'Ramily Matters' Program In Glenwood Promotes Better Family, Community, School Communication

A new outreach program in the Glenwood Community School District is seeking to bridge the gap between families, the schools and the community.

The program, dubbed “Ramily Matters,” is the brainchild of Liz Huggins and Sarah Rozniecki. Huggins is a teacher at the Glenwood Alternative School and Rozniecki is the district’s home school liaison. Both saw too many of their students and their families slipping through the cracks of the traditional, home and school communication model. And often they saw students who weren’t getting the support they needed at home and many of those same students’ homes weren’t getting the support of the school they needed.

Enter Ramily Matters.

The Ramily program offers families a monthly opportunity to meet with district staff and other families, share a meal and build relationships in an open dialogue. The goal is to build skills and share information for parents, teenagers and younger students. Bridging the communication and skills gap between the home, school and the community that often exists for some of the district’s most at-risk students is an issue that stretches far outside the classroom and isn’t confined to teenagers or younger students.

The group held its first meeting Sept. 13 at West Elementary. More than 35 people attended. The plan moving forward is to meet on the first Tuesday of each month, September through May at West. The hope is to, over time, connect students and families to the school who might otherwise feel disconnected for whatever reason, by providing resources that will help those families meet basic needs to make students successful.

By building community, program facilitators hope a welcoming environment can be created that assists in the important role of skills building in the areas of communication, home routines, stress management and addresses mental health needs.

“I’m a big believer that all students are at risk in different ways,” Huggins said. “They’re growing up in the world and all families face different things where having all the information is really important. So Sarah and I started talking to each other about what that kind of outreach would look like and how could we engage in a way that is not demoralizing or damaging or finger wagging towards families.”

After research and discussions, the duo came up with Ramily Matters and the program was signed off on by Superintendent Devin Embray.

“What all the research boiled down to is we needed to offer a meal, provide free child care and so we did that,” Huggins said. “We want people to be comfortable when they come but more than that, we want to show the families we have people in the schools who want to empower them.”

Mills County Public Health, the YMCA and the Mills County Ministerial Association are all potential partners as the program gets its legs under it. Several area business have already offered to donate the meals for the meetings.
Embray said the Ramily program is modeled after a similar program at Mills County Public Health but that Huggins and Rozniecki have put their own stamp on a much needed public relations program.

“This was really all Liz and Sara, they wanted to do more with families and help with parenting strategies and making them feel better connected to the community and build better positive relationships,” Embray said.
Building those positive relationships, while navigating the school system at all levels, is a strategy that can only help students, families and the school district.

“We’re all on the same team,” Embray said. “We all have the same end goal: graduation.  And what are the barriers in place and how can we get rid of those barriers so that we can insure we do continue to have graduation as our end goal?”

While the program is in its infancy, Embray sees a long term appeal to all families – not just those with at-risk students.
“The whole intent is this is for everyone,” Embray said. “The strategy is we always assume, incorrectly, that parents of children who are not labeled as high risk are all perfect parents and all the kids are growing up in a perfect household and that’s just not the case. I think all families can benefit from increased parenting skills or strategies.”