School Partnership Team

Public schools affect everyone in their neighborhood. Most of the kids in your neighborhood go to one. They produce most of the people who will someday serve and lead the businesses and organizations of the neighborhood. A website announces the school’s “grade” every year, which is one of the first things that people who are moving to the area look at if they have kids; which means that school grades directly affect the property values of the homes, businesses, and organizations around them. Like I said, public schools affect everyone in their neighborhood.

There is no better way to foster a deep and meaningful connection with our neighbors than to be a good neighbor to the local public schools. There are kids there from families of a wide variety of socioeconomic statuses. There are kids there with varying degrees of academic acumen—some who need to be given challenges to help push them to achieve new heights, some who need some extra help from caring mentors and tutors, some who have individualized education plans to help them overcome a diagnosed learning disability, some who need emotional stability because of abuse or neglect in their home, and plenty of other kids in between.

There are teachers, support staff, and administrators who love and care for and coach and teach these students. Some of them are in their first years working in their field, others are new to the school, some have been there for years and years, and others are soon to retire. Some of them are teaching kids to tie their shoes, while others are preparing them for their careers, for military service, or for college.

There are clubs for kids with all kinds of different interests, including groups organized by the students that take time during lunch to study the Bible with no help for any adults. There are team and individual sport athletes, some just playing because their friends are, and others hoping for a college scholarship.

There are neighbors of every race, age, ability, life stage, and area of interest all around us, and our public schools are the places where they intersect the most. Heritage has a tradition of being a good neighbor to our schools, especially because of our proximity to Leila Davis Elementary. As we look forward to emerging from the Coronavirus pandemic in the coming months, there is an opportunity for us to build on that tradition by forming a team that would seek ways for us to be a good neighbor to our schools because of our intentionality rather than simply our proximity.

I hope and pray that God would raise up a team at Heritage that would be willing to seek out the ways that the needs of our neighborhood schools intersect with the resources and abilities of the people of our church. If you sense that God might be calling you to join the team, please let me know by emailing me at matth@heritageumc.com. I can’t wait to see the difference we make!

At my previous church, we had Seminole Heights Elementary come over every year for a sing-along concert to Top 40 songs with words on our screens as a reward for finishing their FSA testing. In this picture they’re dancing and singing along to “Shake it Off,” by Taylor Swift.