CH-UH district partners with refugee agencies to ease transition for students and families

The Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District is a member of the Refugee Services Collaborative (RSC) of Greater Cleveland. RSC helps families from other countries transition to life in Northeast Ohio. The district will be working with Global Cleveland, one of the collaborative’s partner agencies, to help families who are moving to the Heights.

On Oct. 18, Global Cleveland will open a Welcome Hub at the Noble Neighborhood Library, 2800 Noble Road in Cleveland Heights. The hub will be a place where families can obtain life skills information, to help ease their transition to life here in the Heights.

Kathleen Scully, English Language Learners (ELL) coordinator at Heights High, said that this partnership will help support teachers in the classroom. It will enable teachers to focus on teaching students English and other content areas, while the agency helps new families transition into daily living here, by providing information on how to get to the doctor, how to obtain winter clothing, where to buy healthy food, how to navigate traffic signals and learn the bus schedule, and how to use 911 and the school’s mail system, and more.

The district is implementing an ELL peer-to-peer student mentor program, and any families interested in volunteering as community mentors, to help families from other countries, should e-mail Kathleen Scully at k_scully@chuh.org for more information.

On Oct. 30, the First Refugee Summit will take place at Cleveland’s City Hall. RSC member groups, including school districts and nonprofit agencies, will attend.