Program News 2004
GSS Launches New Off-Site Suspension Center
On February 3rd, JoEllen Lynch, Good Shepherd's Assistant Executive Director for Community-Based Programs, joined Schools Chancellor Joel Klein on the steps of the Tweed Building, along with representatives from four additional community-based organizations, to announce a new Department of Education initiative and another partnership with our organization.
Klein's announcement of the launch of five off-site suspension centers, operated in collaboration with five non-profit organizations, follows recent media attention on growing safety concerns in high schools across the city. Each center will address the needs of youth who have engaged in repeated negative and disruptive behavior and will accommodate 60 students at a time.
Says JoEllen Lynch: "Our suspension center will build on our growing role in public schools and will provide a new opportunity for us to utilize our extensive background and expertise in integrating youth development into educational settings." The Youth Options Off-Site Suspension Center, as it will be known, will offer a continuum of intensive services and support to students and their families in a nurturing, structured learning environment that will allow students to build on their strengths. The program will address the disciplinary issues of suspended students through assessment, group intervention, family engagement, ongoing counseling and support, career exploration, educational planning and transitional services to appropriate school placements, and follow-up once the student returns to school. As one of the two Brooklyn Off-Site Suspension Centers, this program will be located on Bushwick Avenue.
According to Executive Director Sr. Paulette LoMonaco, this program and other recent partnerships with the Department of Education are expanding the physical boundaries of Good Shepherd's work. "Good Shepherd's community-based programs have been concentrated in the South Brooklyn neighborhoods of Red Hook, Gowanus and Park Slope. Since the recent reorganization of school districts, many of our educational support programs have been drawing students from a broader area. We are excited to have this opportunity to initiate a program in a new community and to begin to work with young people from the surrounding neighborhoods of Bushwick and Bedford Stuyvesant who are suspended from school and at-risk of academic failure."
February 5, 2004
