Athena Ayers, an instructional coach at Carver STEAM Academy, was told unexpectedly by her landlord that she and her daughter, Micah, 5, had just 12 days to find a new place to live. With such…
Urban Recipe Cooperative has launched a food co-op at Slater Elementary School. The co-op meets bi-weekly and families from all PBSA schools are invited to join.
A group of stakeholders, organized by Purpose Built Schools Atlanta, is working swiftly to do something extraordinary: Temporarily relocate 260+ low-income families in a coordinated manner so that their children can continue to attend their current neighborhood schools while a dilapidated housing development is rebuilt.
Last fall, Purpose Built Schools Atlanta partnered with the Boys & Girls Club of Metro Atlanta to provide a “learning pod” for approximately 70 students who were identified as having the potential to benefit from additional learning resources in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. 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.
A recent CDC study showed that providing children who have experienced trauma with supportive, nurturing relationships can help prevent the long lasting effects of childhood trauma. A large percentage of students in south Atlanta have experienced childhood trauma, so Purpose Built Schools partnered with COR, an organization that offers social-emotional support programming to trauma-impacted students marginalized by poverty and race-based educational inequities.
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. 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.
When a student at Price Middle School was having trouble forming relationships with her peers, one of her teachers suspected she may benefit from counseling and made a referral to the school’s CHRIS 180 therapist. After several months in individual and group counseling sessions at school with her CHRIS 180 therapist, she experienced dramatic, positive improvements.
DeAndrea Byrd began making specialty tutus on the weekend to entertain her young daughters while she worked in her salon. “I just made them to keep my kids busy while I worked with clients on…
“AVLF and Purpose Built Schools helped me a lot,” says Ms. Pearson. “I really do appreciate how strangers went out of their way to help a single mother like me. Their hearts are genuine and pure.”
