The impact of COVID-19 is being felt in our International Community School family, and we know that it will continue to evolve and put our most vulnerable students at even more risk. As the global health pandemic unfolds, we wish for safety and good health for you and your loved ones.
The Georgia Center for Nonprofits is hosting a special GA Gives/Giving Tuesday day on May 5, 2020. As a nonprofit, ICS needs your support. You can give from now up to the BIG Giving Tuesday on May 5th.
All proceeds from GA Gives/Giving Tuesday will help fund our Coronavirus Emergency Fund. This fund will support the following initiatives:
Hourly Wages: At ICS we deeply believe in equity for all our students, families and staff. While our salaried staff is guaranteed their pay for the remainder of the year as they support virtual learning, we need your help to ensure that we can pay our hourly workers as well. We are committed to paying our workers, but we need your help to do it. These staff members include those on the front lines of our cafeteria services, our front office staff, and our contracted behavioral specialists who support our students with special needs.
Interpretation Services: We need support to afford translation services quickly. Getting the word out to ALL our families is paramount, but with a multitude of languages spoken at ICS, we need additional interpretation services during a crisis like this. The language line we typically use through DeKalb County Schools is not accessible to ICS at the moment as they are focusing on servicing their traditional public schools. With your help, we can employ a company to help us translate information quickly and effectively. This will help us get crucial information out to our families on a weekly basis.
Food, Books, Baby Supplies, Hygiene Supplies, Cleaning Supplies, Clothing and more: We are constantly monitoring the needs of our students, their families, and ICS staff and we will be assisting our community with various critical needs as they arise.
Professional Development for ICS Educators: As some communities are able to quickly and seamlessly transition to virtual learning, the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in our society will be the farthest left behind. A large percentage of ICS students will face many academic challenges during this time, and we need to support our staff, more than ever, to have the most research-based professional development opportunities available to them so that when we return to school, we can close the gaps for our students as quickly as possible. There are also important training for math and reading that our teachers need in order to support virtual learning right now to close the learning gaps that will continue to grow without daily small group instruction in person from our staff.
