Strengthening Schools Through Community Collaboration

In this episode, James Ellout, Vice President of Community Impact at United Way of Northeast Floridajoins Dr. Robert Balfanz to talk about how community organizations can partner with schools to increase student success.

Four years after the height of the pandemic, schools are still facing high rates of absenteeism, declining academic achievement, and growing well-being challenges. These needs are often too great for schools to address alone.

James shares how United Way of Northeast Florida is helping bring community partners and schools together to expand capacity, provide timely supports, and ensure that every student has the opportunity to thrive.

Listen now to hear how these partnerships are helping schools reimagine what it takes to support all young people on the path to success.

Transcript

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Hello, and welcome to Season 4, Episode 4, of the Designing Education Podcast. I'm Dr. Robert Balfanz, Director of the Everyone Graduate Center at Johns Hopkins University.

In this episode, we are talking with James Ellout, Vice President of Community Impact for the United Way of Northeast Florida. We will be talking about how community organizations can partner with schools to increase student success.

We are excited to have him as part of our continuing series of conversations with education leaders, thinkers, and practitioners from across the country about designing education. We are talking with them about what it will take to create an education system that truly empowers and educates all young people.

Four years after the height of the pandemic, many of our nation's schools are still responding to unprecedented levels of student need, seeing high rates of chronic absenteeism, declining academic achievement, and growing well-being challenges. The scale and scope of student need is difficult and sometimes nearly impossible for schools to address alone.

That is why we are looking forward to talking with James today, and to learn more about the exciting work being done by the United Way of Northeast Florida to bring community partners and schools together to address these challenges and support and enable student success.

We can't wait to start the conversation, but before we do, we want to take a moment to remind you to subscribe to the Designing Education podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe to Designing Education and never miss an episode.

Welcome, James. It's wonderful to have you here today.

James Ellout: Thanks for having me, Bob. Great to be with you.

Bob Balfanz: We're gonna have a good conversation, and we start all our podcasts by asking our guests, when you were in high school, what was a good day?

James Ellout: Bob, I think there's a mix of an answer to give, and I only say that because I attended two different high schools that were significantly different. I attended an additional neighborhood public school in Pontiac, Michigan, where I was born and raised. And then my junior and senior year, I attended an all-boys Catholic school, which was very, very different. But there were some similarities, so to try to merge those two high school experiences into what does one great day look like, I would say some deep, meaningful connections with my peers in terms of just having that social community of classmates to be immersed in, being challenged intellectually by my teachers to think about the world and the subject matters that they were teaching me, differently, and then also being able to bring my full self in terms of my questions, my curiosity, and what my strengths were as a student to the learning environment. Being able to do those three things in a day definitely ended in me feeling like it was a good, meaningful day.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: What's so interesting and powerful about that, James, is that's a pretty good description of what we tend to call school connectedness these days, and it's one of the things we're going to talk about. But that captures that, good peer relationships and the idea of peer support, like, something that's meaningful that you're there, you're not just there to sort of, you know, punch the clock, and then also that you feel a sense of welcome, right? And being in a place where, you know, you're sort of wanted and needed, right?

James Ellout: And thinking about that question, I reflected on just in my experience, the number of adults on the school campus, not necessarily just my class teachers, but the cafeteria worker, or the hall monitor,  who saw me, or who knew my mother, or knew my family, and they saw themselves as witnesses and also people responsible for my success, and so if that meant holding me accountable or encouraging me, I was able to get that from so many different areas, on one school campus throughout my journey. I think it's really meaningful, and students today still need to be able to have those support systems and those connection points.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Yeah, so, so important, right? We talk about, you know, people as individuals, but they're really also the web of their connections. So, let's get going, and to start, let's just hear a little bit about, the United Way of Northeast Florida, its educational mission, who it serves. Why you do what you do.

James Ellout: United Way of Northeast Florida has been around for 101 years in Northeast Florida. We celebrated 100 years last year, and our mission is to solve our community's toughest challenges by connecting people, resources, and ideas.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: That’s powerful.

James Ellout: It is very powerful, and It is very, bold. And it is one that is not shying away from challenge. When you think about dealing with the toughest challenges that a community faces, there's leadership required, there's courage that is connected to that, and I think we've count on ourselves as being an organization that needs to step up to, address challenges. And when we think about the education space, there are a number of programs we lead in-house that do just that. 

One of the programs we have in our organization is Full-Service Schools, and that has been around for over 30 years, really focusing on those non-academic barriers that students have, and their well-being and mental health. So, we are a lead administrator, along with the City of Jacksonville, and also the Duval County Public School Systems, guiding what does it look like to support students and being able to have access to free mental health services and basic wraparound support so that they can be in the classroom and to show up, and learn. 

And then we have our grant portfolio. We are, you know, a large grant maker in the community, and education is a key pillar under our youth opportunity focus area, our focus, our impact area. And, we have nearly 10 organizations that we currently are funding that are doing work in the school systems that align with our mission, and that have strategic importance to the district and also to our organization's aims. 

And then we also have Achievers for Life as our, additional signature program that's focused on transitioning from elementary to middle school successfully, and also transitioning from middle school to high school successfully, knowing that those middle three years is very critical, so having the supports, the interventions, and the tools for students to be successful is really a key mission of that program.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: So let's dig a little deeper there. So, what are the real strengths that you're bringing out of a long-standing community organization that's been there for many years and also leans in, is that you can sustain programs much longer often than a district alone can, given the high turnover we often see in districts. So, I first got to be connected with the great work of the United Way of Northeast Florida through your Achievers for Life program.  Which, you know, goes back to the, you know, mid-00s of 2000, right? So can you just tell us a little bit more about, give us a little more flavor of what the program actually does, the partners you bring together, and some of the successes it's had.

James Ellout: Achievers for Life has been around for nearly 20 years. It's been 18 years since the program was started in 2007. The original model had 3 layers to it. It was Ssudent-centered and focused supports on the school campus, and then there was this community-family-based approach, thinking about family stability and success that directly draws a line to student success. And then the other piece was mentorship.

The pandemic had a big impact on us being able to sustain that third leg, so that has not been a large component of the model, but the first two still remain, and we try to weave in mentorship where possible. Like I mentioned with the United Way's mission, it's all about doing it in partnership. It about the collective use of the strengths of other organizations and not trying to go at it alone. So, we have two additional partners that are critical to this work, and that is Communities and Schools of Jacksonville, in addition to Jewish Family and Community Services, who are our key partners in executing the program, developing strategy, building relationships, and really making a difference. We have Jewish families on one end who was doing intake, family assessments, making referrals when families are in need of mental health services, or, at risk of losing their home, or in need of food, or a student needs uniforms. The organization is right there to support the family, especially so we don't have those uninterrupted moves throughout the school. We have a student moving from school to school because their family situation is shaken.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: And that's actually huge. People, you know, may or may not fully realize, but there's, you know, in a lot of communities, there is a lot of housing instability. And, you know, students have to, in the middle of the year, go from school to school. That's a really hard transition. But also, oftentimes there’s  days are lost between School A and School B,  that aren't even captured by the data system, right? There's, things that are being done to keep kids in, you know, stable in their housing so they don't have to change schools in the year is really a big deal.

James Ellout: And I hadn't thought deeply about that, but if you have a student that's moving from school to school, that in and of itself can cause absenteeism to occur because of the family moving. Then, having to figure out, alright, am I situated and stable in a new living situation, going through the process of transferring or registering that student with that school could take however many days, so that in itself, adds days to that count which we don't want to see. So when we can keep a family, especially for reasons that are preventable, in place, it is really important to be able to do so. So, that is one key component that we really focus on, and that means we have staff on campus full-time, thinking about the family, connecting with the family, going to homes, visiting with families on a regular basis.

Communities and Schools is our school-based partner that is on campus, supporting the students through those A, B, and Cs. Being a bridge between the family and the school, translating what's going on, helping the students set goals, being a champion for them, advocating for them when necessary with teachers and principals, and really driving their academic success and their potential, by really focusing on what's happening in the school.  And so those two levers are really important, and being able to have full-time dedicated staff on both of those ends is really, I believe, part of our secret sauce.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Yeah, yeah.

James Ellout: And the schools value that, because we're there every day, and we have that… multi-dimensional approach.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: And what's so important about that, and that's really the central thing we're talking here about today is that  it's not just giving schools access to  other resources, but it's actually bringing the people into the school that can help manage and run and get kids those resources because it is that lack of people power. It's not for their lack of not wanting to do it, or, you know, not trying their best to do it. But, you know, everyone in that school has another job.  And then they're asked on top of that to help students, you know, meet their challenges, and everyone does the best they can, but without that additional people power, that Achievers for Life and the work of United Way Northeast Florida brings in with your partners it doesn't happen to the degree it needs to happen. So that additional people in schools is another, I think, big idea.

James Ellout: Yes.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: So another place where I recently intersected with you on the work being done was some of the work you're currently doing around chronic absenteeism, which we know in many places doubled after the pandemic. And again, sometimes for old reasons, sometimes for new reasons, but at a scale that, again, really stressed and strained schools to be able to react to it. Because, of a middle or a high school of any size, or even a big elementary school, you could easily be talking about 200 kids or more, right? Systems weren't designed for that. So, what are some of the things, you've been working with, or working with your partners or with the schools on to find ways to sort of address this challenge of the sort of the post-pandemic surge and chronic absenteeism?

James Ellout: Here in Duval County, Bob, we have seen that double-digit increase post-pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, Chronic absenteeism was around 15%, just above 15%. It shot up to nearly 30% in 2022 to 2023 school year, and then we saw the same number again in 2023-2024.  We wanted to be responsive to that real-time data, and then the district also sounded the alarm that this was really important to focus on. So, we did some research and made some shifts to align our next round of grant making, which we did in 2024, to include a layer for organizations to focus on chronic absenteeism.  And then we also took that into Achievers for Life by joining the National Meta Network on Attendance. That has really been helpful to learn with other partners across the district, school districts, organizations who are really tackling chronic absenteeism.

One of our staff members really brought up a great idea. They were engaging students through this Ambassador program leveraging student leadership, and we thought that was a great vehicle to learn from but also center the topic of attendance with the students directly themselves. And I really think it goes to that piece of having strong, supportive relationships.

I can recall from my educational experience, especially when I got to high school or in middle school being brought into conversations, having focus groups, or being surveyed and really deeply asked about what my perceptions were of my school experience, what my feedback would be, and being given the chance to be empowered to make decisions and to inform how my school experience for myself and my peers looked. So that was one of the things that stuck out to me the most is we can’t just look at data and strive to solve this problem of chronic absenteeism without the students themselves.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: I was going say, again, that's very powerful and very, you know, we've seen in other places, too, that, like, adults, again, doing the best they can under tough circumstances, want to get right to what should we do? What's an intervention? We can implement, let's get going. And if they don't take that step to talk to students and really work with students they miss as many times as they hit, right? And then they get frustrated, as we all would. Like, we put all that effort in, and we moved at one point and not fully realizing that maybe they did that because they were just a little off-target.

Have you learned anything that stood out to you from these, you know, bringing students in that, like, helped refine, like, you know, where we should focus that we might not have thought about otherwise?

James Ellout: With Duval County being such a  large space geographically, the way in which transportation operates here has been a challenge, and there's a perspective and an angle that I've gotten from listening to students and engaging with our staff  who have been asking students, you know, questions, and even talking to their parents around what are barriers to students being able to come to school? And to hear that even for a student their parents working remotely from home could cause a challenge for them being able to show up to school. If they wake up late, or their parent is tied into being online, at a certain given point in time, they don't have the luxury to be able to stop and to take them, because they may be, you know, late to the start in the morning. 

The support that young people are giving their siblings that are younger than them to get to and from school, or having to be responsive to siblings, or even a parent who may be ill, and how that impacts being able to show up to school. Those are things I've learned over the last year, year and a half, in a way that I probably wouldn't had I really listened and looked to the get the students' perspective on how they're seeing challenges with attendance. Not to mention, you know, is school the environment in which students feel like they are itching to be, and that they would be able to belong in because they want the conditions are there for them to belong.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: I think that's a perfect example, right? Because sometimes when students are absent, the adults tend to think, especially, a middle or a high school student if they wanted to, they could have got here. They were choosing not to, right? And therefore, that shades how I react to it. Not recognizing, as you said, that many times there's sibling or elder or parental care issues. Where the kids, in a way, are being heroic for their family stepping in doing what needs to be done to help others. And then, you combine that with the transportation difficulties. Maybe they missed the bus, or the line, or the connection. And then on top of it, in some of the places we've worked overtime, this is shifting some, but not everywhere, kids get yelled at for being late right? So, you put that together in a kid's mind of, well, I'm doing this to help my family, I missed my bus, because they're not good connections, and if I go late, I'll be yelled at. It's not crazy for them to conclude it was better to be a quote-unquote sick that day, right?

James Ellout: Right.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: So, that's, again, where we really have to understand from their shoes what's going on to really get at how we can get it back up to where it is still essential for them to be in school every day, as best they can.

James Ellout: There’s a lax in attendance in schools that  I don't know if we've acknowledged deeply. COVID presented a number of things. There's a lot to learn that's great that came out of COVID, but a byproduct  is there's a sense among some families and even, you know, students themselves that it's  easy to re-engage with school because of technology, or the fact that I was able to be remote and learn, and even parents oriented to this more of a lax sense of being connected to school through technology. So, if I'm able to log in and make up an assignment, or my physical presence isn't demanded in the same way because I'm still connected to school at my fingertips. And so, there's definitely educating work that schools and organizations have with parents to be able to help them understand the shift that has now taken place now that school full-time is back operating in person. And I think schools came back that transition to understanding that shift may not have been 100% successful, because there’s this lax perception of what needs to be connected to school.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: What's interesting about that, and it's going to actually get us full circle to how we started with what made a good day for you, was that, we do tend to emphasize and it's appropriately so. I'm not the sort of learning connection of being in school, the importance to be in school, because that's where you learn. But then again, to the point, but if the assignments are online, and I can do my work at home, maybe I'm not missing as much as I used to. But what that overlooks and that gets back to my next question, and also connecting back to the beginning, is this idea of school connectedness, and that many there are many good things about school  that go above and beyond a place of learning, even though if that's first and foremost. It is, as you said, this place of social connection, and we see, the really distressing spike in, sort of students with, depression or anxiety, or even worse, right? And sort of mental health challenges that in part have been traced to the loneliness of the online world, if you will, for lack of a better description.

So, to connect these dots and talk about a final United Way of Northeast Florida effort is, I know they recently joined the Grad Partnership, one of the things we also work on here at the Everyone Graduates Center to be a local implementation partner to implement the next generation of the early warning system approach used in Achievers for Life and elsewhere, as much work we’re calling Student Success Systems. And one of the features that's sort of like the what's new about the next generation is really this upfront stress on the idea of the importance of school connectedness. As you said in the beginning that students have supportive adult and peer groups. They engage in activities they see are meaningful to others, so if I miss school, I'll miss out on that activity.  And they always feel welcome for who they are, right? They're not gonna get yelled at because they're late. Someone's gonna say Yeah. How can I help you, you know, what's going on? Tell me what's happening. How can we figure this out?  I know it's just getting started, but as you're looking at it, what are your thoughts on how this addition of this idea of school connectedness might provide another layer in our efforts as we work with schools to create places where kids want to be, and kids have the supports they need to succeed when they're there?

James Ellout: Bob, I would say we are thrilled and honored to be a part of the Grad Partnership. It is cutting edge, in a way that this work forces us to really sit with the idea that schools are not the same.  And we have to wrestle with the fact that schools are not the same as they were prior to COVID. Looking at the reasons why and being very intentional around doing something about it.

I believe that for United Way and our partners, the Grad Partnership is forcing us to ask the frequent question that leads us back to the the concepts of student connectedness. Do students feel like they belong? How do we know? How is that being measured? When was the last time we got direct voice from students? How are we, you know, doing the same thing around connecting this with students' parents and families? How are we also then circling back to educate our school partners on the ways in which we are able to capture and leverage student voice and understand student connectedness to help be a bridge for them.

And then being able to think about meaningful change ideas that we can test that will push on this effort to improve our schools, and especially attendance, in a way that we weren't thinking about prior, and I think that that is something I believe is a gift from being a part of the Grad Partnership and the conceptual framework and the tools and resources that come along with it, along with the research that you and your team have built.  It's being able to really start there, and that's where I believe we are pushing ourselves every day is to start with that student connectedness in this piece.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: That's wonderful. I really look forward to learning together with you how to make this work. I want to just shift this here as we're getting near the end to a little bit of the bigger picture. For some of the folks that are listening in and trying to figure out how they can maybe do what United Way of Northeast Florida has done is that, what are some of the key lessons you've learned regarding what does it take to bring schools and community partners together? Because sometimes this has not worked as well as it should. And sometimes, even when we talk to schools, it seems like every principal at one point in their 30-year career had a bad experience with one community partner, and it sort of made them gun-shy for the next 20 years. So, what does it take for schools and community partners to work well together so, really, they are making, 1 plus 1 equals 3?

James Ellout: On the community partners side, the key to success has to start with community partners deeply understanding the conditions of schools and the challenges that they're facing. Because a community partner's role is to come in to add hands towards the solution of addressing the things that schools are struggling with. And so, being able to really understand the state of schools, what is in a school's improvement plan, what has past performance looked like, and then what are the strengths that the organization has, that they can bring to the table that helps be a part of moving the school forward. I think it feels very  in motion with where the school is heading, it doesn't feel like something else, or contrary to the school's mission, when you're able to come and speak directly to, in the same language of where the school is it makes it a lot easier, because it doesn't feel like you're taking away, or that you're not in tune with the school. 

And the school side is really being open, to know that the schools exist in communities that are connected to greater communities. And so being able to have an organization come on campus, be an extension of your campus, and serving your students it's only the benefit of the school and the students by having them be president, so I think it's being able to understand the strengths of those organizations, articulate what the school needs are, and be open to have that partnership be centered on the student and their potential is what I believe is the magic of being able to have community and school partnerships work well.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: That was so informative and well said. This idea that schools are in a community, and again, it all brings me also back to your beginning, that, sometimes we tend to think of these as individual organizations, but they really only exist in a web of relationships with each other, right? And it's building that making that web strong both ways is really what leads to 1 plus 1 equals 3, and not, sort of disappointment on either side.

James Ellout: And that is important for the students to be recognized by schools as just an accumulation of the community and the families that exist in that community.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Yeah, absolutely. That's wonderful. 

So, we've added a new closing question. We have our opening question, and now we have a closing question that we are asking of all our podcast guests, which is, “What makes you optimistic about the work currently being done to increase student success in Northeast Florida and more broadly?”

James Ellout: I'm optimistic about the work to increase student success, because the adults that I've been working with have recognized that we have to be able to recognize when it's time to get out of the way.  You know, get of our own ways.

It goes back to the point around, students and families being a part of the process. When we're able to maintain that, we're able to really continue our efforts towards transforming our students, and transforming our schools, and so the more and more conversations I'm having that adults get it, and they agree, and the light bulb is going off, that we need to include this focus on students and their belonging and connectedness to schools. And them participating in the process as being indispensable, that experience over this last year has confirmed for me that we're on the right track, because more adults are easily coming to that conclusion, and they get it, and they've also began to realize and see what happens when you do bring students and families in. The way that the process is lifted up, the magic that happens. When those that you are looking to serve, are at the table it makes all the difference. So that's what makes me optimistic.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Yeah, that's wonderful and very exciting, and it just triggered an image in my mind that 20, 30 years ago, going back 100 years or 200 years before that schools sort of had a monopoly on learning. If you wanted to learn, you had to go to a school. And maybe over time, that made them, a little bit arrogant, and a little bit like, you conform to us, because we have the monopoly. And that's not the case anymore, right? And now I think that's a good thing. Because it means we have to create a community of learners, not just I've got a resource you want, come and get it. I'll give it to you how I think best, right? So, I think that's maybe a reason that's driving some of these new ways of seeing that we really have got to be inclusive of our learners in a community of learners, and not just we have a resource we're going to give you.

This has been a wonderful conversation, very deep and very informative, for myself and for our listeners. Is there anything else you'd like to share or tell our audience, and are there websites people could go to, or for resources or to learn more?

James Ellout: Yes, Bob, I would. The last thing I was going to share is that in 2024, United Way did an independent ecological study on Achievers for Life to look at the program's performance and that was in partnership with the Jacksonville Public Education Fund. They performed the study, and it was very reassuring to see that students who are participants in the program, they felt a higher connection to the staff and the program itself than they did the schools, especially post-COVID.

That was great to hear, but it also it goes back to our early conversation around the students they still need to feel connected to the schools, not just the program, but there were some bright spots from that study that we're using as we continue our work with the Grad Partnership and look towards the future, and it was very, very encouraging. And one of the reasons originally that Achievers for Life started is because the graduation rate was so low in Duval County, and that has gone to the 90 percentile.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: That's amazing. That's wonderful.

James Ellout: I think it was 60, 60 is somewhere there when it, when we started. That was something that was on my mind that I wanted to share.

Obviously, listeners can go to United Way Northeast Florida's website. There's some information there on our program, and we're going to be adding more. But for me, a resource that I've really enjoyed in our work that has been centered around attendance is Attendance Works.  Great toolkits and great research that we've been able to look at and use for our efforts here in Duval County.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: Well, thank you again, James. This has been a wonderful conversation, and we wish the continued success for United Way of Northeast Florida and all your great programs to bring community partners and schools together to enable student success.

James Ellout: Thank you for having me, Bob. Great talking to you.

Bob Balfanz, Johns Hopkins, EGC: To learn more about Student Success Systems and the Grad Partnership, you can visit its website at gradpartnership.org.

To conclude, as we have heard today that more students will succeed in school and beyond if we can bring schools and community partners together in thoughtful ways. This increases the capacity of schools to provide all students with the supports they need to succeed when they need them.

Our schools are not designed to effectively support all their students, to enable them to attend every day, focus in class, and succeed in school, regardless of external circumstances or their level of prior preparation.  Especially now, when it is too often the case, that the number of students needing support can be in the hundreds. Yet at the same time, we live in an era when all students need to not only graduate from high school, and as we've heard, much progress has been made in Duval County, but placed on a pathway to adult success. This means in many schools, the existing staff needs to be supported by additional adults from the community.

Many schools also need capacity-building supports to implement student success systems, which enable them to progress monitor all students on key indicators of attendance, engagement, and academic success  so they can intervene at the first sign of trouble, not after the student has already missed school for weeks, is in a mental health crisis, or failed a course.

That's why it was so exciting to hear from James today and learn from the great work being done by the United Way of Northeast Florida to effectively embed community partners in schools as capacity extenders and builders. Their experience, impacts, and long-term commitment to their schools and community show it can be done.

As we close, we want to ask you to please subscribe to Designing Education to stay up to date on all the revolutionary work happening in education. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a 5-star review. Also, please share the show with a friend or a colleague, or on social media.

This has been Robert Balfanz for the Everyone Graduate Center, thanking everyone for listening. I invite you to listen to the other episodes of our Designing Education series wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Onward, and be well!