FORT WORTH, Texas – Twenty-five years equates to tens of thousands of at-risk students whose lives were changed because of the vision and leadership of Communities In Schools of Greater Tarrant County (CIS-GTC).Mike Steele, the nonprofit’s founding president and chief executive officer, will be honored for his tenure with CIS-GTC at the organization’s 25th-anniversary fundraising gala entitled "Taking Flight – Helping Students Achieve New Heights" at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 12, at Ridglea Country Club in Fort Worth. The theme is a nod to Steele’s military career prior to his leadership of CIS-GTC.
Steele will retire shortly after the gala event. Lindsey Garner, the nonprofit’s current chief operations officer, has been named Steele’s replacement upon his retirement.
Tickets begin at $125 and are now available at www.cistarrant.org/events. Contact Rachel.Peters@cistarrant.org for sponsorships or more information.
The club is at 3700 Bernie Anderson Ave.
CIS-GTC began in 1992, serving not quite 200 students from two Fort Worth high schools – Polytechnic and Diamond-Hill Jarvis.
For the 2015-16 school year, 37,232 students in 52 schools were served by CIS-GTC. The number includes 4,572 students who received 154,695 hours of intensive case management; of those students:
87 percent improved their grades
94 percent improved their behavior
94 percent were promoted to the next grade
94 percent of high school seniors graduated. Of those, 85 percent moved to post-secondary education.
The organization annually supports nearly 5,000 students at 57 schools across 9 districts, collaborating with 80 community partner organizations. CIS-GTC is part of the national Communities In Schools network, which serves more than 1.2 million at-risk students across the United States.
"Taking Flight" is generously presented by Coldwell Banker Commercial Advisors. Additional sponsors include media partners Fort Worth Business Press and NBC 5, along with Una and Jade Bailey, Bank Of America, Bank of Texas, Carolyn Bell and Mandy Patty, Christian Burton, Capital One, CBCA, MaryAnn and Matt Dufrene, Estrada Hinojosa/Catherine and Robert Estrada, Holt Capital, Insperity, Northern Trust, Oncor, PlainsCapital, Rylander, Clay and Opitz, Kay Sanders, TAMU, Tarrant County College, THR, UMB, VLK Architects and the Webb Family Foundation.
www.cistarrant.org