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Q&A
Concerns about Student Success Centers and education continuity
3:07:12
·
170 sec
Council Member Rita Joseph raises concerns about the redesign of Student Success Centers, particularly the exclusion of middle schools from the program. She emphasizes the importance of early intervention and the proven success of peer-to-peer college admission assistance.
- Melanie Mac explains the DOE's $3.3 million investment in high school Student Success Centers
- The funding focuses on 37 schools, 13 SSCs, serving 18,000 students total
- Mac acknowledges the push for middle school programs and mentions bridge funding for two middle school centers
Rita Joseph
3:07:12
Student Success Centers talks us about that.
3:07:15
I know there was a redesign, you essentially but we left out one important component which is middle school.
3:07:21
Right?
3:07:21
So we're seeing at a rate for me this should start in elementary because a lot of these things kids disconnecting from school starts from elementary.
3:07:30
So we gotta start meeting that need in elementary and and stretch it out.
3:07:34
We took out middle schools, so we wanna know what's the thought process around it this year.
3:07:39
And it's a proven program, right?
3:07:40
Every time something works we take it away.
3:07:43
So it's peer to peer where students help their their peers with college administration process.
3:07:47
The students testify today how much that work has made an impact on him.
3:07:52
He he test he spoke this morning at a rally and and so we're more than 30 high schools across the city, so we call on the administration to fund this program.
3:08:01
So just want to hear your thought process on that.
Melanie Mac
3:08:05
Thank you chair.
3:08:06
Melanie Mack, been on a couple school business together now.
3:08:09
So you know that there is really deep work happening when we talk about someone like councilmember Stevens nephew taking the big leaps he took after graduation, right?
3:08:21
And that's very intentional in terms of the work that we've invested in high school, college, and career advising in establishing a career navigation roadmap and finding a way when stimulus funding expired to self fund the high school student success centers.
3:08:41
So we've continued that investment.
3:08:43
There are a few things that we've shifted based on talking to young people, talking to providers, talking to the high schools.
3:08:49
The 3,300,000.0 that we invest in student success centers is going entirely to the high school work because the previous formula wasn't serving all students and all of the schools on those campuses.
3:09:03
So 37 schools, 13 SSCs, and 18,000 students total.
3:09:09
So we believe we got the formula right so that we're hearing from providers, hearing from students, and right sizing what the CBO capacity needs to be to really let the Student Success Center work well.
3:09:23
In terms of the middle school success centers, we certainly heard your push this year and we worked with the two middle school student success centers on some one time bridge funding this year.
3:09:35
We spoke with the principals, we spoke with the providers and talked about what this investment this year could do in terms of helping them with sustainability.
3:09:45
We've learned a lot from the middle school success centers.
3:09:48
Those two served about a 50 students and we are looking for for bigger impact to all of the push that we've heard from the council around the absolute importance of college and career exploration happening early and often.