Howard County Maryland HoCo Scholars Program

About the Program

Category: Children and Youth (Best in Category)

Year: 2021

The Howard County Scholars Program (HCSP) is an innovative effort, implemented through a collaboration of four different County agencies, and multiple non-profit community agencies, to address educational inequities that resulted from the need to stop in-person public education due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At risk students, who were more likely to lack supportive home educational environments, were targeted, and provided with enriched all day education opportunities in COVID safe environments. HCSP provided: transportation, lunch, educational enrichment activities, bilingual translation, and supervision and monitoring. Early indices are that absenteeism among participating students dropped by 58% relative to the time period when instruction had initially resumed in a virtual manner.