This Tarrant County nonprofit unveiled a new Student Support Center. Here’s why
When officials with Communities in Schools of Greater Tarrant County began plans for the nonprofit’s new Center for Student Support, they wanted it to be a single site where school social workers could pick up resources like food, clothes and school supplies to give to the students they work with.
Almost immediately after the building was complete, the need for those services was obvious, said CEO Lindsay Garner: Just a couple of weeks after the new building opened this month, its food pantry was out of stock.
The nonprofit partners with 11 school districts around the Fort Worth area to place social workers in 80 schools. Social workers provide mental health counseling and case management services.
The center is located on Hawks Creek Avenue in Westworth Village, just east of Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth. During a ribbon-cutting event for the new building on Wednesday, Garner said the center will allow the nonprofit to expand those services. If social workers need to meet with students off campus so they can see multiple siblings at once, the center offers space.
The center also gives the Communities in Schools opportunities to work with other organizations, Garner said — the nonprofit is partnering with Texas Health Community Hope to operate its food pantry, and Tarleton State University will open a counseling and wellness clinic, where university students who are training to be social workers will receive training.
Desiree Smith, a social worker at Lake Worth High School, said the fact that the new center brings several services together at a single site makes it easier for her to get supplies her students need. Before the center opened, she would need to make several phone calls and wait several days, and make trips to several sites anytime she needed anything, she said. It also helps that the new center is relatively close to her school.
“It’s a 15-minute drive, whereas before it was about 20 to 30, maybe 40, depending on the day,” she said.
Ja’cyriah Lacy, a junior at Lake Worth High School, said Communities in Schools gives her a safe place to go when she needs to talk, or just to cool down. Smith has also talked with her about college plans and taken her on campus visits, she said.
Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker said Communities in Schools provides a valuable service to the campuses where it has a presence. When she visits those campuses, she notices that teachers feel like they have an important resource they can offer their students and their families, she said.
One of the biggest responsibilities a community has is the education of its young people, Parker said, and teachers and school leaders can’t do that job alone, she said. She urged other community leaders to continue to think about what they can do to make sure their schools are strong.
“In Fort Worth, our city is successful. We do have so much to celebrate and think about into the future,” Parker said. “But I promise you, this city will be great if we keep focused on education.”
