Name: Communities In Schools
Partner for: 19 years
Partner with: Success By 6, Target Graduation
Our relationship:
Funding programs that serve children and parents
UWATX funding supports Communities In Schools (CIS) in their ASPIRE program – a dual generation program where low-income parents take ESL or GED classes while their children enjoy quality child care, allowing all family members to get support at the same time. UWATX also funds CIS parent education programs that provide evidence-based courses that improve school readiness and also decrease child abuse and neglect.
Additionally, CIS provides services to three high-need middle schools – providing mentoring, tutoring, case management and behavioral health services.
Creating solutions that work
Working collaboratively, UWATX, CIS and Child Inc. brought Early Head Start services to teen parents at two local high schools. These services allowed vulnerable children to receive engaging care shown to help brain development while their parents focused on their own education.
CIS is also providing valuable insight to our Target Graduation’s Out-of-School Time (OST) Agenda – a detailed plan for improving the OST system in Central Texas.
Meeting the challenge of quality programs
When UWATX set the bar high in 2006 by requiring funded program to adopt evidence-based models, CIS enthusiastically embraced the new standards and expanded quality programming as a result.
What we’ve accomplished:
Through this partnership, CIS and UWATX have brought quality, innovative solutions for the challenges of Greater Austin.
How Communities In Schools makes Austin greater:
“Because CIS programs operate in or near public schools, CIS provides a solid link from the early childhood world into the public school system.
More than that, CIS not only delivers great services to the families in our community that need it most, but they are always willing to share their space and time.”
– Sue Carpenter, Senior Director, Success By 6
From Communities In Schools:
“ CIS served teen parents at Reagan High from 1990-2003, providing intensive support to simultaneously keep the mom in school, so she could graduate and lead a productive life, and ensure that the baby thrived, developed and entered Kindergarten ready to learn. Back then, cuts to state funding hit AISD which was forced to cut CIS’s funding at Reagan. Funding from UWATX will support CIS to once again serve young people at risk of dropping out of school, and their babies who are at risk of not being nurtured. This is an opportunity for an incredible, long-lasting investment in St Johns, with ripples through generations of families.”