Austin Schools Awarded $8.6 Million for Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative (SS/HS)

The Austin Project facilitated several Austin community organizations' engagement with AISD staff to conceptualize, design, and write the 2007 awarded, four year, $8.6 million Safe Schools/Healthy Students Federal Grant Application.   Seton Hospitals' Children's Optimal Health Initiative also provided important leadership for the effort. TAP was invited to help coordinate and frame the key conceptual elements for the federal grant application.  Locally, the AISD SS/HS grant is known as ACCESS (Austin Community Collaboration Ensuring Student Success). 

St. John School/Community Alliance Initiative

The Austin Project is working with the St. John Community/School Alliance to build an infrastructure that will support students, faculty, administrators, and community members in their efforts to revitalize Webb Middle School and improve all the school in the St. John neighborhood. Please see our intiatives section for background and impact information on the St. John School/Community Alliance Initiative.

Step Into Reading

This program adds to the number of quality books distributed to children and families in need. 6,800 books were purchased and given to children attending Govalle, Ortega, Pecan Springs, and Travis Heights last year. 100% of the funds donated to Step Into Reading go to the purchase of books and literacy materials. And The Austin Project makes those funds go further.  TAP has negotiated an agreement with Harcourt Achive Publishers to get two books for the cost of one, essentially doubling the books readily available to children in Austin.

Tutors Galore

TAP secures funding from the City of Austin and uses it to retain tutors for elementary school children in high need neighorhoods. The tutors are UT work-study students. During the last school year 1,520 tutoring hours were provided to 126 elementary school students. In addition to enchancing academic achievement, this highly effective program promotes student retention and endorces community involvement for the students and tutors.

Lucy Read Pre-K Demonstration School

The Austin Project helped to secure funding for a full-time counselor and an evidence-based early childhood curriculum that will promote social, emotional, and academic readiness. TAP also helped develop a conceptual frameworks for integrated service delivery, established focus groups, and distributed and scored a comprehensive parent survey.

Early Start Coalition

TAP led the Early Start Coalition, a consortium of approximately 30 service providers to develop a comprehensive 'vision' for the Austin Community, centered on child outcomes in the areas of health, safety, school readiness, child care, family support and community engagement. United Way Capital Area adopted this effort into its Success by Six initiative.

Youth and Family Assessment Center

TAP developed the Youth and Family Assessment Center (YFAC) in partnership with the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department to pilot, test and evaluate the "wraparound" care model of social service delivery. The Youth & Family Assessment Center model was adopted by Communities in Schools (CIS) after TAP's 3-year pilot.

Early Learning Opportunities Act

TAP coordinated a community-wide effort in early literacy that resulted in Austin receiving a $1 million federal grant from the Department of Education's Early Learning Opportunities Act.