Letter to the Athens Community: Help Us Help Athens Children

Dear friends,

Friday’s mail brought three checks from Clarke County School teachers. With no pay raises in years, with actual pay cuts due to furloughs forced by state funding cuts, why would a teacher donate to our work?

Perhaps because the teacher knows students like Mario (not his real name) who wasn’t coming to school and was extremely unlikely to graduate. Leo Cotlar, our site coordinator at the school, connected with Mario and discovered that he was working two part time jobs three school nights each week. One was 4:00 to 11:30 pm working in a seafood restaurant followed by the other workingmidnight to 5 a.m. preparing food in a buffet restaurant. Thanks to the support of Leo, Mario was able to get a variety of support that allowed him both to keep the jobs (which his family needed) and to graduate from high school in July. “His parents were the proudest couple I’ve ever seen,” comments Leo.

Perhaps the teacher knows that Susie had failed all her core classes in 6thgrade and was clearly on a track that would lead to dropping out. Lindsey Cavin, our site coordinator at Susie’s school, met with Susie and Susie’s mom, learned about the multiple challenges Susie faced outside of school that affected her classroom performance, brought wrap-around services to address those issues, continued to meet with her and her mom regularly, got into an after-school program that we supported, and more. Susie has improved significantly in every single subject area, her attendance is up, her teachers report a much better attitude, and, Lindsey says, “She will graduate from high school!”

Perhaps the teacher knows that the kindergarten student entering his classroom is ready to learn despite all the challenges she faces at home, thanks to the great work of the professionals in the Early Head Start and Pre-Kindergarten programs that we brought to Clarke County School District, early learning programs that UGA research shows measurably improve academic performance through high school.

Perhaps the teachers know that, through our Neighborhood Leaders program, parents in neighborhoods that have in the past had little involvement are taking leadership roles for their children and their neighbors’ children, engaged in authentic partnership for improved schools, health, safety, and community involvement.

Undoubtedly they know that by coordinating distribution of computers for use by students in their homes – nearly 1,000 families have gotten computers in their homes this year through the program – our Neighborhood Leaders program is having a significant impact.

The teachers might know that literally thousands of children and youth in our community have been given better opportunities through more than 40 programs we have initiated with our partners. They might have heard that our work has received national recognition, not just anecdotally (though the White House did include a story about one of our Neighborhood Leaders in a recent report), but because the data reflects remarkable gains by our partners, including a 67% reduction in teen pregnancy, 88% reduction in substantiated child abuse & neglect, continuing improvement in graduation rates, and the largest reduction in the achievement gap of any school district in Georgia.

They know as well as anyone that, as Superintendent Philip Lanoue puts it, “every data point has a face.” These improvements in data represent incalculable improvements in the lives of precious children who are not being abused, who are doing well in school, who will be successful in life and who will improve the quality of life for us all.

They certainly know that these gains are the result of the enormous support of all of our collaborative partners – the School District, the individual schools, UGA, business partners, health and social service providers, the faith community, hundreds of individuals, and, most importantly, the families of the children.

They might even know that a recent study by a state consultant concluded that we have the greatest return on investment of any of 157 partnerships for children they reviewed.

And they might know that, despite all this success, our financial resources for the collaboration itself have been depleted. We have always been a shoestring operation – we facilitate collaboration among the partners (including families) – but we now face major budget challenges that threaten our current work.

Most significantly, we will lose our site coordinator positions, positions that a national study concluded are the most effective dropout prevention program of any national model ever scientifically evaluated.

The purpose of this message is two-fold.

First, I am writing to thank our partners, our donors, and the community for creating and supporting our continued success and commitment to the children and youth of Athens. These successes are, quite literally, your successes.

Second, I am writing to request that you join the teachers and provide financial support at this critical time in our work. We have enormous opportunity to take some pretty amazing work to an even higher level. We face the danger, however, of losing the momentum if we are unable to foster the resources required.

So, please consider a year-end donation, fully tax-deductible. I can think of no better, more important investment you can make for our community. You can make checks payable to “FC-CIS” and mail them to us at FC-CIS, PO Box 1904, Athens, GA  30603.

Again, thank you for caring for the children and youth of Athens. All children and youth.

We are Family Connection-Communities In Schools and we do whatever it takes as a community working together for the success of all of our children!