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Partnership with SCO Family of Services

Partnership with a local non-profit to provide social supports

Overview

Bronx Arena partners with SCO Family of Services (SCO) to provide social supports to its students. As a transfer school in the Bronx, their students are part of a high-need community that is eligible for additional supports from New York City. When the school started, the founder selected SCO, a non-profit that provides a variety of social supports throughout New York City, to be the social services provider for Bronx Arena.

Bronx Arena’s partnership with SCO is staffed to reflect the school’s focus on academic and social supports. SCO has a director and assistant director on campus, who serve social support functions similar to the academic ones of the principal and assistant principal. SCO provides Advocate Counselors, who provide social support for students similar to the academic support of generalist teachers. Each Arena (a class-like structure) is staffed with a generalist teacher and Advocate Counselor.

Providing roughly equal staffing for academic and social supports helps Bronx Arena meet more of their students’ needs. Figuring out the right balance of supports for individual students is a consistent and evolving challenge, but one that Bronx Arena is committed to make for its students. Bronx Arena’s educators work closely with their SCO counterparts to help stabilize their students’ lives as much as possible, which helps improve their mindset and create an environment with a high potential for learning.