Students at Fulton County’s Tri Cities High School will now have access to free food, clothes, counseling services, and more. The district opened a new Student and Family Engagement (SAFE) center at the school this week. A similar center at Banneker High School opened in 2018. Another planned for North Springs High is expected to open next month.
“It was a consolidation of all types of support services that would eliminate any type of academic barriers for students,” says Fulton’s Deputy Chief Academic Officer Dr. Giymah Whitaker of Banneker’s program. “It included mentorship groups…a clothing closet, a food pantry. If families had any type of mental health support needs, they could get that. Job placement, all sorts of things were happening there.”
In 2018, the Georgia Department of Education provided districts with some funding to create these wrap-around services for schools.
“Our job, and our responsibility to students, doesn’t end when the school bell rings,” State Schools Superintendent Richard Woods said at the time. “These wraparound centers will provide the support kids need to be ready to learn. They’ll begin to address the barriers to learning that are in place for so many of our students.”
Whitaker says Fulton County Schools decided to use some funding from the American Rescue Plan (ARP) to redesign the center at Banneker and develop two more. For example, Banneker had a food pantry which has now been replaced with a grocery store through a partnership with Goodr. Each center will also be staffed with a social worker and a coordinator that helps organize everything from therapeutic small groups to the clothes closet.
