City Year San Antonio’s Principal Summit

City Year San Antonio’s first-ever Principal Summit

On Wednesday, July 13th, City Year San Antonio had the privilege to present our first ever Principal Summit at the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) main office. This was a collaborative effort between City Year and SAISD administrative leadership. The summit brought all City Year staff and our SAISD partner principals, school liaisons, and other admin staff together to collaborate with each other to center on expectations and plan for a year that will allow for the most strategic support of students. City Year San Antonio would like to thank our SAISD Liaisons, Kendra Doyle, Senior Executive Director of Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment, Esmeralda Alday, Executive Director of Dual Language, ESL, & Migrant, and Iris Zepeda, Coordinator of Curriculum Instruction & Assessment, for helping us put this event together. Their partnership is crucial to our success!

The Summit began with breakfast and a welcome by SAISD Deputy Superintendent, Patti Salzmann. We were thrilled to have the new SAISD Superintendent, Dr. Jamie Aquino, share his vision and why he believes this partnership is more important than ever to ensure student success.

“My hope is that we are all going to swim in the same direction which is making the impossible in public education a reality which is to make miracles happen for our kids,” he said.

City Year San Antonio’s Executive Director, Abigale James Van Haselen shared her vision for what our school partnership looks like and talked about City Year’s service model, our AmeriCorps teams, and our double bottom line. She also highlighted new people and positions within our site and also recognized the new principals that are joining our amazing partnership this year. Jeff May, Managing Director of Impact for City Year also shared about our impact team, our schools, and our areas of focus.

City Year San Antonio and SAISD Partnership

City Year San Antonio (CYSA) was launched in the fall of 1995 with the support of the bipartisan Texas Commission for Volunteerism and Community Service, the City of San Antonio, and regional grocer, H-E-B. The 2021 – 2022 academic year marked our 25th year of partnership with SAISD.

The success of this partnership is because of our shared values and is only possible because of the relationships forged by City Year staff and corps and SAISD leadership, principals, teachers and faculty. Our partnership allows our AmeriCorps members to serve as student success coaches using our Whole School, Whole Child program. This programming targets the academic, attendance, and behavior/social-emotional needs of students. Last year, 88% of students who received social-emotional support from City Year AmeriCorps members improved in their social-emotional competencies.

We look forward to this upcoming year of service and know that the time spent at the summit will allow us to deepen our impact by responding to the needs of each individual school.