GCSU Beyond: Communities in Schools empowers local students to stay in school

Image
  • Communities in Schools Site Coordinator for Oak Hill Middle School, Amber Palmer, poses with her students. CONTRIBUTED
    Communities in Schools Site Coordinator for Oak Hill Middle School, Amber Palmer, poses with her students. CONTRIBUTED
Body

The School of Continuing and Professional studies focuses on the educational and professional growth of youth and adults in the Baldwin County community. The final unit of the school, Communities in Schools Milledgeville/Baldwin County, compliments this overall goal by helping surround students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and work to achieve in life.

Communities in Schools is a national organization that began its impact in Baldwin County about 13 years ago. A group of citizens, leaders and Georgia College representatives came together to discuss the best way that Georgia College could support the school system, build closer relationships and be able to share resources to strengthen the public school system.

“Georgia College was willing to help to house the main office on campus as well as provide some of the funding for the director and office staff. So, that really helped Communities in Schools to have a strong beginning,” said Janet Cavin, executive director of

Communities in Schools. “So we’ve been inside the Baldwin County Schools for about 13 years and have made a dramatic impact on that graduation rate as well as helping kids progress through each grade.”

Communities in Schools works with the public school system to provide tutors and mentors that help students in need. Each school has its own on-site coordinator that works directly with the school to meet the needs of individual students as young as kindergartners all the way through twelfth grade. The program is needs-based, however, so the school provides what students are eligible for the services.

“Communities in Schools provides tutoring services, food, clothing, mentorship programs, reading workshops and so much more,” said Cavin. “In a typical school year we impact about 60 to 70 kids per school.”

One of the biggest programs in Communities with Schools is the Wrap Around Baldwin Program. Wrap Around Baldwin is funded by the Reverend Baldwin grant, a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Education, which was awarded to Georgia College in 2018 as a five year $2.3 million grant. Its funding contributed to hiring full time site coordinators that follow the Communities in Schools model in both primary schools, to support the kindergarten through second grade population.

“They provide tutoring services and mentorship to the students inside the schools during the school day,” said Courtney Bentley, manager of the Wrap Around Baldwin Program. “Tutoring usually focuses on literacy or math and we also provide students with a book to take home to build their home library as part of the program. They get those twice a month.”

In addition to the typical tutoring and mentorship mentioned above, Wrap Around Baldwin partners with the Baldwin School District to support six classrooms for the Summer Adventures Program. During the partnership with the Summer Adventures Program, students who receive their services during the school year will be provided tutoring and academic help throughout the month of June. This is done to ensure the students are ready for the next grade they are going into. Typically, the summer program is more activity based so that it is more like a summer camp rather than a school setting. In addition, students are given the opportunity to grow their summer library by receiving a book every single week of June, so four books in total for the summer.

“Another key part of Communities in Schools was opening the Bee Well Clinic in October of 2019. This is a health based clinic that works to alleviate the barriers that parents may have to getting their child quality healthcare during the school day and helps to keep students at school rather than having them be taken out for the day to go to the doctor,” said Bentley.

The Bee Well Clinic is housed in the Early Learning Center in Baldwin County. The building was originally built with the intention of having a clinic so when the Bee Well Clinic was officially opened, Communities in Schools was given access to a registration area, three exam rooms and fully functional labs. The clinic sees Baldwin County students, their immediate household family members and Baldwin County staff.

“This allows another resource in the community for the students to come to get the medication and the diagnosis that they need so that they can get back into school, which was a big push from our school superintendent, Dr. Price,” said Bentley.

When the clinic was being founded, a barrier that the group hit was figuring out how to transport students and sanitize. To solve this problem, Communities in Schools created the Reaching Rural Communities Program. Due to the impact of COVID on the newly built clinic, the new program purchased telehealth equipment to alleviate this problem. With this equipment, the school nurse will host a call and will determine if the child needs to see a provider. If they are confirmed to need a provider, parents are given a chance to join the call and talk in real time with both their child and the nurse.

“This state of the art equipment allows the provider to be essentially right there with a student just as they would if the student was physically in their office,” said Andie Herrington, manager of the Reaching Rural Communities Program. “The equipment allows the provider to see things like inside of the child’s ear or use a stethoscope that will not only allow the provider to hear what is going on but also to see on a monitor what’s really going on like a EKG would. Plus, there’s additional equipment that we can bring in to make it to where we can have specialty care. So, it’s more than just a simple call.”

A new part of the clinic will be added this year to include hired medical assistants that will assist the school nurses. Medical assistants will be on call to go to whatever school needs a telehealth visit, and will then go ahead and implement that visit. In addition, the clinic will advocate for mental health by having a hired mental health care provider. The mental health care provider is a NP psychiatrist that will be able to provide behavioral meds to the students and offer services for students to see her through the telehealth equipment at home or at school. Including all of these services, ensures the Bee Well Clinic provides student ample healthcare despite lack of transportation or ability to pay for it.

“We partner with Community Health Care Systems to provide for the clinic. They’re a federally qualified health care center so they also provide services that can help you get signed up for Medicaid or Medicare. They also accept most private insurances and even if you’re uninsured or underinsured, they do have an income based sliding scale fee that parents can just fill out to determine how much you pay for each visit from there on out,” said Bentley. “So it’s very well rounded in what we offer.”

Beyond the Bee Well Clinic, Communities in Schools puts a high level of care in mentorship programs for middle school and high school students. Through their partnership with Central Georgia Technical College (CGTC), they provide mentorship and guidance to students who may need other options from a high school diploma. They guide students through the process of getting a GED or special diploma. In addition, they work with CGTC to provide students options and guidance on what comes after the graduation path they take.

“We give them options to go into either the diploma program or a GED program over there with a seamless transition with that. Then after that, we are able to go on and give them the support to look at the certificate programs or the great programs that are offered over there for what they may want to do after they graduate,” said Bentley.

The unit of Communities in Schools works endlessly to help lower the barriers that may cause a student to drop out of school or lose passion for school. They provide academic and health care support for students and their family along with providing schools with necessities to support their students such as food, books, hygiene items and more. To learn more about this unit and what it offers for Baldwin County, visit https://cismilledgeville. org/about/.