Dive Brief:
- The Rochester City School District has announced plans to open a new “Beacon school,” which will actively coordinate services to students and community members, including free healthcare and meals.
- The city’s schools have already become the access point for many social services, including healthcare, mentoring, and child care.
- But the new approach will eventually mean a designated coordinator will organize all of the available services and provide space to more community partners.
Dive Insight:
The Beacon school is one among a growing number of community schools that provide so-called “wraparound” services, where the school becomes the access point for services not typically associated with education. It has become popular with education leaders as a way to take a holistic to the challenges low-income students and families face. The principal of the school that will undergone the Beacon transformation says the goal is to focus less on the politics of the various organizations that provide services and instead focus on getting them to the people that need them the most.
"The core services are the same, but we’re beginning to blur the line between school and community services, with children and families at the heart of it rather than who’s (providing) it when,” principal Caterina Leone-Mannino told the Democrat and Chronicle.