Monti Burnett

(May 17, 2023) — With the school year coming to a close, it also puts a cap on another year of StreetSquash’s FLB, short for the Family Leadership Board. 

The FLB provides an opportunity for caregivers to remain engaged with StreetSquash programming and have a deeper understanding of the work being done day in and day out with their children inside our facility. Led by the StreetSquash Social Work staff, caregivers are invited to the building once per month to receive updates, get to know each other better, and interact with various members of the program staff. 

Monti Burnett currently serves as the FLB chair. She’s a StreetSquash caregiver with a daughter, Sienna, reaching the end of her junior year. Sienna has been a student at StreetSquash since 2017. 

“It’s important just to gather caregivers who are available on a monthly basis, just allowing the space to be able to meet staff,” Monti said. 

Moving forward, Monti is hoping that the number of caregivers that get involved grows, and she’s hoping there could be a lot more layers of involvement. 

“We want a structure where there’s representatives at each grade level,” Monti said. “As we’ve seen, there’s different opportunities for different grade levels. Middle school sort of has their team onboarding whereas the high schoolers are more performance based and more active.”

She feels having liaisons for each grade level could help create a better support system for middle school caregivers who are still first getting acclimated to StreetSquash programming. 

“We want to gear the caregivers to where they’re best needed as their student transitions through each grade level,” Monti said. “I would envision grade level leads adding an additional monthly meeting with their cohorts, to help steer the bigger once-a-month meetings that include everyone.” 

The FLB will have one last get together this school yeat at their annual end-of-year meetup in Morningside Park on June 10th. 

Caregivers interested in attending the June 10th gathering and being an active part of the FLB next school year should email socialwork@streetsquash.org for more information. 

“Our goal is to make sure the FLB community knows each other and that they know the community is supportive of one another,” Monti said.