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The Linking Health with Education Reform Program is one of eight special initiatives of the BellSouth Foundation. These initiatives supplement the Foundation's regular grantmaking and offer an opportunity for the Foundation to work collegially on a specific education issue with a designated group of grantees and educators.
Through the Linking Health to Education Reform program, the Foundation wishes to ensure that students come to school healthy and ready to learn. This goal is part of the Foundation's overall mission to stimulate fundamental change in primary and secondary education in the southeast region that will result in active learning and improved outcomes for all students.
Our partners in this effort are seven public school districts which have each demonstrated innovation and commitment in developing comprehensive approaches for student success. These school districts in different ways are demonstrating a new role for public schools, that of community leader working to ensure that the social and health needs of children and their families are addressed through comprehensive collaborations as well as through school efforts.
In 1996, BellSouth Foundation sent a Request for Proposal (RFP) to twelve school districts in the Southeast which had earlier been identified as innovators in initiating comprehensive approaches for student success. These twelve had been part of an earlier New Partnerships Network, under the auspices of the Education Development Center through a BellSouth Foundation grant. The RFP was based upon results of a detailed survey and evaluation of the districts' needs. The new grants, awarded in 1997, are intended to help the districts deepen and sustain the work they have begun, by adding new programs, approaches and collaborations to their current efforts.
The partners in this Special Initiative have committed to working together as a network, in order to share ideas and support one another, and to serve as models to other school districts. Through the network, BellSouth Foundation will offer technical assistance, as needed and as appropriate, and will connect the members of the network to national and state policy efforts and resources. A private intranet has been created to facilitate work on-line by the partners.
BellSouth Foundation's partner institutions for this program are:
Dr. Pat Cooper, Superintendent of McComb County Public Schools, MS, is consultant to the program.
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