Dear Friends,
What a wonderful journey it is to grow our Communities In Schools initiative to 38 counties! The beginning of this school year 2022-23 is an exciting time and one I hope will be filled with a lot of great experiences for our West Virginia students. We are in 208 schools now, serving over 89,000 students!
This CIS WV website has been a work in progress for many months and I’m excited with our rollout! We plan on highlighting one CIS county every few weeks and have launched our website featuring Berkeley County. Many thanks to Elaine Bobo, the Communications Director for Berkeley County Schools, for her great assistance. Other information on this site includes a list of all of our CIS schools/counties, as well as their respective site coordinators’ names and how to reach out to them. You’ll also learn about our CIS “Friends With Paws” therapy dog program, which began in April of this year. We’ll be placing more dogs in CIS schools this fall and throughout next year.
As we begin another school year, I’d like to thank all the teachers, CIS site coordinators, county contacts and regional specialists who are truly the “boots on the ground” staff that keep this program running. I am grateful for each and every one of you. And I thank all the school Principals and County Superintendents who have chosen to join the CIS statewide program. Almost every time I see one of them, they tell me how thankful they are to have the program. They see firsthand the benefits from it and most especially, how it frees teachers up to teach, because now the site coordinator can help see to it that the basic needs of a child are met.
And thank you to all who recognize the importance of having that pivotal point person……that one caring adult in our schools who could change a child’s life. And that is exactly what CIS does, it changes kids’ lives.
-First Lady Cathy Justice