School-community partnership to help students succeed at West Ottawa’s Pine Creek
HOLLAND TWP. — A group of local organizations, nonprofits and churches are coming together to provide support for a local elementary school.
A school-community partnership is being established for West Ottawa’s Pine Creek Elementary, led by Movement West Michigan.
Laura Jonker, Movement West Michigan’s director of communication and church engagement, said the goal of the partnership is to build connections to bring additional resources and support to Pine Creek.
“Ultimately, it’s to support the teachers, staff, students and their families with resources beyond what the school itself can provide,” Jonker said. “We really believe the community can flourish when we all come together.”
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Movement West Michigan is a group that exists to unite Christian leaders in the community to work together to help the community flourish, said Executive Director Kory Plockmeyer. In addition to this school partnership, the group has assisted in Afghan refugee resettling, Community Action House’s Food Club and several church initiatives.
“We can do more together than we can on our own,” Plockmeyer said. “We want to see our schools thriving. That happens best when we come together and work across sectors, across lines that divide us from one another.”
The partnership is meant to build off of work done by the Ottawa Community Schools Network in recent years.
“The whole idea is to help students flourish,” Pine Creek Principal Jessica Rios said. “The goal is to encourage families to invest in a child’s education, to encourage students to love coming to school and to help give students and families the supports they need to be successful.”
Pine Creek was chosen for the partnership because of the school’s diversity and socioeconomic status, with a high percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced meals.
An introductory Zoom meeting with community partners was held July 28. There are around a dozen participants who tuned in and are considering being part of the partnership. Jonker said the hope is for that number to continue growing.
Plockmeyer said the partnership will help ensure community partners are helping in the right areas by having a “clear conduit” to communicate needs from school to the community.
Rios said the initial meeting was spent brainstorming easy to “jump right in” with the partnership. That includes things like partners coming to school events, providing classroom supplies, volunteering to read to children or presenting in classrooms to share about different career paths.
“It’s about showing them the learning they’re doing in the classroom connects to the real world they live in,” Rios said. “We hope to have lots of different partners that will be able to lean into us and support us in different ways.”
Rios said having community involvement is key to student success and this partnership will strengthen that involvement.
“I have seen the impact our community can have on our young students and how life changing that can be,” Rios said. “It takes a village, and our village is just amazing.”
— Contact reporter Mitchell Boatman at mboatman@hollandsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter @SentinelMitch.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Community group forming to help students at West Ottawa’s Pine Creek
