Community Achieves Celebrates Anniversary

Community Achieves Celebrates 10 Years of Impact with Schools and Community Partners
Posted on 12/20/2022
reading volunteer with student in school library

Community Achieves has been coordinating community partners to bring enhanced resources to MNPS schools for 10 years now – and its impact continues to grow.

Founded in 2012 in nine schools, Community Achieves is now in 58. With the help of federal ESSER funds, the program added a school coordinator at 26 more schools at the start of the 2022-23 school year and now serves more than 34,500 students.

At the core of this powerful initiative is a constant push to link students and families to enrichment opportunities and vital community resources by working closely with partners and volunteers based on needs identified in a needs assessment. Led by MNPS’s Student Support Services Department, Community Achieves focuses its work on four pillars of support: college and career readiness, family engagement, health and wellness, and social services and adult development. 

In 2021-22, Community Achieves distributed more than $1.9 million in in-kind school supplies and basic need items to students and families through more than 1,300 collaborative partnerships at 35 schools.

“When schools use the community school strategy, they collaborate with families and the community to share accountability for student success, all bringing different assets to the partnership,” said Alison McArthur, director of Community Achieves. “It has been amazing to see this strategy evolve in MNPS over the past 10 years.”

Community Achieves is vital to the district’s efforts to make sure every student is known, supported, cared for and on a path to success. It plays a central role in MNPS’s academics as well as the district’s work to provide wraparound services to support students and families.

Watch the Community Achieves Video

 

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Community Achieves,Community Partners