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Communities In Schools helps kids succeed in school and in life. Its mission is to connect needed community resources with schools to help students learn, stay in school and prepare for life.

• Services: “Success in Schools” uses social and academic enrichment to increase the likelihood of success in school for disadvantaged students. It was allocated $141,104 for 2009-10. In 2008-09, 942 students had after-school sessions, 225 parents attended open houses, 23 students were recognized for perfect attendance, and 27 were recognized for outstanding citizenship.
• Need: “We see more of our families requiring emergency assistance in the way of food, clothing and shelter,” said Jimmi Williams, executive director. “We also have noticed that we are working with more families in which the head of household is unemployed, especially the number of fathers who are unemployed. Finally, the community partners that we rely on to provide services are experiencing backlogs in their services, which makes it more difficult for us to successfully refer students and families.”
• The effect of reduced funding: “A reduction of $1,000 in United Way funding would result in an almost immediate reduction of services to approximately 4.9 students,” Williams said.
• With additional funding: “Additional funding would allow us to serve middle schools which we do not serve at the moment,” Williams said. “This is a critical, unmet need as we think a best practice is to follow the child from elementary to middle to high school. We would also like to offer our reading services to more elementary schools with disproportionate numbers of students who read below grade level. We think this is critical as a dropout prevention strategy.”