With the first month of the school year in the books, work is continuing to transform Henry F. Moss Middle and Jennings Creek Elementary Schools to better serve their students and communities. The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence announced last October that both Moss and Jennings Creek will join the Kentucky Community Schools Initiative.
KCSI seeks to improve schools such as Moss and JCES by turning them into “community schools.” That same month, WCPS was awarded $1.5 million to implement changes at the two schools to expand partnerships with the community and businesses over the next five years.
Forty schools in 20 districts across Kentucky have been selected by the committee, with each one receiving $65,000 per year to implement the “community school” model. A slew of programs and improvements are on the way to both schools this year. Ben Kirtley, Family Resource and Youth Services Centers coordinator for Warren County Public Schools and community schools director for KCSI, said during a Thursday night meeting of district staff and parents that one change coming to Moss this year is the inclusion of “enrichment days” for students.
“(For) many of our students, if it wasn’t baseball, basketball, football, any of the major sports, they often didn’t have the opportunity to participate in other recreational types of things,” Kirtley said. He said the enrichment programs happen “every single day of school,” and currently have a focus on social and emotional learning and "Leader In Me” practices. Personnel at Moss are also implementing “club days” for students, which will take place every Friday after students return from fall break.
Kirtley described the club days as “a big deal.” “I heard the most beautiful thing that I think I’ve ever heard two days ago,” Kirtley told meeting attendees. “Every staff member in the Moss Middle School building is either sponsoring or helping to sponsor a club during that enrichment period.
” Community schools are guided by four “pillars.” These include active family and community engagement, expanded and enriched learning times, integrated support and collaborative leadership. Included in the pillars are eight “pipelines” that work toward each goal, such as early childhood education, workforce readiness instruction and out-of-school programming.
Moss and Jennings Creek were chosen to become community schools due to their diverse, high-need student population. While these will become dedicated community schools, aspects of the model will be implemented district-wide. Changes through the community schools model are not limited to the classroom.
Tracy Woods, family resource coordinator at Jennings Creek Elementary, said the school has started using a language tool called TalkingPoints to better engage migrant families with their student’s successes. Woods said TalkingPoints works with Infinite Campus, the district’s data management system, to translate messages into different languages for parents. “It’s an amazing tool, it’s a very powerful tool,” Woods said.
“When you hit that send button, it sends to every contact in Infinite Campus and they receive it as a text message on their phone in their home language, they can reply in their home language, and you get an email back in English.” She said TalkingPoints arrived at the school just before summer break last year and was used to alert families about the school’s monthly Rock The Block events. When it was used leading up to a Rock The Block then, she said it led to great turnout at the event.
“I quit counting at 100 (attendees),” Woods said in the meeting. “That's the difference that it made. They understood it.
They got it in their language, and they understood it, so it works.” More meetings about the community schools projects will be held over the course of the school year. Upcoming dates include: Locations for the upcoming meetings are yet to be determined.
.
