United Way Partnering With Schools For ‘Start United’
June 24, 2020 at 10:49 p.m.
United Way Partnering With Schools For ‘Start United’
By David [email protected]
“The schools came to us and wanted to start thinking about how do we begin making connection with some of the children who’ve been out of a consistent routine or format, most of them since March,” Bickel said at the weekly press conference on the COVID-19 pandemic at Warsaw City Hall. “While there are children who are home and in very wonderful families who have been providing structure and routine, there are a number of kids that we know are in need of some reach and action and we’ve been trying to figure out how do we start doing that in a safe and orderly manner, and doing it within State of Indiana guidelines and Health Department guidelines moving forward.”
Start United will begin July 20 and run through Aug. 7, from 7:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. The Warsaw program will be at Lakeview Middle School, while the Wawasee program will be at the new Syracuse Elementary School.
Bickel said the program is looking at 700 elementary-aged children from Warsaw Schools and another 300 from Wawasee. Students in the program will be nominated by the Warsaw and Wawasee school corporations. The age range for Warsaw is kindergarten to sixth grade, and kindergarten to fifth grade for Wawasee. Bussing will be provided by the school corporations.
“So looking at 1,000 kids that we would begin to say, ‘How do we get started?’ The schools have been in contact with most of the families within their system, and the kids that we’re looking at are ones that we just believe are going to be least ready on that first day of school in August. That they’re going to need some help,” Bickel said.
To the schools’ credit, he said, the schools came to United Way and said, “How do we look at doing something this summer that’s different, that isn’t just summer school, that is a little bit more of a camp-like atmosphere that could get some of these kids reconnected? Let them have a space where they can come in and start to get back into the rhythm of every day?”
Students will get two meals every day – breakfast and lunch.
“But then a heavy emphasis of working with partners from Bowen Center, with the counselors within the schools, to really have more of a calming and kind of healing piece to this,” Bickel said.
Giving credit to the schools’ superintendents, he said, “We are really looking here in Kosciusko County to be at the forefront of communities that are going to step forward for our kids and not just wait until that magical day in August when school starts and think, ‘Hey, schools are open, it’s all good again.’ We’re going to take three weeks this summer and really take the kids we think are most in need of our community really reaching out and wrapping their arms around them and saying, ‘OK, let’s get back on track. How do we do this? How do we give you some space to feel safe again and get comfortable and get back into that routine?’”
There will be a number of ways the community can be a part of Start United. One way is that the United Way will have volunteer readers come in to do morning stories via Zoom or other technology to the classrooms. “So we’re going to need a lot of volunteers, probably somewhere between 100 to 120 volunteers to hit all of our classrooms consistently and to do those stories,” Bickel said.
Classroom sizes are intentionally going to be a lot smaller – 12 to 14 children – because of COVID-19 and social distancing, but Bickel said they feel that will create a more intimate setting between the teachers and students.
At the beginning of July, Bickel said they’re going to start a significant drive to provide each child in Start United a “Ready To Go” bag. It will be filled with school supplies and hygiene items so the students are ready for the start of school. Volunteers will be needed to help assemble bags.
Information on volunteering will be available by reaching out to the United Way through its website by the end of this week. For a parent to register their child for the Start United program, they can go directly to the Warsaw or Wawasee schools’ webpages.
“We really see this as the next phase of the starting to rebuild and come back together. How we take care of our children will be just a really significant part of that,” Bickel said.
Asked about Tippecanoe Valley Schools participating in the program, Bickel said an invitation was extended to TVSC.
“All of the Tippecanoe Valley summer programs are going to stay online at this point, so they’re doing that,” he said, adding that they are talking with Valley about getting some Ready To Go bags to the right children who need them. “We think that (it’s) likely we’ll be able to raise more than enough (money) for those kids and make sure that we do reach out to Mentone and Akron because those places are really important to us. But the (Valley) school board decided they’re not going to do it in-person so that made some of what we’re trying to do a little harder.”
Grant money from the Lilly Endowment Fund will help pay for the program.
As for safety of the students participating in Start United, Bickel said, “A 1,000 kids sounds like a lot of kids ... We think in a lot of ways this could be kind of a rehearsal so that our rehearsal isn’t the first day of school where we’re trying to figure” it all out. “We’re thinking what this could function as is almost a way that we could begin working those protocols: how are we doing it, how does that work to be safe. And there are so many questions out there.”
He said School Superintendents Dr. David Hoffert and Dr. Tom Edington would have more of the specifics, but he would “really love” for “our community to be on the forefront of figuring things out so that when we get back to school in August we can really go about learning and rebuilding and not have to take that first month of school to figure out” how to run things.
The United Way of Kosciusko website can be found at www.unitedwaykosciusko.org; Warsaw Schools at www.warsawschools.org; and Wawasee Schools at www.wawasee.k12.in.us.
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“The schools came to us and wanted to start thinking about how do we begin making connection with some of the children who’ve been out of a consistent routine or format, most of them since March,” Bickel said at the weekly press conference on the COVID-19 pandemic at Warsaw City Hall. “While there are children who are home and in very wonderful families who have been providing structure and routine, there are a number of kids that we know are in need of some reach and action and we’ve been trying to figure out how do we start doing that in a safe and orderly manner, and doing it within State of Indiana guidelines and Health Department guidelines moving forward.”
Start United will begin July 20 and run through Aug. 7, from 7:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. The Warsaw program will be at Lakeview Middle School, while the Wawasee program will be at the new Syracuse Elementary School.
Bickel said the program is looking at 700 elementary-aged children from Warsaw Schools and another 300 from Wawasee. Students in the program will be nominated by the Warsaw and Wawasee school corporations. The age range for Warsaw is kindergarten to sixth grade, and kindergarten to fifth grade for Wawasee. Bussing will be provided by the school corporations.
“So looking at 1,000 kids that we would begin to say, ‘How do we get started?’ The schools have been in contact with most of the families within their system, and the kids that we’re looking at are ones that we just believe are going to be least ready on that first day of school in August. That they’re going to need some help,” Bickel said.
To the schools’ credit, he said, the schools came to United Way and said, “How do we look at doing something this summer that’s different, that isn’t just summer school, that is a little bit more of a camp-like atmosphere that could get some of these kids reconnected? Let them have a space where they can come in and start to get back into the rhythm of every day?”
Students will get two meals every day – breakfast and lunch.
“But then a heavy emphasis of working with partners from Bowen Center, with the counselors within the schools, to really have more of a calming and kind of healing piece to this,” Bickel said.
Giving credit to the schools’ superintendents, he said, “We are really looking here in Kosciusko County to be at the forefront of communities that are going to step forward for our kids and not just wait until that magical day in August when school starts and think, ‘Hey, schools are open, it’s all good again.’ We’re going to take three weeks this summer and really take the kids we think are most in need of our community really reaching out and wrapping their arms around them and saying, ‘OK, let’s get back on track. How do we do this? How do we give you some space to feel safe again and get comfortable and get back into that routine?’”
There will be a number of ways the community can be a part of Start United. One way is that the United Way will have volunteer readers come in to do morning stories via Zoom or other technology to the classrooms. “So we’re going to need a lot of volunteers, probably somewhere between 100 to 120 volunteers to hit all of our classrooms consistently and to do those stories,” Bickel said.
Classroom sizes are intentionally going to be a lot smaller – 12 to 14 children – because of COVID-19 and social distancing, but Bickel said they feel that will create a more intimate setting between the teachers and students.
At the beginning of July, Bickel said they’re going to start a significant drive to provide each child in Start United a “Ready To Go” bag. It will be filled with school supplies and hygiene items so the students are ready for the start of school. Volunteers will be needed to help assemble bags.
Information on volunteering will be available by reaching out to the United Way through its website by the end of this week. For a parent to register their child for the Start United program, they can go directly to the Warsaw or Wawasee schools’ webpages.
“We really see this as the next phase of the starting to rebuild and come back together. How we take care of our children will be just a really significant part of that,” Bickel said.
Asked about Tippecanoe Valley Schools participating in the program, Bickel said an invitation was extended to TVSC.
“All of the Tippecanoe Valley summer programs are going to stay online at this point, so they’re doing that,” he said, adding that they are talking with Valley about getting some Ready To Go bags to the right children who need them. “We think that (it’s) likely we’ll be able to raise more than enough (money) for those kids and make sure that we do reach out to Mentone and Akron because those places are really important to us. But the (Valley) school board decided they’re not going to do it in-person so that made some of what we’re trying to do a little harder.”
Grant money from the Lilly Endowment Fund will help pay for the program.
As for safety of the students participating in Start United, Bickel said, “A 1,000 kids sounds like a lot of kids ... We think in a lot of ways this could be kind of a rehearsal so that our rehearsal isn’t the first day of school where we’re trying to figure” it all out. “We’re thinking what this could function as is almost a way that we could begin working those protocols: how are we doing it, how does that work to be safe. And there are so many questions out there.”
He said School Superintendents Dr. David Hoffert and Dr. Tom Edington would have more of the specifics, but he would “really love” for “our community to be on the forefront of figuring things out so that when we get back to school in August we can really go about learning and rebuilding and not have to take that first month of school to figure out” how to run things.
The United Way of Kosciusko website can be found at www.unitedwaykosciusko.org; Warsaw Schools at www.warsawschools.org; and Wawasee Schools at www.wawasee.k12.in.us.
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