Behind Sky Ranch Elementary, Moore Public Schools and local nonprofit Bridges are doing something you do not see every day in a school district: they are literally building a small village so homeless high-school students have a safe place to sleep, study and finish their diplomas.
The plan calls for 10 duplexes, providing space for about 20 students, along with a shared student center stocked with food, hygiene essentials and laundry facilities so residents can keep their focus on school instead of where they are staying that night. District leaders say the project is designed to bundle housing, case management and job-skills support into one tight campus, with a goal of welcoming students by August.
What the village will include
The Bridges of Moore campus is set up as a compact community: ten duplex units for students, on-site housing for resident advisors and a central student center where teens can pick up food, hygiene items and do their laundry. The foundation behind the effort says Bridges will handle staffing with case managers and counselors and will connect students to medical and employment support so they can stay enrolled and on track instead of slipping through the cracks. Those details, along with renderings and construction updates, are laid out on the campaign page from the Moore Public Schools Foundation.
How students qualify and pay forward
District officials told reporters that students admitted to the program will be expected to keep their grades up and hold jobs outside of school. Part of those paychecks will be set aside by the program and then returned to the students when they graduate, giving them a starter fund for independent living instead of sending them out the door with nothing. Bridges leaders also noted that an anonymous donor recently contributed $1 million toward the project and that they are budgeting around $4.5 million for construction and program startup, as reported by News 9.
District leaders frame it as basic support
“We are taking care of our own,” Moore superintendent Dr. Robert Romines said at the groundbreaking, according to KOCO 5. Bridges executive director Stacy Bruce put the stakes more bluntly: “If you don’t know where you’re going to sleep at night, you’re not worried about your math test,” she told News 9. In other words, a roof and a washer can sometimes do more for GPA than another lecture on algebra.
Fundraising and next steps
Students and community members have been driving much of the early fundraising. The district says student-led campaigns brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first year, and Bridges and its partners have raised roughly $800,000 toward the capital goal so far. The Moore Public Schools Foundation lists a campaign target of about $3.75 million to build and keep the village running, and infrastructure work behind Sky Ranch Elementary is already underway, with leaders aiming to open by next school year. These fundraising totals and timeline details are reported by Gaylord News…