Austin Voices for Education and Youth

Youth & parent leadership programs: Youth leadership is done through several programs including the ambassadors program at eastside hs and the just keep livin' after school program at northeast and akins. Youth leaders have engaged on a variety of issues in public meetings and have hosted school board candidate forums. Austin Voices also sponsors Youth leadership events, such as the recent Youth equity summit at dobie middle school. Parent and community leaders are also trained a community block leader and promotora program, which offers time each week to engage virtually in training and networking sessions. Over 100 parents took part in the cbl and promotora program in 2021. In 2021-2022, Austin Voices received a $1 million federal grant to train community health workers.

Family resource centers: the first family resource center was founded in 2007 to provide a school-based center to offer professional wraparound services to families in crisis. Currently, avey has seven family resource centers (burnet, dobie, martin,and web middle schools, houston elementary school, and navarro early college and northeast early college high school). The frcs are a "one-stop shop" for families facing the challenges of poverty, offering the employment, housing, health, counseling, and basic needs assistance, with the goal of family stability and success. Each frc has a licensed bilingual social worker, and most of the frc have a full-time director. Avey's frcs have, over the past fifteen years helped campuses improve attendance and academic performance by helping students focus on needs at school rather than at home. Avey also operates an adult academy accross its community schools, offering both in-person and virtual classes in partnership with more than a dozen agencies. Parents are able to take classes, both during the day and in the evening, to improve their skills for employment and parenting. "the right question project" is a siganture of avey's parent leadership programs that helps parents support, monitor, and advocate for their child(ren) in school. Over the past year, over 18,324 participants have received frc wraparound services, including housing, utility assistance, food, healthcare access, employment services and more. The results have been amazing. Student mobility, which was as high as 42% on some frc campuses, has been significantly decreased as high-risk families are stabilized and parents become more connected to their schools. This has led to significant academic improvement, with webb middle school and reagan (now northeast) early college high school experiencing strong turnarounds. Webb, which was aisd's lowest-performing middle school in 2007, became aisd's highest-performing title 1 middle school for a decade. Reagan/northeast's improvement has been similar, with the graduation rate increasing from 48% to 99% in seven years. While both schools have experienced ups and downs in performance due to budget cuts and the effects of the covid-19 pandemic, they also have resilient family and student support systems that are keeping families stable and supporting continued academic improvement

Community schools: avey works with community stakeholders, including students, tachers/staff, parents and community members to support great Education for all children. Efforts include community-based strategic planning and partner development. Austin Voices has partnered with Austin isd to create two high-functioning community schools at webb middle school and reagan early college high school. Both campuses were on the verge of closure in 2007-2008, but have now made nationally-recognized turnarounds using community school strategies. Currently, Austin Voices is working with 21 campuses to support comminity school development and priorities.

Other programs include: community conversations, verticle teams, and save Texas schools.