Vancouver Public Schools is adding Family-Community Resource Centers at Hough and Truman elementary schools for the 2016-17 school year. That will bring its total of resource centers to 14 elementary schools, two middle schools, two high schools and a mobile unit.
The centers provide students with resources including after-school enrichment programs, food, clothing, school supplies, health services, dental care and programs to keep homeless kids in their classrooms. Resources at the family level include emergency housing, job assistance, early childhood education, family activity nights and GED preparation.
Hough’s resource coordinator will work full time, while Truman’s coordinator will start half time, but eventually will be a full-time position. Both will be 10-month positions.
Previously, the district’s resource centers were funded through Title I. Now they are funded from the district’s general budget. That change was made when the district decided that offering resource centers district-wide by 2020 would be part of its strategic plan, said Tamara Shoup, who directs the district’s resource centers.
VPS Family-Community Resource Centers
• Purpose: To help children succeed by removing barriers and connecting families with available community resources including homework help, school supplies, health services, dental care, clothing, food, emergency housing, job assistance, early childhood education and more.
• Available at 14 elementary schools: Sarah J. Anderson, Fruit Valley, Harney, Hazel Dell, Hough, King, Lincoln, Marshall, Minnehaha, Ogden, Roosevelt, Truman, Walnut Grove and Washington; two middle schools: Discovery and McLoughlin; and two high schools: Hudson’s Bay and Fort Vancouver; and a mobile resource center.
• Assisted by dozens of community partners and faith-based organizations and hundreds of donors.
• Learn more at www.vansd.org/fcrc
The resource center at Hough Elementary will share a space with the Hough Foundation, which has had a Family Service Center in the school since 1992 when businessman and former Hough student Paul Christensen founded the foundation.
Previously, the foundation funded, supervised and managed a resource coordinator, but the district and foundation have “been talking for a couple of years now about the opportunity to have a district resource coordinator there integrated into a larger team,” Shoup said. “Starting this year, the individual we hire will be a district employee.”
The Hough Foundation will continue to pay for a half-time coordinator to administer its enrichment programs and continue working with the PTSA, said Jill Campbell, the foundation’s executive director.
The foundation also will continue paying for its after-school enrichment programs: a glee instructor who teaches vocals and movement and an instructor for the Brazilian drumming group.
For the upcoming school year, Campbell hopes to add an program to teach students how to operate sound and lighting boards “to appeal to students who want to work behind the scenes at performances and events.”
Campbell spoke about the work of the Hough Foundation’s resource center for the past 24 years. She said the district “liked what we were doing and spread it out in the Vancouver school system” in its resource centers.
Both Shoup and Campbell emphasized that the district and the foundation will work together in the shared space.
“We’ll want to put the frosting on the cake,” Campbell said. “We want the Hough kids to walk out in fifth grade with an amazing experience looking forward to middle school.”
“We’ve committed to having a resource center presence through our staff at both Hough and Truman during the start of school,” Shoup said. “Within a few weeks of school starting, we should be ready to go.”
If Vancouver Public Schools families have needs to address before then, Shoup said they should contact the district’s mobile resource coordinator, Nicole Loran-Graham at 360-313-4724.
