The Houston Independent School District (HISD) is going through a slew of changes yet again. The district’s Homeless Services Office underwent a major downsizing from 40 to 12 employees, per local reporting. Its wraparound services also have a new mandate to follow.
The shift in HISD’s wraparound services
Wraparound services at HISD refer to non-academic support to students, which includes food and shelter, medical needs, legal support, social and recreational services, and immigration support.
Last year, these services were available to students on a campus-wide basis. Based on local reporting from Houston Public Media, these services are now shifting toward attendance and dropout prevention. Now, wraparound specialists are being asked to refer families to the Sunrise Centers as a means of trying to get these two programs to “complement one another.”
“It’s a great idea to support vulnerable communities like the homeless population. But we live in one of the largest cities in America. We have a public transportation issue. How can the homeless get there if these centers are 30 minutes away? Money should be directed toward wraparound services.”
savant moore
The district introduced the wraparound services department in 2017 and appointed a specialist on each campus. It has now established Sunrise Centers to provide resources similar to the wraparound services through the new approach of a one-stop shop for multiple needs — medical care that comprises mental health, case management, clothes and uniforms, food, job training, and enrichment programs for students and parents, outside the school campuses. It currently partners with more than 200 community organizations and offers services across 210 campuses.
“The reality of where the centers have gone, and frankly, where we need the support, is that we are going to be serving a lot of students of color,” Najah Callander, the senior executive director of external engagement at HISD told the Defender. “We have focused on selecting community partners that align with the communities we’re trying to serve, bringing in the Houston Area Urban League to help us with workforce development, bringing together partners that have trust and brand awareness in our communities, so that Black families can feel like this is a trusted partner that’s going to help, understand my needs and meet my needs, and are going to give me a culturally competent experience.”
The center’s focus is primarily on the students, but it also offers assistance for adults, where parents of HISD students can enroll in GED and/or English as a second language courses and avail employment resources, among other services.
The $12 million project aims to support students from low-income families and those experiencing homelessness. According to HISD superintendent Mike Miles, these seven centers were needed because of the growing impact of poverty, violence, and mental health challenges on students.
The centers were created as a response to the HISD Student Needs Survey, conducted by the Kinder Institute’s Houston Education Research Consortium during the 2021-2022 school year, which helped the district determine the challenges that its students’ families face. The organization also used a drive-time analysis to strategize locations for the centers that were within the reach of most students.
HISD currently has 183,884 in the 2023-2024 school year. In HERC’s survey of about 43,000 students across HISD, 67% of the respondents in grades 3-6 and more than half the students in grades 7-12 said they had at least one unmet need. It also showed that 27% of students lacked access to mental health services.
Moreover, Black and Hispanic students reported the highest amount of need among older respondents.
“It’s a great idea to support vulnerable communities like the homeless population. But we live in one of the largest cities in America,” Savant Moore, an elected HISD board trustee, told the Defender. “We have a public transportation issue. How can the homeless get there if these centers are 30 minutes away? Money should be directed toward wraparound services.”
The new mandate for HISD’s wraparound services
Callander said that while HISD has wraparound specialists and counselors in schools, the support staff may not always live on the campus.
“So, they’re doing a lot of referrals. And while that is good, and it has much merit and value, just like we just talked about with accessibility, we never know, as the in-school staff, if that phone call [referral] happened, if that service was given, what the outcome of the service was, and was there some follow up or need,” Callander said.
With the Sunrise Center, HISD now has an opportunity for the specialist to refer these families to the Sunrise Centers. When you get there, “the uniforms that you need are there, the food that you need is there, the mental health counseling is there.”
If the student needs a doctor’s visit or an after-school enrichment, and they’re going to the YMCA Sunrise Center, instead of a parent having to call off work and the middle of the day to come over and see what’s wrong with their child, they can be seen by a telehealth doctor on site, she added.
The new mandate, obtained by Houston Public Media, has three metrics.
Metric 1
The first metric deals with “chronic absenteeism,” which aims to reduce the percentage of students with 10 or more absences (currently, 12,313 students) by 2% by June 2024.
In this metric, the school district plans on using data sources like Everyday Labs, PurpleSENSE, PowerSchool, and Solution Center Start of School Dashboard to review students’ attendance records and take steps like referring families to Sunrise Centers and credit recovery, among other resources on to address challenges faced by students. Using these parameters, the coordinator then will provide the students’ attendance data to the school’s wraparound resource specialist (WRS), follow up, and review strategies to address “chronic absenteeism.”
Metric 2
The second metric pertains to dropout rates and decreasing the number of four-year longitudinal dropout rates by 1% from the numbers in June 2023, by June 2024.
Using data sources, HISD plans to identify at-risk patterns and address them. The wraparound specialist’s responsibilities include accessing the data, documenting the support being given to dropout students such as phone calls, check-ins, and home visits, and referring families to Sunrise Centers, among others.
Meanwhile, the coordinator will train specialists, monitor progress, and collaborate on strategies regarding dropout prevention.
Metric 3
The third metric aims to get 80% of the parents of HISD students with 10 or more absences due to a lack of access to resources to “agree/strongly agree” that the school provided support to improve students’ attendance by June 2024.
The wraparound specialist will be required to monitor data, check in about the student’s progress, connect the concerned student’s parents with adequate resources, follow up, keep in touch with community partners and service providers for resources, provide program referrals and support, strategize based on individual cases, conduct attendance meeting, and conduct home visits in collaboration with campus personnel, among other responsibilities.
On the other hand, the coordinator would have to analyze campus data, create action plans for the specialist and support plans for service, conduct site visits to ensure the smooth running of operations, and monitor documentation, among other things.
Thus, there is a clear shift in a specialist’s role that was initially intended. From providing non-academic services to students, like the basic needs of food, shelter, and medical care, WRSs are now expected to focus more on decreasing absenteeism and dropout rates.
