Community Schools Good News

Catherine T. Reed ES loves a beautiful smile😁😁. We would like to give a huge thank you to SMILE Maryland for providing dental services 🦷to the students of our school.

Cherokee Lane ES CSC, Gesireth Mariscal, set up two food boxes filled with can goods and food so that families have free access at anytime!

The Junior League of Prince George’s County has adopted Drew-Freeman Middle School and will be supporting our students and teachers on an as needed basis. One of the organization’s first projects was to meet our need for additional uniform shirts. Devonya Gourdine, the Community School Coordinator organized a coat drive donation hosted by JLPGC at Drew-Freeman at the school. The organization donated approximately 70 uniform shirts in various colors and sizes. This generous donation will greatly assist our needy students in attending school more consistently.

Hollywood Elementary School's Community School Coordinator, Katharine Campos, partnered with the University of Maryland Office of Community Engagement to have Hollywood ES as a beautification site for UMD's 10th Annual Good Neighbor Day. Volunteers planted new trees, mulched, and pruned bushes. In addition, volunteers assembled and installed a Little Library for the Hollywood ES community. There was a surprise visit by University of Maryland President Darryll Pines, who helped beautify the school.

Hollywood Elementary School's CSC, Katharine Campos, alongside the help of PEA, Aida Caballero and Thrive Behavioral Health therapist, Breanna Fair, held the school's 1st Community Night event on September 14, 2021! Several of Hollywood ES' community partners were present to provide resources and giveaways to families in preparation for the new school year. With the help of our partners, Living Water Adventist Church and Ansaar-ul-Birr Community Services, we were able to ensure all attendees (approximately 60 families) went home with backpacks and school supplies! Picture: Katharine Campos, CSC with our partners at Ansaar-ul-Birr Community Services during Community Night

REI Coop Adopt a Family for the Holidays Program, The Lainez family was selected to be part of this wonderful program to support a family during the Holidays!

Hyattsville Elementary Shop with a Cop Program.

A unfortunate family had a fire a few days before the holidays. They lost 75% of their belongings and had to relocate last minute. With the support of the community and the staff at Hyattsville Elementary. We were able to help with support in temporary relocation, food and clothes donated by LAYC, support from red cross, PTO donated a $500 gift card to bob furniture and a Aldi gift card, Crossover Church donated blankets, food and gift card for the children to purchase new clothes, and we raised over $1,000 dollars to also support the family with rebuilding their home. All of this within 48 hours our community really supported during these difficult times.

Prince George’s County Community Conferencing Circles with Hyattsville Middle School. Our community circle is focusing on mindfulness, values, and healthy friendships. 

IHSLA provided an experiential learning activity and began our community garden. Students learned soil preparation, weeding, and planting while contributing to a larger goal of creating a resource that will feed our community. This garden will be a food resource for our families and will provide an experiential learning opportunity across all content areas. The learning that can be done with a community garden is limitless as it can be connected to science, language arts, social studies, our restorative justice course, and more. It will also allow us to build community in a culturally relevant manner as gardening and agriculture are topics that are familiar to our families. The fruits and vegetables planted are selected with the diverse cultures of our students and families in mind. As an International School, we face unique barriers to engaging families. However, with this effort, we hope to decrease uncertainty or self-perceived ineptitude that some of our families have communicated as it relates to school engagement. This was made possible through in-kind donations and partnership. We received donations from our local Lowes that included soil, compost, tomato cages, water hose, garden fencing, and more. The activity was facilitated with donated time from Mr. Kevin Alsop, CEO of NEMAS Gardens, who has generously donated his time and expertise to establishing our garden and teaching our school community to create and sustain an organic garden. Pictured: The Loews team with some of the donated items, 2 different groups of students receiving instruction from Mr. Alsop, and the final product of planted vegetables.

Community School Coordinator, Keiona Carr reached out to local author Shirell Bates regarding donating her time to provide J. Frank Dent Elementary School primary students with a virtual book reading of her title, Woolly Bully. On March 15, 2022 Mrs. Bates presented a virtual book reading experience to the students of J. Frank Dent Elementary School and they had a wonderful time! Select grades also received a copy of the book!

Sergeant Floyd Tate, Jr. and other PGCPS Police Officers took 10 of our students to Target to shop for Christmas together. They met up and had a great time shopping and interacting with each other!

Our community partner, Laurel Historical Society, purchased 36 coats of various sizes from Operation Warm for our students in need!

Longfields Elementary School CSC secured 300 pumpkin donations for our 300 students. Pumpkins were a reward/incentive for Octoberfest Book Report Celebration. Every student got to go home with a pumpkin and some got to decorate their pumpkin in class.

In picture: CSC Jennifer Garcia & Secretary Ms.Taylor

Longfields Elementary School received a very generous coat donation from Gamma Phi Delta Pi Sorority MD. Chapter with the help of Ms. Hawkins.

Oaklands Elementary School is  proud to have established a new partnership with Community Stakeholder Staples, Inc. (Gerry Dunham-General Manager.)  Mr. Dunham donated school Erasers, Colored Pencils, Pocket Tissue packages, Crayons, Hand Sanitizer, Folders, Markers and Student Supply Kits. This will sustain our efforts in working to make a difference in the lives of our students and families.

Oaklands Elementary School is  grateful to have a partnership with United Healthcare. They continue to provide  support and  outreach services to our school and community. We were excited to  receive a donation of 120  pencil pouches and a  box of  Tie-dyed face masks for kids. 

The photo features: Mrs.  Lynn Mejia- United Healthcare and Ms. Belinda Johnson-Community School Coordinator

Oaklands Elementary School is  grateful to have a partnership with Laurel Helping Hands. They continue to provide  support and  outreach services to our school and community. We were excited to receive a donation of 200 parcel bags including pencils, erasers, lollipops, post-it sticky notes and counseling services resource pamphlets to provide to our school community.

The photo features: Mr. Echeverry-Laurel Helping Hands and  Ms. Belinda Johnson-Community School Coordinator

Oaklands is  proud that we have dedicated community stakeholders like New Life Church. We had a successful food distribution on Saturday, August 28th where New Life  Volunteers and Oaklands Staff(Jewel Preston- Principal and Belinda Johnson-Community School Coordinator ) were able to provide food boxes  to 100 Oaklands families & the Laurel community.

Thomas S. Stone Elementary's Back-to-School Celebration! Thomas S. Stone had an amazing event where we were able to give out 225 backpacks and school supplies. Thanks to donations from 2 local churches and even a sponsor that rented a Kona Ice Truck for all the students who came to the event!

Here at William Beanes, we continue to foster family and community partnerships through our Family Night events. In October, we hosted a Family Literacy Night, where all our students received an activity kit to take home or pick up. We read Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White and our students and families were able to engage in a reading activity and get creative painting pumpkins together. These events provide our students with a different mode of instruction and allows our parents to become partners in education. We are very excited for our next Family Night event!

To raise awareness for Bullying Prevention Month in October, our Community School hosted a Bullying Prevention Parent Workshop. The workshop was facilitated by our mental health clinician and our School Counselor. Parents were able to learn about the signs of bullying and how to talk to their child about bullying. We also had a discussion about the rise of cyberbullying and developing strategies to prevent cyberbullying in our school.

Wow! In October the district discontinued the afternoon supper meals due to food shortages. Principal Simley and CSC Meakes have been working hard to find ways to continue to provide our scholars with this support, one thing we learned about the pandemic is that our families have needs. For some students those afternoon meals are their dinner for the day. We have been in communication with several partners but today Shepherd's Table dropped boxes of snacks/fruits/cheese to provide meals for 600 students. The organization will be using the rest of their budget for the fiscal year to put $1000 towards our after school supper meal initiative. On top of the food donation they created a wishlist to support us with PPE and other needs! We are so grateful for this generous donation. We will continue to work hard to serve your students and be the hub of the community.