District forms bond with nonprofit

The partnership between Charleston County schools and a nonprofit dropout prevention organization will expand this year to twice as many schools.

Communities in Schools will work with 13 district schools this year, up from six last year. Each partner school will receive at least one student support specialist who will case manage up to 50 students and work with the entire school population on issues such as teen pregnancy prevention and life skills. Student support specialists also coordinate the extra help coming into the school from outside volunteers and agencies.

The county school board will pay the nonprofit $420,000 to staff eight high-poverty schools and provide a volunteer coordinator to recruit mentors and tutors for students. The money will come from the district's Title 1 budget for low-income schools, and it will cover the salaries, training and supervision associated with those positions. Some of it also will cover field trips and incentives offered to students.

"This has been a big vote of confidence for us," said Jane Riley, executive director of Communities in Schools.

Schools such as Baptist Hill High, Burke High, Lincoln High, North Charleston High and the Sixth Grade Academy haven't received the group's help in the past but will now under the contract approved by the board earlier this month. Other schools have contracted directly with Communities in Schools and will pay for the services out of their school-based budgets.

Nineteen years ago, the nonprofit helped establish Clark Academy, a small high school program designed for students who haven't been successful in a traditional school setting. The district's involvement with Communities in Schools has continued to grow since then, and school Superintendent Nancy McGinley described the partnership as a successful one.

The district doesn't have enough guidance counselors, and the poor economy has put students and their families in stressful situations, she said.

"We recognize that in addition to the academic challenges that many of our students face, they face social and emotional challenges, and the counseling ratio does not enable our counselors to do as much individual, one-on-one counseling and support as our students need," she said.

Unlike student concern specialists who often focus on students with behavioral problems, student support specialists build relationships with students who have the highest risk of not completing high school. They lead the process of identifying and matching students to the services they need, and they adapt school-wide programs to fit each school, Riley said.

"It's not necessarily a cookie cutter program," she said. "We tweak it to focus on what the individual schools feel that they need."

Reach Diette Courrégé at 937-5546 or dcourrege@postandcourier.com.