You're going to see additional in-school and out-of-school supports like tutoring and different training development.”
DeVonté Payton, S2’s Deputy Director of Strategy & Impact, was originally involved with the application from the M-SCS side as the Community Schools Manager. He says each school included in the grant will receive a full-time Pipeline Coordinator Specialist. This specialist will identify the barriers that students face and organize corresponding resources accordingly. For example, if healthcare access is identified as a problem at one school, this specialist will make the connections with healthcare providers and volunteers necessary to fulfill support plans for both the school and individual students.
Because every community and every school has different needs, the model will show up differently in each case of application. “One school may have a particular focus on arts and culture because that's where they've identified needs,” Payton says, “or another school may have a focus on mental health and social services. So it depends on what the needs are of that school and that community. But ideally what we want to do is be able to have pieces of all of that spread throughout the schools because we know those things are needed.”
Schools with common needs may overlap in terms of service partners, but some may not overlap at all because the needs identified may not be the same. This tailoring ensures that, instead of external forces deciding what support communities should get, students and their families will be empowered to make those decisions together with their neighborhood schools.
Reggie Davis, former director of Beyond the Classroom for Seeding Success and founder of Uplift Coaching & Consulting, was instrumental in convening the involved LEAs for this application. He envisions the effective implementation of the community schools model improving the student experience through multiple pathways: “Students consistently [attend] school, students and families are actively involved in students’ education and growth, increased engagement between schools, families, and community members; students are healthier (physically, socially and emotionally); higher success rate for students; students live and learn in safe, supportive, stable environments; and [their] communities become a more desirable place to live.”
Now, with a $30M total investment from the Department of Education and matched funding, this vision has the chance to become reality; however, getting this collaboration underway was a big challenge.
The Purpose of a Backbone Partner
Though Seeding Success began to connect with partners for this particular grant in January 2022, the process has actually been in the works for “a couple of years”, according to Davis. He, Burke, and Payton trace the project’s beginnings to winning teamwork between Seeding Success, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, Communities In Schools Memphis, and Whole Child Strategies on the Together For Students grant in 2018. Burke describes Together For Students as a “planning grant” which did not have much funding for implementation. The idea to pursue the FSCS grant brought Millington Municipal Schools, Memphis Business Academy, and Frayser Community Schools into the fold, and has secured the money needed to scale up.
“If we kind of focus on one area of Memphis,” Burke says, “which now is that North [Shelby County] corridor, when you think about where all those schools are located–it gives us an opportunity to do a test of change in terms of how do you pilot, build out the infrastructure, bring the right core partners together, [and] create the right pipeline of services to support kids, and families, and the schools that are now hubs for these different communities that make up that [North Shelby County] area?”
“...when we do decide to work together and we say that ‘All of our kids are all of our kids,’ this will be the impact that we can have on our community.”
As the lead applicant, Seeding Success acted as a “neutral force” (Burke’s phase) and the “connective tissue” (Davis’s phrase) between the LEAs, managing work groups and facilitating conversations about which community-based organizations would be best to support each school. Because the application opened in July, it was a busy time for many of the partners involved. The Strategy & Impact team at Seeding Success collected the documents necessary piece by piece and was able to keep all of this information organized and cohesive As the work moves forward, Seeding Success will be responsible for making sure partners have the connections, training, data, and information they need to carry out the plan.
“Through our research of former awardees of the FSCS grant, we learned that many successful applications were those with a backbone organization as the lead partner,” Davis says. “More specifically for the Shelby County application, we thought S2 had enough credibility and social capital to serve as the lead partner, and all the LEAs agreed.”
Looking Forward
The goal of this project for the next five years is to serve about 3,400 families each year from Northaven Elementary School, Westside Middle School, Memphis Business Academy, Millington Primary School, Millington Intermediate School, and Millington High School.
“I'm excited about the grant because it's going to hopefully serve [as] proofpoint that we don't have to work in silos, even in the education space,” Payton says. “Districts and different educational entities don't have to work in silos. And that, when we do decide to work together and we say that ‘All of our kids are all of our kids,’ this will be the impact that we can have on our community.”