Community Partners with School to Assist Lower Income Families
By Samantha Karam and Kellie Nock
Windham is a small village in Portage County. There are roughly 1,852 residents and about 742 people work in the village.
According to statistics from DataUSA, a data visualization website, the median household income for Windham is 37, 569 dollars. A Business Insider article states the average salary in the United States for 2017 was 49,400.
In 2016, the percentage of Windham residents with incomes below the poverty level was 34.5 percent. While the state of Ohio had a percentage of 19 percent.
Information from City-Data, another data visualization site, reports Windham has a percentage of children below the poverty line of 42.2 percent. The State of Ohio’s percentage is 20.1 percent.
Read more about Windham’s poverty statistics here.
Windham’s Junior High and High School Principal Laura Amero said a large percentage of the community is transient and 13.9 percent of the student body is mobile, meaning they move in and out of the district or do not spend the majority of the school year in the district.
Amero said the schools have over 100 enrollments with about 80 to 100 withdrawals a year.
Enrollment has declined 30 percent since 2007.
Given the small size of the student body, Windham has a small staff of teachers, too. Amero said the administration has to be creative in how it educates the students while maintaining a small staff.
The district is looking into personalized learning options and has implemented STEM programs into each of its schools.
“Although we have a high poverty rate we do not separate out programs we offer our students based on their level of income. All of the programs we offer at Windham, including our Title 1 federal program, are open to all students,” Gregg Isler, the superintendent for Windham schools said in an email. “Students who need assistance, irregardless of income, our referred to a multitude of outside agencies, including the Renaissance Center.”
The Title 1 federal program provides financial assistance to schools with high numbers of children from low-income families.
“We got about 240,000 dollars in Title I funds this year,” Amero said. “Our economically disadvantaged (student) population is over 40 percent. So we get free and reduced (lunches). We qualify for Community Eligibility Provision.”
The United States Department of Agriculture’s website states Community Eligibility Provision is a service that provides free meals to low income school districts.
In addition to Title 1 assistance, Amaro said, all breakfasts and lunches are free. The afterschool program, which is the result of a three year federal grant, gives out a free healthy snack to ensure students get at least three meals a day.
A large factor of Amero’s job is providing students and families with additional resources they can utilize outside of school, like the Renaissance Center.
“We try to get to know the families when they move in,” Amero said. “And try to hook them up with resources from there. A lot of times we talk to the students and tell them where to reach out if they need a resource.”
The Renaissance Family Center which opened in 2010 is located in Windham and offers services such as after-school programs, community dinners and different exercise facilities. These services and programs are offered to low income residents of Windham.
On February 5th, the center opened its free clinic, which is a medical center available for low income families in the area. It’s open on Mondays and Wednesdays.
Crystal Hickman, Windham School District’s Education Management Information System Coordinator, works with the Renaissance Family Center to help students.
“It’s just kind of been an automatic blending,” Hickman said. “The Renaissance Center is willing to partner and work with anyone, it just works out good that some of us are at the school and also at the center so we kind of bridge that gap.”
Hickman said that any organization in the community can reach out to the center, and they do, working with local churches and other groups.
listen to audio “We are on the eastern end of Portage County, so to get any type of assistance our families have to travel into Ravenna, which is probably 12/14 miles. Some families do not have transportation. So bringing those resources to our community has been wonderful. We serve so many people, I see students being served there and their parents, where normally that wouldn’t have happened…”
“I feel like we do a pretty good job with it. I feel like we have a lot of resources for them,” Amero said. “And the fact that we’re so small that they could sit down with any of us, administrators, teachers, guidance counselors and we can help them with anything they need.”
The federal government funds various programs to assist low income families. The School Breakfast Program is one Windham utilizes, which allows schools to give free breakfasts to students every day.
The Ohio Summer Food Service Program provides free meals during the summer breaks to students who would get free meals while school is in session. Amero said Windham schools don’t give out free meals during summer time because the Renaissance Center already does.
“The Special Milk Program (SMP) provides milk to children in schools and childcare institutions who do not participate in other Federal meal service programs. The program reimburses schools for the milk they serve,” Benfits.gov states. “Schools may elect to offer free milk to low-income children.”
There is also Head Start, a program that, “emphasizes the role of parents as their child’s first and most important teacher,” Benefits.gov states. “Many Head Start programs also provide Early Head Start, which serves infants, toddlers, and pregnant women and their families who have incomes below the Federal poverty level.”
“Head Start, which is technically funded by the Department of Health and Human Services, provides preschool and other family health services to low-income families,” Camera said. “Funding for the program has increased significantly, from $6.5 billion in 2002 to $9.2 billion in 2016.”
“By far, the biggest amount of federal education dollars goes toward funding the Pell Grant program, a tuition assistance initiative for low-income students,” Education Education Reporter Lauren Camera wrote in an article for US News, “In fiscal 2016, the government is spending $22 billion to fund Pell Grants.”
Families can apply for all federally funded programs online.
“We are on these kids like crazy”, Amero said. “Hooking them up with whatever we can to get them to graduate.”
@kellnock and I wrote our latest article on how Portage County’s poorest district provides financial assistance to families! Be sure to check it out on https://t.co/Izjwf3icB7
— Sammy (@tearainandbooks) February 14, 2018
how do communities & schools help their lower income students? find out from me & @tearainandbooks later on https://t.co/UGH2nylmfH
— kellie bean (@kellnock) February 14, 2018
Credit:
Sam: Timeline/Interactive Element 1, background information on Windham and government programs, interviews and pictures with Laura Amero and Gregg Isler
Kellie: Interactive Element 2, interview with Crystal, Photos of Renaissance Center logo and Windham Schools
