SAN ANTONIO – Communities in Schools’ mission is to surround students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life.
Recently they received a huge multimillion-dollar donation that can mean a lot for our Bexar County schools.
Jessica Weaver, CEO of Communities in Schools-San Antonio, joined Leading SA Sunday to discuss the program and what it means for San Antonio schools.
“Our mission statement is surrounding students with a community of support and ultimately empowering them to stay in school. And how we do that is we embed full-time professional staff, our backgrounds, our social work and counseling, and we embed them in the schools. And so what we do is we come inside, partner with our school counselors and our teachers and offer support services to students with any challenges that they may be facing,” Weaver said.
The COVID-19 pandemic has not made life easy for local students and their families.
“The last two years have been challenging for everyone. And so this gift has really been great. An uplift to the expansion that we’ve been asked for and so many of our districts have asked us to move into more schools,” Weaver said.
Weaver explained the multimillion-dollar donation would mean further outreach in schools.
“Our parents will see that we are in more campuses and really that opportunity to be able to reach out to someone who can really help them through any kind of challenges of their child or their family may be facing,” Weaver said.
Communities in Schools is a program across the country, but the San Antonio chapter is dealing with a unique issue.
“And I think for San Antonio, what you know, what’s unique to us is we have so many school districts. So it’s not that you’re, you know, you get to see if there are some things that are happening across the board or if there are trends and those trends are really everywhere. So that’s one thing is disengagement. But kids went without their continuous learning. And so there’s no way that that did not impact them,” Weaver said.
You can watch the full interview Weaver in the video player above.