Thrive
Classroom grandparent program begins for 2025 school year
Seniors in Service of Tampa Bay’s classroom grandparent program encourages interactions between elders and elementary students.
In partnership with Pinellas and Hillsborough County Schools, Seniors in Service of Tampa Bay invites elders to engage with students in a classroom setting.
The organization’s volunteers mentor elementary students and tutor them in topics such as literacy and reading comprehension, working with the children one-on-one and in small groups.
This is a part of the nonprofit’s foster grandparent program, which dates back to the 1980s. Seniors in Service partners with public Title I schools. These are institutions that receive government funding to educate students from low income families.
“We match them with a school in their own neighborhood. They work with the same teacher in the same classroom for the entire school year,” Kim Skrovanek, coordinator of the Pinellas Seniors in Service foster grandparent program, told the Catalyst.
With the 2025 school year beginning, volunteers are getting ready to collaborate with students once again.
“There’s definitely a need. The classes have more students than ever,” she said.
“We’re growing, and I guess the exciting part is we’re getting calls and requests from other schools asking about the program and interested in bringing some grandparents to their schools.”
In Pinellas alone, the organization is working with about 16 schools. For both counties, it needs roughly 160 more volunteers for the 2025 school year, she added.
The program has been impactful for the elderly volunteers. While it’s open to individuals 55 or older, many of the participants are in their 70s. “Grandparents have told me that it gives them a purpose again,” Skrovanek explained.
“There comes a point in life where they start feeling isolated, lonely and they’re not as active. It gets them a little bit more physically active and makes them feel valued again.”
It’s just as meaningful for students, she added.
“We get data back from the teachers themselves each year on how the students have improved from the beginning of the school year when they started working with the classroom grandparent to the end of the school year,” she continued, “and I would say 99.5% show improvement.”
As to how often classroom grandparents come to the classroom, it depends on multiple factors, Skrovanek said. Some come in four to five days a week, while others volunteer once or twice a week.
“It definitely is a collaboration between the grandparent, the school and the teacher with all their needs and desires,” she added.
While the seniors volunteer their time, low-income elders are eligible to receive a “small stipend,” Skrovanek said.
Seniors in Service works with more than 1500 volunteers every year and collaborates with over 150 community partners, including Pinellas and Hillsborough County Schools.
The foster grandparent program, which is a part of the national AmeriCorps Seniors program run and funded by the federal government, was created in 1965. Seniors in Service receives funding from AmeriCorps.
