INDIANAPOLIS — On a Monday morning at Eleanor Skillen IPS School 34, as students are getting ready for the first lesson of the day, Natalie Swihart is settling into a conversation.
"How is volleyball going?" Swihart asked one of the students.
Swihart is checking in on two fifth-graders to see how life is going.
Here at this school on the east side of Indianapolis, nearly every student is on free or reduced lunch. Administrators describe it as high-poverty, high-need.
"I'm here to ensure that these students aren't falling through the cracks. That is my job," said Swihart, who is the onsite coordinator for "City Connects," a program now in close to 80 schools across the state, that provides individual support plans for each student to make sure they have what they need to succeed inside and outside the classroom.
"If a student is in the classroom every day, that's great, but if they're facing challenges — access to food, or they're not sleeping at night, or facing housing insecurity — it's going to be continuously a challenge," said Jillian Lain, director of City Connects, which is headquartered at the Center for Vibrant Schools at Marian University. The program is now in its third school year in Indiana after originating in Boston.
Finding out what students need requires getting to know their situation. So, with the help of classroom teachers, Swihart does her homework on all of them.
"Every single student," Swihart said.
That's more than 400 students from pre-K to sixth grade. She then works with community partners to connect students and their families to the necessary resources like food, social services or anything else the family might need.
"I also do small groups, so a lot of social skills, anxiety groups, students who have lost loved ones," Swihart said.
Principal Katie Douglass said the support is critical.
"It's very important that we're supporting the whole child," Douglass said. "When we're able to support students as people — not just with their reading skills and their math skills — that tells me they'll be able to go on and be successful later in life."
Lain said the program's budget is about $20,000 per year, per school and funded through a combination of school district budgets and grant funding.