Community Partnerships VISTA Update

Posted by on January 30, 2014

By Eden Kainer

The VISTAs are almost halfway through their year of service, and their work is beginning to bear fruit in the development of both new and existing partnerships at their sites. Our host principals have told PHENND that the VISTAs’ work has been invaluable, especially in light of this year’s austere budget. The work the VISTAs are doing simply could not be done without them and the VISTAs’ supervisors have repeatedly expressed their praises to PHENND.  In our Mid-Winter Reflection Retreat, we all discovered that while none of us are doing exactly what we thought we would be doing, the work is challenging and important.

Here are just some of the highlights:

Kensington Health Sciences VISTA Margaret McLaughlin has convened several community partner meetings at her school. The partners discuss collaborating on future school-wide projects. As a group they planned for College Week, a Career Fair, the annual Pep Rally and a whole month of community service events for the school!  Each partner contributes portions of the programming according to their expertise. Margaret also established and continues to facilitate partnership with St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. This has created the opportunity for 15 KHSA students to participate in a program that involves a weekly paid internship in various departments at the hospital and assistance with the college application process. Next year, 40 students will be able to participate. The program has a track record of having 94% of alumni go to a post-secondary educational institution.

In December, Sayre High School VISTA Abby Schottenfels took up the responsibility for leading “Team Sayre” meetings. In the first meeting that she led, many partners were at the table and all regarded it as an excellent opportunity to share best practices and continue discussions about serving students. In addition to developing community service placements for her seniors, Abby was able to help expand the Silverman Fellowship program run through Penn. Silverman Fellows are Penn students who teach a bioethics curriculum using Jodi Picoult’s novel, My Sister’s Keeper, and also teach SAT preparation.  As a member of the hiring committee, Abby helped hire six more Fellows who will be able to teach these curricula to three additional classes. The eventual goal of this program is to facilitate the possibility for Sayre students to audit Penn courses in the sociology and anthropology departments.

Caitlin Roman at Penn Treaty School has also been holding successful community partner meetings and helping facilitate collaboration between partners. She has been building community engagement through the use of Twitter, a monthly email newsletter, and organizing special events.  In October, she organized a book fair including recruiting volunteers, which raised more than $1800 dollars in sales and upwards of $700 in “Scholastic Dollars” to be spent on additional books for Penn Treaty.  About $700 of it was spent on books that were then donated to the school. In January, she helped students and teachers organize a “PhilaSoup” (http://philasoup.org/) fundraiser in which students presented proposals for which they needed funding to an audience of staff, families and other community members who enjoyed a potluck soup luncheon. The proceeds of this event, of which there was over $2000, helped fund four different student group projects.

Julia Boyer helped put together a large college fair at her school, Kensington Creative and Performing Arts High School, its first ever. Over forty colleges, universities,  gap-year programs, student assistance programs, and nonprofits attended, with more than 800 students from the Kensington Multiplex, i.e., Kensington Creative and Performing Arts, Health Sciences, Business, Urban High Schools, made their way through the gymnasium. There were three on-the-spot acceptances (one student was even offered a full ride), a great many raffle winners and a lot of excitement. KCAPA looks forward to making the college fair bigger and better next year! Aside from planning the college fair and recruiting for a Thursday career speaker series for the seniors, Julia has written a press release that prompted an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Here is a link to the article: At Phila High School A Daily Struggle with Budget Cuts

Malarie Grace, VISTA at W.D. Kelley, helped organize a very special “It Takes a Village” luncheon in which over 30 different community partners were represented. She made a presentation to the partners about the school’s needs in literacy, STEM and extra-curricular enrichment. Partners, both regular and new, enjoyed meeting each other, discovering overlapping interests and work-shopping ideas together. Malarie has been collaborating with Don McKinney from the Math and Science Coalition to discuss STEM needs at Kelley. She has drafted an excellent STEM needs assessment to administer to the teachers to help shape Kelley’s requests from partners. Malarie has also been facilitating meetings about an exciting initiative in conjunction with the Community Design Collaborative and the Philadelphia Water Department. This project seeks to beautify the grounds of Kelley, while also building a storm water management facility and introduce related curriculum to the students.

Dedra Totin, who serves both at the Office of Strategic Partnerships at the School District and the Greater Philadelphia Corporate Council at the United Way, completed a feasibility study detailing the capacity in which the SDP can accept volunteers. Dedra also helped Juanita Romu from the Office of Early Childhood at the SDP recruit volunteers for the FAST (Families and Schools Together) program by connecting her with colleagues from the United Way and other organizations.

Schinae Peterson, the School Advisory Council Liaison VISTA at the School District Office of Charter Schools, has created individual needs assessments and action plans for each of the 20 Renaissance Charter School Advisory Councils that she serves. Over the past month, with the action plans in place, she has been able to create a more transparent and cohesive culture for the SACs. She has provided the rubric to the councils to be designated successful by the School District as well as a compilation of “SAC Facts” for clarification. Since Schinae’s start, the SACs have gone from 17% “success” last school year, to 80% “success” this school year. Of that 80%, 75% are on track to completing the SAC Semi-Annual Report for the 2013-2014 school year, up from 20%,

And last, but certainly not least, Devon Hawkins-Anderson, who also serves at the Office of Strategic Partnerships, coordinated with PHENND and the Office of Strategic Partnerships, to organize the second K-16 University Partners meeting of the year at the School District in which university partners, teachers and School District personnel met to discuss model programs for developing early literacy through community engagement practices. Devon’s ongoing work is building capacity for developing a partnerships database for the School District. He reviewed the structure and functionality of an existing partnerships database and researched how it could be developed to better meet needs of both the School District and partners. Furthermore, with Stacy Holland, he has created a data map of the elements that the OSP would like to include in a revamped partnerships database. He has consulted with several information technology professionals about zero and low cost options for building a comprehensive partnerships database that inventories service providers implementing programs and services in District schools by program type and populations served.