Healdsburg’s Public School Success Team, PSST!, has called an end to its 13-year program to mentor the city’s secondary school students, from junior high through graduation. Though many things have impacted education in recent years, none has done more than COVID.
“With the onset of the pandemic in 2020, PSST! was forced to curtail its contact with and services to students. Since that time, the program has suffered from a lack of available volunteers and a diminished cohort of students,” read an announcement from Cynthia Doubleday.
Although the reduced organization focused on Healdsburg Junior High School, where services for struggling students were insufficient, “it soon became apparent that PSST! was no longer in a position to provide the program that it had offered students for the previous decade.”
PSST! was founded in 2009 as a nonprofit by a group of Healdsburg community members who wanted to increase the graduation rate at Healdsburg High School (HHS). Beginning at the outset of middle school, PSST! program volunteers worked with select groups of students who demonstrated potential for academic success, if given specific subject-matter tutoring and mentoring attention.
These groups were called “cohorts,” and they studied and grew over the years until graduation from HHS. The first cohort graduated from the high school in 2017; the 2022 cohort will be the last, said Doubleday.
Acknowledging that “The board of directors of PSST! made the difficult decision to wind down the organization and dissolve the non-profit in its entirety,” it was announced a Grant Distribution Initiative will get underway July 1.
The board “is seeking proposals from appropriate 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations for the distribution of PSST! funds.
“The applicants should be part of education-based organizations that seek to encourage lifelong learning for the youth of Healdsburg.”
Both English language and Spanish applications will be available at pssthealdsburg.com/grantapplication.
