Boston's Higher Ground

Education, support for local schools: in fiscal year 2023, Boston's Higher Ground (Higher Ground) extended its agreement with boston public schools and continued to coordinate the 14-member surround care coalition and supported children and families served by two local schools, david a. ellis k-5, and higginson lewis inclusion, and the nearby crispus attucks children's cener (cacc). Coalition members included the boston children's chorus, center for teen empowerment, docwayne, elizabeth stone house, families first parenting programs, jfynetworks, keysteps, mass. Advocates for children, onebead, program for education & resilience (pear), room to grow, thompson island outward bound education center, union capital boston. In addition, Higher Ground placed social work graduate students from local universities to support students and families. We completed the second year of implementation of the surround care coalition and began the third year of implementation supported by a 3-year $1 million grant from boston children's hospital serving local schools and cacc. Higher Ground, with support of local school leaders and surround care coalition partners, secured funds from bps and boston after school and beyond (basb) and implemented its fourth summer learning academy (sla) again in-person and hosted at the martin luther king, jr. school. In addition, responding to suggestions by members of the coalition's parent teacher advisory group (ptag), Higher Ground launched an in-person after school programs hosted at the david a. ellis school. Together the summer learning academy and after school program serve as extended day and extended year learning opportunities for students who are in most need of such support. We continued to prioritize students who are homeless or were recently housed.finally, in fy 2023, Higher Ground launched a mentoring program that provided employment opportunities to youth and young adults who in turn supported younger students to succeed in their academic endeavors.

Other programs: while maintaining focus on its primary efforts to improve educational outcomes for children and families in its community, Higher Ground engaged in activities complementary its educational programs. These included collaborating with naaacp boston, the commonwealth seminar, and adl new england in hosting quarterly community crossover dialogues that engaged community leaders and activists in a learning journey about the experiences of greater Boston's diverse populations, responding to requests from community residents to support them in addressing concerns in their housing development, and participating in citywide and regional convenings on education, housing and homelessness, and general public policy discussions impacting our community.

Family-led stability initiative: in fiscal year 2023, Higher Ground continued to play a lead role in the family-led stability initiative (flsi) to address student homelessness in boston schools. Higher Ground coordinated the program with an agreement with boston public schools (bps) on behalf of four non-profit organizations and in collaborations with the boston housing authority (bha) and the mayor's office of housing (moh) supporting families served by 13 schools in Boston's roxbury, dorchester and mattapan neighborhoods. The nonprofit partners in addition to Higher Ground are dudley street neighborhood initiative (dsni), project hope, and new lease for homeless families. The 13 partner schools include the boston day and evening academy, david a. ellis, dudley street neighborhood charter school, dearborn stem academy, ellison parks early education center, haynes early education center, henry l. higginson inclusion, higginson lewis inclusion, madison park technical vocational high school, o'bryant school of science and math, orchard gardens, rafael hernandez, and william monroe trotter. In june 2023 Higher Ground and flsi partners joined bps superintendent mary skipper to mark reaching the milestone of 500 formerly homeless students and their families housed and committed to continuing to collaborate and house 500 more boston school students in the next few years.during fiscal 2023, we continued discussions with networks of organizations in boston and gateway communities in eastern Massachusetts that had expressed interest in launching their own initiatives to address student homelessness in their communities.