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Most afternoons, Milby High School junior Steven Hernandez walks down Broadway Street to Houston ISD’s new Sunrise Center, where he earns $9 per hour mentoring eighth-graders from a nearby campus.

Steven helps the students with their homework, catches up on their lives and walks around the garden at the Mission Milby Community Development Center, which hosts HISD’s latest effort to help kids after the final bell.

“I ask, ‘How was your day?’” Steven said, describing a typical conversation with one mentee. “If he has anything to talk about, if something’s bothering him, I tell him that he can trust me. … Honestly, he said he doesn’t talk to anybody, so at least he has somebody to talk to.”

Steven is one of roughly 600 students and adults each day using several new hubs that popped up this fall across HISD, created by district officials with the intention of serving some of Houston’s neediest families.

While other, more controversial changes implemented by state-appointed HISD Superintendent Mike Miles have grabbed headlines since his arrival in June, the rollout of seven Sunrise Centers has largely flown under the radar.

Through the centers, HISD partners with existing community organizations to offer food pantries, clothing closets, mental health services and telehealth medical services. The district also provides programs tailored toward the interests of the communities served, such as gardening or music-making.

Whether the Sunrise Centers, which are budgeted to cost $12 million this year, can provide a strong return on investment will come down to the number of families they reach. A fraction of HISD’s roughly 150,000 economically disadvantaged students and their families have used them in their first weeks of operation. During a recent, day-long visit, the Houston Landing saw about 40 adults and students use the Sunrise Center at the Mission Milby Community Development Center.

Miles has said the centers will add to the landscape of resources already available to students as they face challenges that interfere with their learning. HISD employs “wraparound” resource specialists at most campuses, who are responsible for helping students with their non-academic needs.

“The Sunrise Centers was our part to try to be a force multiplier, if I can use that phrase, for the work that’s already happening and our investment in the systems that are already taking place,” Miles said.

Miles has said he will not make cuts to wraparound services as the Sunrise Centers roll out, despite the district facing a nearly $250 million budget deficit it has pledged to close next year.

‘Change the trajectory’

The Sunrise Centers are a needed addition to the existing system for wraparound services because families might feel less stigma using the programs offered in off-campus locations, said Najah Callander, HISD’s senior executive director for external engagement.

“We know that if you’re hungry, if you can’t see, if you don’t have what you need, that those are the things that hold you back,” Callander said. “When I think about, big picture, what does this mean for kids? We’re hoping to change the trajectory of kids’ lives. We’re hoping to take one more thing off the working parent.”

About 70 percent of HISD students, or 130,000 children, live within a 10-minute drive of a Sunrise Center, Callander said. District officials placed the centers based on survey data from Rice University’s Houston Education Research Consortium, which mapped out the most-pressing needs in each neighborhood. Gaps exist for now in some spots, including the city’s northwest side.

On Houston’s east side, the Mission Milby Community Development Center has long offered computer labs and free internet for students. Now, the HISD partnership brings a food pantry, funds for English as a second-language courses for adults and free mental health counseling provided through the nonprofit Communities in Schools. District officials also are planning to expand after-school programs and add an ESL class catered to students.

“When I welcomed (the HISD partnership), I told them, ‘I just want to keep everything that we already have, and then just add,’” Mission Milby Executive Director Maria Aguilar said. “So that’s what we’re doing.”

One Tuesday earlier this month, three women came in for an aerobics class, nine adult students attended an ESL class, one young man came for information about starting classes at Houston Community College and three parents wandered in to peruse the food pantry. 

In the afternoon, about two dozen students filled up the center, playing Roblox on computers, chatting outside at picnic tables, eating dinner and passing a volleyball. 

Vianney Villeda, a sophomore at Milby High, did not have homework that day, but when she does, her mentor provides a boost.

“My mentor, she helps me a lot, actually,” Vianney said. “Usually, she will ask me the question first and what I think the answer is, then she’ll narrow it down and put it in more simple words.”

Most of those who came to the Mission Milby center that day left satisfied. Karen Estrada, who has two children attending nearby J.R. Harris Elementary School, visited the center after hearing about it from a friend.

“I came here for information. I didn’t expect to leave here with clothes and school supplies,” Estrada said.

A slow opening

When the Mission Milby center launched, staff threw a kickoff event featuring players from the Houston Dynamo soccer team to help advertise the new community resource. They plastered the laundry rooms of nearby apartment complexes with posters and showed up to schools’ coffee chats with principals. 

Despite those outreach efforts, the center has averaged about three new people seeking services per day, totaling 110 in seven weeks. By comparison, about 5,000 students attend classes in the Milby High School feeder pattern. 

Callander said she expects those numbers to increase with time across all centers as more families find out about the resources and the district coordinates how to transport more students to the centers for programs after school. Texas does not provide districts with funding to bus students who live within two miles of school, let alone money for after-school transportation.

Even the wraparound resource specialists — who are charged with referring families in need to the Sunrise Centers — are still acquainting themselves with the new hubs. After stopping by the new Mission Milby Sunrise Center for the first time earlier this month, Milby High wraparound specialist Cecilia Salazar said she’s excited for what the HISD partnership might mean for families she works with.

“I think it’s great that there’s everything in one place,” Salazar said. “It’s also really close, so lots of the parents, lots of the students, they walk.”

Currently, all of the students who attend the center’s after-school program come from two campuses: Milby High School and Deady Middle School. However, the Mission Milby center team said it plans in the coming months to welcome elementary students, as well as kids from schools in the Chavez and Austin high school feeder patterns.

Callander plans that sort of growth not just for Mission Milby, but all seven Sunrise Centers.

“We’re open and ready to serve as many families as possible,” she said.

Angelica Perez and Anna-Catherine Brigida contributed to this report.

Asher Lehrer-Small covers Houston ISD for the Landing and would love to hear your tips, questions and story ideas. Reach him at asher@houstonlanding.org.

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