All students living in Forest Cove will be able to complete this school year at THES. Next school year, beginning in the fall of 2022, students who currently attend THES but do not live in Forest Cove will be temporarily rezoned to Slater Elementary School.

“The Forest Cove redevelopment will dramatically improve living conditions for residents and ultimately result in positive outcomes, and we are sensitive to the sudden nature of this situation,” said APS Superintendent Dr. Lisa Herring. “Therefore, APS and �ڹϳ����� will continue to partner to help minimize disruption for families, students, and staff. PBSA is a valued partner. They are doing good work and we look forward to their return at THES when the Forest Cove redevelopment is complete.”

The Atlanta Municipal Court Order of December 28, 2021 ordering the relocation of all Forest Cove families by March 1, 2022, and the demolition of the property by September 22, 2022 due to the poor condition of the property, now take the place of a previous plan developed by APS, PBSA, and a coalition of community stakeholders to continue operating THES while Forest Cove was redeveloped.

APS and �ڹϳ����� are aware of the living conditions in Forest Cove, and the primary concern is the long-term health and safety of the families who live there. APS and �ڹϳ����� Built Schools will continue to work with the City of Atlanta, Millennia, and key stakeholders to make sure that every impacted family is well supported during the relocation process.

“THES has served this neighborhood since 1971 and is the bedrock of an invaluably strong school-community connection,” said Greg Giornelli, President of �ڹϳ����� Built Schools. “We are confident that the parties to the Forest Cove redevelopment plan will rebuild the apartments over the next three years, and we expect to re-open THES within that timeframe.”

The decision to close THES and to rezone students in the Thomasville Heights neighborhood to Slater Elementary School requires the approval of the Atlanta Board of Education. The matter will be presented to the Board at its April board meeting, with a decision expected in May.

PBSA is a non-profit school management organization that partners with APS to operate four district schools.

�ڹϳ����� Atlanta Public Schools

Atlanta Public Schools is one of the largest school districts in the state of Georgia, serving approximately 51,000 students across 87 schools and five programs. The District is organized into nine K-12 clusters with 64 traditional schools, 19 charter schools, six partner schools, two alternative schools and five alternative programs. To learn more about Atlanta Public Schools, follow us on social media – Twitter (@apsupdate), Facebook (Atlanta Public Schools), and Instagram (apsupdate) – or visit us online at .

�ڹϳ����� �ڹϳ����� Built Schools

Through an innovative partnership with APS that began in 2016, �ڹϳ����� began operating Thomasville Heights Elementary, Slater Elementary, Price Middle and Carver STEAM Academy. Since then, �ڹϳ����� Built Schools has evolved into a high-impact organization that serves approximately 1,600 students and 1,000 families in four schools that comprise one of Georgia’s lowest-income K-12 feeder patterns. �ڹϳ����� Built Schools’ mission is to develop students’ skills and cultivate their agency so they can fulfill their unlimited potential. �ڹϳ����� Built Schools’ model has proven that when low-income students have access to high-quality education, exposure to enrichment opportunities, and basic needs such as housing, adequate nutrition, and mental health supports, they too can thrive.

Scholars have made meaningful and significant individual and collective gains. Our schools grow stronger every year, and the families who entrust their children to a �ڹϳ����� Built school each day have increased access to support and resources. We gladly pause to celebrate all the hard work and achievements of 2021.

Atlanta has one of the largest populations of food insecure people in the country, and the south Atlanta community served by �ڹϳ����� Built Schools has experienced this for decades.

To help ensure no student arrives to school hungry, �ڹϳ����� Built Schools partners with several organizations to increase food security in south Atlanta. We caught up with Javan Wyche, School Engagement Manager at Carver STEAM, to see how the THES Farm impacts the community.

The club is serving as a distance-learning hub where students of all grade levels can come during the school day to do online classes. This full-day, five-days-per-week program provides a safe and supervised place for students to log in to their daily classroom instruction. There is no cost to participate, and the hub is providing a safe, positive, and engaging environment for students.

The Boys & Girls Club has a long-standing track record of providing youth with safe and enriching programming designed to enhance educational and social-emotional outcomes. On the heels of a successful beginning last fall, �ڹϳ����� Built Schools and Boys & Girls Club have further expanded their partnership with a new and innovative model where the Boys & Girls Club will run their after-school enrichment programs on-site at �ڹϳ����� Built Schools.

“This partnership was an innovative way to address both the widening achievement gaps, as well as the need for our parents to get back to work,” said Greg Giornelli, CEO, �ڹϳ����� Built Schools. “This is the first time the Boys and Girls Club of Metro Atlanta has held their program off-site, and this idea of adopting a club model and implementing it on site at a school, or in our case, throughout a network of schools, is an innovative approach to help best serve our students.”

The club will shift to provide after-school programming for students at Thomasville Heights and Slater elementary schools, once Atlanta Public Schools reopens school buildings. There are plans to open a site at Price Middle School next August.

�ڹϳ����� strives to create a positive climate and culture where students feel known, accepted and supported. Providing consistency is a big part of that.

But when children come from generational poverty, they face barriers that prevent them from experiencing that consistency in education, which can impede their ability to be successful in school.

To break this cycle, a group of teachers at Thomasville Heights Elementary School have stayed with the same cohort of students year after year.

This educational practice is called looping, where teachers spend two or more years with the same group of classroom students. There is evidence that looping is very effective from 3rd through 5th grade as well as through transition years, when students go to middle school or high school.

At THES, Ms. Rosales, Ms. Edwards, Ms. May and Ms. Ward have looped with the same group of students since third grade. The students will begin 5th grade this fall, kicking off their third year together.

“Looping is a great way to provide students with the stability and consistency needed to thrive in the classroom,” says Ms. Rosales. “Kids are more familiar with you and it makes it easier for them to participate.”

“We’ve gotten to know our students and they’re comfortable with us,” says Ms. Edwards. “Kids learn from people who they know love them and care for them. We’ve instilled that in them and motivated them. When they were told what they couldn’t do, we made their successes bigger.”

Looping helps teachers understand the learning styles of each student and accommodate them year after year. They can also group students by ability and personality.

“These relationships have helped students improve across the board,” says Ms. May. “They listen to every teacher now. We build relationships outside of school with our families. Parents trust us because they’ve known us for years.”

For students with behavioral challenges, looping can help create consistency in how classrooms are managed. Students know exactly what is expected of them in each classroom, no exceptions.

“I had a student for three years and his sister before that,” says Ms. Ward. “He knew exactly what was expected of him. The parents and I had a great relationship. They know us by now so we don’t have the “getting to know you” part. We can just jump right into teaching on day one.”

But looping can present challenges, as well. With each new school year comes the need for the looping teachers to learn a new set of standards and purchase new resources.

“We have to get to know the new standards each year,” says Ms. Ward. “But we know our students better each year, so we can adjust the standards to what they need. We can adapt because we know exactly where they are.”

Overall, the teachers have seen the method produce results each year.

“I once had a student who came to my class in 3rd grade from an alternative classroom because of her behavioral issues,” says Ms. Rosales. “This student was known as a slow learner who wasn’t able to get along in the classroom. But in my class, she hasn’t had a single issue because of the consistency and stability we provided her by staying together year over year. She recently told me she wants us to go on to middle school with her!”

Looping has been so successful for this team of teachers that they may consider starting the next cohort of students earlier, potentially in first grade; proof that the benefits of this educational practice are worth the effort.

“There were concerns that while some of the elementary school students might not be dyslexic, some may have dyslexic-like profiles and, as a result, were struggling with learning to read and were perhaps going unidentified,” says Day. “When I got to The Schenck School, the administration was very interested in talking to �ڹϳ����� Built and learning more about the work at THES and Slater.”

In 2017, Day brought The Schenck School’s Head of School, Josh Clark, for a meeting at and tour of Slater Elementary. As a result of that meeting, an official partnership formed between The Schenck School and �ڹϳ����� for Schenck to provide direct reading services to students through The Dyslexia Resource, an outreach program of The Schenck School.

“We started doing work together in January 2018. We called that Year 0. It was supposed to be a planning year, but we went ahead and started working with some students,” says Day. “We brought in some reading remediation specialists and worked with the instructional coaches at Thomasville Heights to identify students who were struggling with reading and began working with them. That was the beginning of the partnership.”

The 2018-2019 school year marked the official first year of the partnership. The Dyslexia Resource brought in three reading specialists to provide reading remediation to 99 students in first, second, third, and fourth grades at Thomasville Heights Elementary.

An app developed by The Hill Learning Center in Durham, NC, allowed remediation specialists to move from a 1:1 or 1:2 specialist to student ratio to a 1:3 ratio. Remediation sessions occurred twice a week and lasted 40 minutes.

The program expanded in the 2019-2020 school year to include three additional remediation specialists and another 99 students at Slater Elementary School. Remediation specialists also saw a specific group of third-grade students at Thomasville Heights for 40-minute sessions, four times a week.

“We had a cohort of children in the 2018-19 school year that struggled to make gains in reading, no matter if they were working with us or with the remediation programs within the building or with their classroom teachers,” says Day. “So, we decided that they needed more time with our remediation specialists. We called it ‘double dosing’ and the kids did quite well.”

The results of the program have been impressive. By spring 2019, scores on an assessment used to show a student’s growth in reading yielded results that equated to approximately two years of reading growth in just one year for those students who received remediation from The Dyslexia Resource reading specialists.

December 2019 assessment data showed that remediation students at Thomasville Heights performed similarly to their peers in first and second grades. Students receiving remediation at Slater outperformed their peers in first, second and third grades.

The outcomes for the group of third grade Thomasville Heights students receiving additional remediation were of particular interest. Based on the mid-year data, students receiving remediation four times per week clearly outperformed both their peers and those students receiving remediation two times per week. Moving forward, these data will be used to determine remediation dosage for students at both Thomasville Heights and Slater.

“One of the lessons learned over these two years is that it’s the relationships that we have within the school building that are most helpful to us,” says Day. “Instructional coaches and teachers have been invaluable in helping us navigate schedules and providing information about behavior management systems in place in the classroom that we mirror in our sessions with students so the expectations are the same.”

These relationships proved imperative to the continuing success of the program as the coronavirus pandemic struck this spring. The program moved to a 1:1 online tutoring model the week of April 13 after the APS spring break. Many sessions took place over the phone when students were unable to access a computer or Chromebook.

“We had to work closely with the leadership staff at both schools to get information on how to contact families,” says Day. “As part of our contingency planning for next year, we are prepared to toggle between the classroom to online much quicker if needed due to our experience this spring.”

Moving forward to next year, the program is expected to expand with a focus on second, third and fourth grade with the potential to continue to work with some fifth-grade students who participated as fourth-graders in the 2019-2020 school year.

When Ayanna Burroughs, a teacher at Thomasville Heights Elementary School (THES), reached out to Tania Herbert, Urban Agriculture Coordinator at The Paideia School, she hoped to learn from Paideia’s thriving farm program so she could start one at THES.

At the same time, Tania was hoping to replicate the program at other schools, particularly in those located in communities experiencing ‘food apartheid’ or food insecurity.

Both educators, located in very different parts of the city–southeast Atlanta and Druid Hills, wanted to encourage students to make change in their communities by learning how to decrease food insecurity through urban farming.

The schools partnered to create a thriving urban farm at THES. Paideia supports the THES Farm through mentorship and a close partnership that involves the sharing of knowledge, seeds, tools, materials and volunteers that enables the two schools to continue to learn and grow together and feed our communities.

“This program is about building bridges,” says Tania. “Without these shared urban farms at our schools, students may not have the opportunity to meet other students and families from different communities. We may not learn how much we have to offer each other, and how much we can gain from friendships with those outside our regular circles and neighborhoods. Now, students see that we’re all in this together.”

The THES/Paideia partnership quickly grew to include the Metro Atlanta Transitional Center, which assists residents completing the last portion of a felony sentence in making successful transitions back into the community through social and employment skills. This center now has its own urban farm to help equip women with skills to help them reintegrate into employment and community life.

“It’s so encouraging that three different communities can come together and grow so much food with the understanding that it’s not for any one of us in particular,” says Tania. “At the women’s transitional center, it’s empowering for them to work while incarcerated toward feeding families they may never meet. At Paideia, our families have been uplifted to serve families who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. And at THES, students are solving their own community’s needs by growing food to feed their own families and neighbors. This model is a great example of a place-based agricultural model- a grassroots effort to grow and feed our families.”

Combined, the three farms grow approximately 5,000 lbs of high quality produce each year. Next year, they are positioned to produce even more as Paideia relocates its urban farm to a larger plot of land in south Atlanta. The new farm will be closer to THES and the women’s center, which will allow the alliance to better support each other.

The organizations distribute their bumper crop of produce in three ways to help feed the community.

First, THES students give teachers and families tokens to “purchase” food from student-run farm stands during the school year. The students harvest, wash and package the food themselves.

Second, the organizations select the very best produce gathered from the three farms and donate it to the Urban Recipe Cooperative, which serves 50 families in the Thomasville Heights community. Next year, the cooperative will serve families in the Slater Elementary School neighborhoods, as well.

Third, fresh produce is donated to Intown Collaborative Ministries, a Saturday morning food pantry that serves 80 families.

“What’s different about our alliance is that we give our very best produce to the communities we serve,” says Tania. “Often, donated produce is old and of poor quality. But we don’t do that. We give our families our best food first because that is what we all should have and we believe it provides more dignity.”

The THES team looked to Paideia’s model to incorporate farming, composting and agency into its curriculum. �ڹϳ����� Built Schools hired Eva Dickerson, a Spelman graduate, THES’ farmer, to run the THES urban farm and support the school curriculum.

At THES, all grades have access to the farm to explore the natural world and for hands-on lessons, and 3rd and 4th graders use the garden as a quarterly project-based learning project on change-making, food insecurity and how to feed the community.

Through the Summer Farm Apprenticeship program, Carver STEAM Academy students and high school students in Paideia’s Urban Agriculture Program are paid to grow and learn together at both school farms, while accumulating agricultural skills and supporting families who need food during the summer. This opportunity provides meaningful paid employment and allows students to learn different farming systems.

“This partnership forms an unlikely alliance between a private school, a Title 1 school, and a women’s transitional center,” says Tania. “Three organizations that may not have normally come together, but when united, we formed a grassroots movement that benefits everyone involved and grows an abundance of food for underserved communities with food insecurity.”

Watch THES Farm in Action

At Thomasville Heights Elementary School (THES), many students don’t have access to three healthy meals a day without the school’s cafeteria.

�ڹϳ����� and the THES community identified gaps in food access for students and their families amidst the COVID-19 school closures and sprung into action. Although APS had set up distribution sites to provide breakfast and lunch to students, their closest site was – initially – too far for THES students to access safely.

Led by Tania Herbert, Urban Agriculture Coordinator at The Paideia School, and Javan Wyche, Director of After-School Programming at THES, the Thomasville Heights (T.H.E.) Take-Home Project mobilized volunteers and parents from the community to collect and then distribute APS breakfasts and lunches to THES students each morning in their own neighborhood.

Meanwhile, APS made THES an official food distribution site, making it even easier for the community to have access to these meals. When this happened, Javan and her team of volunteers pivoted to offer support for this expanded effort.

To further address families’ needs, the T.H.E. Take-Home Project started organizing to serve healthy evening meals, for students and their families, three days a week. The goal is to stimulate and support an effective local response to the THES community’s food needs, while observing the CDC-recommended social distancing tactics.

These meals are prepared by local chefs using produce grown by local farmers, including THES’ own student-farmers on their school farm. Led by THES school farmer, Eva Dickerson, with support from the Paideia School Urban Agriculture program, THES and Paideia School students are contributing vegetables grown on their own farms to many of these evening meals. This allows children to help feed their families and to participate in their local food system in a meaningful way. Equally important is the community building aspect where individuals, families and organizations are working together in this stressful time.

THE Take-Home Project works with local food entrepreneurs who are cooking their favorite dishes to provide healthy family meals during the school shutdown. In this way, the collaboration addresses food insecurity, while supporting the local food economy by providing both business and jobs.

Clearly, this grassroots effort is a great example of how local problems can be addressed by mobilizing local resources.

“I just made them to keep my kids busy while I worked with clients on Saturdays,” says DeAndrea. “But then clients saw the tutus and started making special requests. I began selling themed-tutus for holidays, and before I knew it, I had a business.”

By request, DeAndrea began booking tutu and spa parties in her salon. The demand was so high that she decided to start , a birthday party company and boutique for children.

DeAndrea, a parent at Thomasville Heights Elementary School (THES), learned about the from a sign at the school’s front desk. Her husband, who is a parent-liaison at THES, encouraged her to apply.

DeAndrea’s family has been part of the THES community for generations. She attended THES as a young student, as did her mother and three children. Her youngest is currently a third grader at THES.

�ڹϳ����� is proud to partner with Start:ME to bring new opportunities to small business owners in South Atlanta. DeAndrea is now one of 17 entrepreneurs who were accepted into the Southside cohort.

Start:ME is an intensive 14-session business training program for promising small businesses
that provides entrepreneurs the tools and connections necessary to build and grow successful businesses.

The program provides entrepreneurs like DeAndrea in south Atlanta, East Lake and Clarkston with hands-on business training by Emory’s Goizueta Business School; connections to mentors, support services, and fellow entrepreneurs; and grants for promising ventures and connections to capital providers.

“It’s a great program because it has challenged me to get out of my comfort zone,” says DeAndrea. “I don’t like the numbers side of business, but Start:ME has given me mentors and resources to better understand bookkeeping, hiring employees, and legal and tax benefits I didn’t know before.”

Start:ME currently supports 49 business owners across three cohorts in South Atlanta, East Lake and Clarkston.

“We look for entrepreneurs and companies that have a tie to the community like DeAndrea has,” says Kareem Hall, program lead for the Southside and East Lake Start:ME cohorts. “Most are located in South Atlanta or their children go to the neighborhood schools. Businesses serving the community will hire people in the community, making the benefit even greater.”

Across this year’s three cohorts, Start:ME estimates that 127 jobs will be created within these local communities. The program supports entrepreneurs from a diverse set of industries and stages of growth, including media, professional services, food services, party planning, and more. “Our mission is to develop the communities that we’re in, and communities need all types of businesses. We want to make sure we’re fostering businesses that are long-lasting,” says Kareem.

Start:ME seeks to reach people who don’t always have the opportunity to pursue programs like incubators and accelerators. Seventy-five percent of this year’s cohort of entrepreneurs are women, with 10 nationalities represented.

For DeAndrea, connecting with other entrepreneurs in South Atlanta has been very meaningful.

“We’ve already collaborated with fellow cohort members and developed friendships,” says DeAndrea. “At the neighborhood night in south Atlanta, I was able to speak directly with my target audience and get feedback directly from my community.”

“Everything I’ve accomplished so far has been through hard work and growing my businesses myself,” continues DeAndrea. “But now thanks to the Start:ME program, I have access to mentors, resources and capital. I’m now thinking about franchising and having a mobile part of my business. My mentors and the program’s legal day opened my eyes to more things that I can do for my business.”

JG Larochette knows firsthand how anxiety, depression and stress from trauma can overtake someone’s life.

As a successful elementary school teacher in South Richmond, CA, JG cared deeply for his students, and like many teachers, absorbed their trauma as he struggled to provide a healthy learning environment.

“In 2011, I tried to push through sleepless nights and deep suffering on my own, but eventually realized that I was not able to be fully present for my students,” says Larochette. “For one month, I dedicated himself to the practice of mindfulness, discovering its ability to rewire the brain into optimal mental health.”

Upon his return to the classroom, JG was determined to incorporate the mindfulness and gratitude practices that had healed (and saved) his life. He implemented daily mindfulness and weekly yoga, expressive arts and performing arts, noticing an immediate change in the self-awareness, self-regulation and behavior of his students.

“Mindfulness is so important in young people and teachers’ lives,” says Larochette. “When we have stress that is overwhelming, our brains get hijacked. We change our behaviors as a way to cope and protect ourselves.”

“In my 17 years of education in low-income communities, I’ve seen firsthand how schools have a hard time creating the social, emotional and mental safety for students to thrive,” continues Larochette. “Students are struggling to stay present in school. When faced with stress and trauma, we make unhealthy decisions in survival instinct mode. We have to work on students’ mental/emotional wellbeing first, then the academic portion will thrive. This will lead to young folks feeling empowered and their brains ready to thrive academically.”

JG founded the Mindful Life Project (MLP) to reach a larger population of students needing mindfulness in the classroom. They empower underserved children through mindfulness and other transformative skills to gain self-awareness, confidence, self-regulation and resilience, leading to lifelong success.

Their direct service programs, including the Mindful Community program (whole class/whole school programming) and the Rise-Up program (small group intervention), lead to sustainably embedding mindfulness at all levels of the school ecosystem. Students and educators become inspired, engaged, and motivated to practice mindfulness.

�ڹϳ����� Built Schools reached out to the MLP to begin implementing programs at Thomasville Heights Elementary School and Slater Elementary School.

“When we look at what our schools are struggling with the most, we see that adults are stressed, students are stressed, and we all have trauma. It’s the greatest health crisis no one is talking about,” says Larochette. “But what I’ve seen at PBSA is true innovation. They are creating school ecosystems where everyone feels like they belong and everyone wants to be proud of their community. We work with many schools where it’s not like that.”

MLP found a strong partnership with Ana Maria Lagasca and Iman Saint Jean, who were hired by �ڹϳ����� Built Schools to implement the MLP programs at THES and Slater, respectively.

At both schools, MLP provides weekly mindfulness classroom programming for every single student. At Slater, MLP additionally provides small group mindfulness programs, pulling students out of class for 30-45 minutes to practice mindful hip-hop, art and yoga once a week.

“We have seen at THES and Slater that young people are born with innate greatness inside of them,” says Larochette. “When given the proper support and programming, they can thrive. At the MLP school assemblies, I saw kids who have never done mindfulness before practice mindfulness in the most incredibly courageous ways. I can’t speak highly enough about �ڹϳ����� Built’s young people and staff.

“Mindfulness is a game changer in education, especially when it’s complemented by great and innovative work like PBSA Atlanta is doing.” says Larochette. “That’s the beauty of this partnership. Together, we are providing the greatest whole child experience possible so students can thrive in life.”