Tuscaloosa’s New Heights Community Resource Center celebrates grand opening
Alabama State Schools Superintendent Eric Mackey, the Tuscaloosa City Schools Board of Education, representatives from Alabama Power and other area leaders and nonprofit agencies celebrated the official opening Wednesday of a community resource center that is believed to be the first of its kind in Alabama.
New Heights Community Resource Center is an innovative partnership between the Tuscaloosa City Schools and area nonprofits to help ensure the needs of city school students, their families and the broader community are being met.
“It is a goal of the Tuscaloosa City Schools to educate the whole child and, in order to ensure every child succeeds, we must help remove barriers for some students and their families,” said TCS Superintendent Mike Daria. “New Heights Community Resource Center has long been a dream. We are proud that this has come to fruition and will truly make an impact on our students and their families, with the vital work that our community partners do each and every day.”
Plans for the center were proposed in 2021 as an effort to bring community services together and collaborate to make them more accessible, while also taking advantage of unused space in a building owned by the city schools. Once Stillman Heights Elementary, portions of the New Heights building were renovated in 2022 so that former classroom space could be used as offices. The location is also home to STARS Academy, an alternative program. By having the agencies on-site, the hope is that it will better serve the STARS students, but also all TCS students and their families, as the center is a hub for the nonprofit agencies.
Services provided by New Heights have five areas of focus: education, homeless and homeless prevention services, youth services, mental health and health care. Ten agencies are the first community partners to move into New Heights: Habitat for Humanity of West Alabama, the Literacy Council of West Alabama, Disability Rights and Resources, Five Horizons Health, PRIDE of Tuscaloosa, the Kristen Amerson Youth Foundation, Boys and Girls Club of West Alabama, Parents as Teachers, Tuscaloosa Reads and La Fuerza Multicultural.
In addition to the area agencies, New Heights will be home to The Lift, which will be a store of new, donated items, including clothes, toiletries, food and school supplies, where TCS students may “shop” when a need is identified by their school social worker.
“We are so excited to currently have 10 community partners on board, and we hope to grow this even more,” said Tesney Davis, mental health coordinator for Tuscaloosa City Schools. “I am very proud of TCS and the team we have that has done this work – people who worked very hard for this vision, which has been cultivated for several years now, and for it to finally come to reality has truly been a dream.”
The Alabama Power Foundation sponsored the New Heights ribbon cutting and grand opening. Alabama Power Western Division Vice President Mark Crews said that as a corporate citizen, the company recognizes the important role the center will play to improve the lives of students and their families.
“We understand that educational prosperity goes beyond the classroom. Our students must be made whole at home and in their personal lives in order to achieve academic success,” he said. “We believe that New Heights will fill this need and we are dedicated to working closely with the Tuscaloosa City School System and the nonprofit partners to ensure this resource center is effective in providing services to the community.”
