Jenkins Independent and Letcher County Schools launched FSCS in a context in which schools were, in many ways, already serving as resource hubs for the community. Immediately after the traumatic floods in late July 2022, schools and their communities came together to support families who had lost everything. During the ongoing recovery, schools across Letcher County have supported each other, including by sharing space and resources ranging from buses to staff. In conjunction with the Promise Neighborhood (PN) grant, which also launched a few months after the flood, FSCS first prioritized the solidification and expansion of partnerships with community organizations to ensure the basic needs of students and families were met. 

In its second year, FSCS has focused on addressing needs identified by community members, school and district staff, families, and students in formal and informal needs assessments. The districts recognize an acute need to address student absenteeism; student attendance has been low in schools since 2020. The 2022 floods complicated these attendance issues, as schools, buses, and roads were damaged or destroyed, and families were scattered after the water made their homes unlivable. 

FSCS staff and the two districts participated in an Attendance Summit with other PRI FSCS grants in late spring 2024. During the summit, they mapped out strategies to increase student and family engagement and attendance. These strategies included both short-term and longer-term initiatives. For example, as a short-term strategy, they prioritized communication with families and students about the importance of attendance through the local media infrastructure.

Long-term strategies include investing in instructional resources, expanding community engagement into the most remote areas of the county, and utilizing mapped data to identify locations with a high concentration of chronically absent students. The chronic absenteeism data are useful for targeted outreach strategies to micro-communities to connect with residents and organizations, such as churches, with which schools and FSCS can establish partnerships to promote student attendance.

The project has enabled better instructional resources to be available for students to enhance their academic growth. One administrator noted that these resources benefit students by enhancing their learning and access to higher-level content and positively impact teacher retention, which is crucial in a county that sometimes struggles to recruit and retain staff.

Outside of the school walls and the school day, the project has allowed for initiatives such as a community STEAM lab, a maker space in Neon, that addresses multiple project and community goals: engagement, community building, learning, and bringing opportunity to a community that has experienced many setbacks. The STEAM lab will give students and community members access to resources and technology and is conceived as a space that will encourage cross-generational sharing, teaching, and learning. 

Reflecting on FSCS, one stakeholder commented: “I feel like we have an arsenal in our back pocket right now. Being able to work together and bring in that aid and that support, whether it’s emotional, social, academic, whatever it be, to meet those needs that the students have right now.” In addition, FSCS and PN staff are considering approaches for longer-term planning and sustainability, which requires a mindset shift from the crisis management that had been central to Letcher-Jenkins’ support for families in the first year of the grant. In the grant’s second year and moving forward, they are institutionalizing practices to support connections and build trust among hyperlocal community leaders (the “mayors of the hollers”), organizations, and schools to ensure that the grant’s work continues beyond its five years.