Bostons Higher Ground

Family-led stability initiative: in fiscal year 2025, higher ground continued to play a lead role in the family-led stability initiative (flsi) to address student homelessness in boston schools. Higher ground coordinated the program with an agreement with boston public schools (bps) on behalf of four non-profit organizations and in collaborations with the boston housing authority (bha) and the mayor's office of housing (moh) supporting families served by 16 schools in boston's roxbury, dorchester and mattapan neighborhoods. The nonprofit partners in addition to higher ground are dudley street neighborhood initiative (dsni), project hope, and new lease for homeless families. The 16 partner schools include the boston day and evening academy, david a. Ellis, dudley street neighborhood charter school, dearborn stem academy, ellison parks early education center, haynes early education center, henry l. Higginson inclusion, higginson lewis inclusion, madison park technical vocational high school, o'bryant school of science and math, orchard gardens, rafael hernandez, william monroe trotter, boston international newcomer academy, lilla fredrick pilot school, and fenway high school. During fiscal 2025, we continued discussions with networks of organizations in boston and gateway communities in eastern massachusetts that had expressed interest in launching their own initiatives to address student homelessness in their communities.

Other programs: while maintaining focus on its primary efforts to improve educational outcomes for children and families in its community, higher ground engaged in activities complementary its educational programs. These included collaborating with naaacp boston, the commonwealth seminar, and adl new england in hosting quarterly community crossover dialogues that engaged community leaders and activists in a learning journey about the experiences of greater boston's diverse populations, responding to requests from community residents to support them in addressing concerns in their housing development, and participating in citywide and regional convenings on education, housing and homelessness, and general public policy discussions impacting our community.