Glory Reitz
The Education Foundation of Alachua County has announced four new initiatives after receiving $498,151 in federal funding.
The Resiliency in the Community (RTC) grant money is federal funding awarded through the Consortium of Florida Education Foundations, intended to support Alachua County Public Schools’ (ACPS) students.
“In general, I’m excited about being part of this program to build positive behaviors in kids,” said Jayne Moraski, executive director of the Education Foundation, in a phone interview. “It’s exciting to be on that end of it, to really think about what’s positive and ways we can do positive reinforcements for students and make a lasting impact on their lives.”
Moraski said students suffered a social and emotional setback coming out of isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. To help ACPS students build social and emotional skills for resiliency, the Education Foundation has chosen four initiatives to support in the district.
The chosen initiatives were selected from a pool that had already applied for Education Foundation grants through normal channels, according to Moraski. From there, she said the foundation worked with school mental health coordinators, the superintendent and the district’s chief of equity, inclusion, and community engagement to identify a structure that would best help ACPS.
The first initiative is a Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS) program at Westwood Middle School. The school was already using the program, a positive reinforcement system where students are rewarded if they are “caught” doing good things.
Part of the Westwood PBIS help is a family night to be held in the school cafeteria at 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 22. Moraski said she hopes the family day will help show parts of the program that are difficult to describe, and families will also explore “activities that teach, review and recognize school expectations,” according to a press release.
The second initiative is to help hire additional paraprofessionals for up to 10 schools. Paraprofessionals help support students by giving them time to “reset,” listening to them, coaching them and providing them strategies to self-manage in class. Moraski said though schools in the district have been opening calm rooms, those rooms are only effective when there is an adult available to be there.
The third initiative is “Student Positive Communication Webinars” for teens in the Education Foundation’s Take Stock in Children program, and webinars in partnership with the ACPS Parent Academy. These webinars include UF/IFAS character-building communication modules for “9 Skills for Talking about Money” and “Relationship Smarts PLUS 3.0 for Teens.”
The fourth initiative is college tours, providing opportunities for hundreds of ACPS students to take field trips to college campuses, with a new focus on “wellness and resiliency.” The tours look at student life, program offerings, scholarships and mental health resources.
The college tours’ target population is first-generation college students and those who are eligible for free or reduced lunches.
“We’re thankful to the Consortium of Florida Education Foundations for really making this possible,” Moraski said. “They’re sharing best practices at other [education] foundations throughout the state, and what they’re doing was really instrumental in helping us help the district. I love that we have such collaborative partners throughout the state, really helping each other and trying to lift up public schools.”