Restart SMART

The Restart SMART Strategy is Arizona’s adaptation of a full-service Community School model, organizing school and local resources around student and family success. Restart SMART is a data-driven and responsive strategy to Arizona’s unique needs.


We work with school leadership to place Restart SMART teams at schools whose populations face high poverty rates and related opportunity gaps. The Restart SMART Strategy develops a deep understanding of each person’s unique needs and assets to support locally-led goals specific to the student, family, and community needs. Using our Data-Powered Strategic Coaching Technology, Restart SMART teams focus on student, family, and community well-being according to that person’s specific history. Knowing that each person is the expert in their own life, this strategy empowers students, families, schools, and communities toward making sustainable change.

Restart SMART Strategy Practices

  • People cannot thrive while in survival mode. Each Restart SMART team focuses on the students’ needs, family support, and community well being, to ensure effectiveness. Our team first triages on an individual basis, using our Data-Powered Life Coaching Technology. After our teams have more insight into immediate needs, they begin to stabilize, provide support, and help build skills. Change does not happen overnight, and it cannot happen until people have their basic needs met.

    Our Data-Powered Life Coaching Technology helps our teams recognize existing or potential stress factors, traumatic experiences, service gaps, risks, and current supports/resources for each student. During these one-on-one meeting times, data is continually collected that is used to monitor student progress. This data is essential to provide appropriate services based on the youth’s individual current and evolving needs. Working with individual students, we can also track growth and real-time changes. Our Data-Powered Life Coaching Technology enables us to strategically navigate life with the youth and their families while helping them build skills and access any necessary opportunities to help with their goals.

    The Restart SMART Strategy helps us provide a continuum of responsive, well-rounded care to youth and their families. We facilitate deep, local relationships as we work alongside youth, parents, schools, community health agencies, and others to address needs and help guide individuals on a path toward success and self-improvement.

  • Each partnered school is supported by a dedicated Restart SMART team. The teams undergo extensive training to ensure research-backed and best-practice methods when working with youth, families, schools, and community partners. In addition, the Restart SMART Strategy prioritizes the intentional selection of staff to match the unique needs of each school community, recognizing and addressing the long-lasting impacts of adversity and opportunity gaps.

    Day-to-day, teams support the school’s overall social and behavioral environments while helping students build long-term skills and executive functions. They meet individually with youth, employing a Strategic Life-Coaching Technology that documents their strengths, triggers, goals, and struggles. Teams meet with families to help identify needs, potential service coordination, and mentoring based on need. At the same time, we partner with school administrators and community members to coordinate on-site services. Through these one-on-one meetings, the teams helps identify gaps, needs, and potential local resources. After the teams assess foundational needs, they collaborate with local organizations to address the different needs of students, families, and school professionals.

    Their collaboration catalyzes significant individual and community change by helping individuals understand obstacles, access community resources, and achieve self-driven goals. The teams will eventually transition to a locally-led steering committee.

    The teams are responsible for:

    • Integration & Partner Engagement

    • Developing & Facilitating a School Steering Committee

    • Fostering Partnership with School Personnel

    • One-on-one Coach-Mentoring with Students

    • Facilitating Group Social & Behavioral Skill Community Builders

    • Service Coordination for Student and Family Needs

    • Engaging Parents in Services & Identifying Family Needs

    • Supporting  Group Social & Behavioral Skills Integration

    • Providing Coach-Mentoring with Parents Based on Need

  • Restart SMART addresses the non-academic needs of youth and families, allowing the principal and the teachers to focus on high-quality education, curriculum, and other academic needs of their school. Instead of focusing on food, housing, clothing, or hygiene, students can focus on learning, building skills, and achieving other goals. When students and families have their basic needs met, the school begins to thrive.

    Restart SMART sites make measurable strides in school improvement because of individual needs assessments, root-cause analysis, and strong networks. The Site Directors focus on building community partnerships and overall outreach to support the school’s most pressing needs. The Support Specialists serve as support systems for students and families while helping them build life skills that impact long-term success. When students, families, and community partnerships have a bit of extra attention, school professionals can focus on academics knowing that there is extra support.

  • In short, Restart SMART empowers communities to improve conditions for youth, families, and schools based on individual needs and goals. Trained community-based organizations that want to empower locally-led, sustainable change can replicate this work.

    Restart SMART, powered by Higher Ground, is a locally driven initiative and adaptation of the Community School Model. Community Schools have existed in the United States for decades. They correlate with a strong trend of community empowerment, lower chronic and situational poverty, lower dropout rates, higher attendance, higher student attainment rates, and healthier community economic metrics. We know that if we focus on developing our youth’s executive functions, then their academic performance will improve; if we improve the wellness of the families, then we improve the wellness of the children; and if we improve the living conditions of the community, then the schools in that community will improve their outcomes.

    Because each person is unique, the approach is deeply individual. Many of the students on our caseloads come from different backgrounds, cultures, and some have different behavioral health diagnoses. Each of these youth will require different supports and skills, depending on their specific lived experiences. Our Data-Powered Life Coaching method allows us to look at root causes of behaviors and triggers such as adversities, major life changes, and/or other key factors.

    Through intentional one-on-one conversations, Restart SMART teams better understand each youth. A better understanding helps us address their individual needs according to the Eight Dimensions of Wellness (emotional, physical, occupational, social, spiritual, intellectual, environmental, and financial.) We also gain insight into their strengths, helpful habits, and resources.

    An empowering environment is more healing than one that focuses solely on the challenges. We are works in progress, not problems to fix. Our communities are not bad places to live, where the ultimate goal is to escape. Our communities are rich in backgrounds, wisdom, skills, and dreams. Restart SMART reaches people where they are, helps people build the skills necessary to transform their lives, and supports them as they elevate their community through their achievements.

  • Yes, a lot! Community schools operate in almost 40 states and have a long-standing history of success. We encourage you to visit the Coalition for Community School’s website: https://www.communityschools.org

Restart SMART Strategy Outcomes

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Student Support

  • • Increased Attendance

    • Increased Behavioral and Emotional Growth
    (Based on grit, resilience, & wellness metrics)

    • Increased Student Engagement
    (Based on supports, resources, academics, and activities)

    • Fewer Logged Discipline Incidents

    • Decreased Chronic Absences

  • Every child experiences life differently. Support should never be one-size-fits-all. Student Support Specialists use our Data-Powered Life Coaching method to approach every youth in a trauma-responsive, personalized manner. This allows us to get to know the youth while integrating wellness, life skills, and socio-emotional skill development that work for their specific needs.

    Each Restart SMART Site has different needs, resources, and goals, making it impossible for each school to have the same metrics of improvement. Overall, youth who work with a Support Specialist see trends of increased attendance, increased behavioral and emotional growth, increased student engagement, fewer logged discipline incidents, and decreased chronic absences. Over time, this level of individualized and school-wide support increases graduation rates along with improving post-graduation success.

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Family Support

Restart SMART sites and neighborhoods that have full-service Community Schools can anticipate the following outcomes:

  • • More families stabilizing and building skills, which also helps overall community development

    • Increased successful community-based resource referrals

    • Increased communication and connection pathways between home and school

    • Steady or increased enrollment

    • Fewer student withdrawals from school

  • Family Support Specialists work closely with the families of the students we work with. Restart SMART teams can assist families in receiving basic needs to reach household stabilization, help build skills to reach goals, and scaffold support as time goes on. Using a trauma-responsive, one-on-one approach, our support specialists help parents and caregivers identify their unique assets, goals, challenges, barriers, and next steps.

    Each family has different needs and goals, so family success will look different across each school site. Overall, we see an increase in families stabilizing and building skills, an increase in successful community-based resource referrals, an increase in communication and connection pathways between home and school, steady or increased enrollment, and fewer student withdrawals from school.

Impact Reports
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Community Support

  • •Increased support from connected networks

    •Increased funding from private and public sectors

    •Community-based skill building to aid workforce development

    •Closer collaboration between all stakeholders (youth, families, schools, local organizations, policymakers, etc.)

    •Responsive strategies to locally identified needs and goals

  • Our teams partner with schools in high-poverty communities, working with the community toward locally-led goals. The Restart SMART Site Director is responsible for collaborating with school administration, community-based organizations, and care providers to address the community’s needs in an individualized, strategic fashion. The Site Director works one-on-one with the school community to assess and aid in effective interventions for post-pandemic effects, trauma, and poverty. The beauty of the Restart SMART Strategy is that any school or community-based entity can implement it to help empower locally-led change.

    Apart from providing direct services, The Restart SMART Strategy advocates for state, city, and local-level policy changes to ensure solutions are fully integrated and implemented sustainably. Our communities have seen initiatives and programs that either don’t have the capacity to help or that work for a limited amount of time, but ultimately lose funding. We seek to raise federal, state, and private funds; mobilize resources; and engage community partners from both the private and public sectors. Policy and financial advocacy work ensures that our teams can reach school communities to help individuals elevate their lives, in turn transforming the community.

Support for Restart SMART

Below are letters of support from the initial Restart SMART proposal. Since then, we have expanded to multiple schools in Southern Arizona! Higher Ground also works with other organizations, helping to adapt this work in their communities.

Your Donation Helps Us Empower Arizona.

Every contribution, no matter the size, plays a vital role in advancing our mission. Donations made to Higher Ground are used where the need is greatest. Your support allows us to further our mission of empowering one life at a time to reach, transform, and elevate the community through love and character-building.

Donate today!