Supporting Student Achievement by Centering Families

When Isabella’s mother joined Rocketship as a founding family member, she was already deeply committed to her children’s education, with her older son enrolled first and now thriving in high school. Manager of Family Advocacy, Elsy Villafuentes, had met the family through her work in Head Start and recruited them to join the Rocketship community. Now, Isabella was enrolled as a thriving kindergartener.

Despite battling kidney failure, Isabella’s mother worked two jobs to support her family as a single mother. She was initially placed on the kidney transplant list—until her immigration status forced her removal from the list, a devastating blow for their family.

The call came on September 30th. Isabella’s grandmother reached out to Elsy with heartbreaking news: her daughter had suffered a series of strokes and was declared brain dead. In those final moments of consciousness, the mother had made a specific request of her mother, knowing that she would need assistance: “Get Elsy to help you.”

Elsy immediately sprang into action, drawing on her 18 years of experience supporting families as a social worker across Milwaukee, visiting the family in the hospital while Isabella’s mother remained on life support.

With the support of their doctors, the grandparents made the courageous decision to let their daughter go on October 4th. What followed demonstrated the transformative power of Rocketship’s family-centered approach. The family faced overwhelming challenges: funeral costs, childcare arrangements, and the complex legal maze of guardianship for undocumented immigrants.

Elsy helped the family access the mother’s life insurance policy, connected them with Milwaukee County’s burial assistance program, and organized a GoFundMe campaign, reducing funeral costs to just $150 for a small but dignified service.

As the family bravely moved forward, the greater challenge arose in helping Isabella’s grandparents secure guardianship: despite having work permits, they were told they needed a U.S. citizen as a guardian or backup guardian.

Without a legal guardian, Isabella couldn’t access medical insurance. Elsy navigated this bureaucratic nightmare while providing support to the grieving child and grandparents. She connected the family with Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers for therapy services while helping them assemble legal support.

The legal challenges seemed insurmountable: one attorney quoted $8,000 for guardianship proceedings—an impossible expense for this family. Elsy orchestrated a team of pro bono legal support. She completed the initial paperwork herself and leveraged her connections for legal review and ongoing support through Kids Matter, a Catholic Charities immigration lawyer, and Wisconsin Legal Aid.

Together, they navigated the complex process and pushed for a Zoom hearing to avoid the courthouse ICE presence. Their hearing is scheduled for August 2025, and we expect that the grandparents will be made Isabella’s legal guardians.

Throughout this ordeal, Isabella showed remarkable resilience. Elsy reports that she never wanted to miss school, finding comfort in the love and sense of home Rocketship provided. The school community rallied around her, with many mothers offering extra support after learning of the family’s loss.

This story illustrates Rocketship’s philosophy: supporting student achievement involves supporting families. Whether connecting families to mental health services or organizing support groups, Rocketship knows that transformational relationships create lasting change.

As Elsy explains, “We don’t want to just send families a number and say ‘call them.’ We want to build transformational relationships.” While Isabella’s story is an extraordinary example, it exemplifies how Rocketship consistently goes above and beyond to support its students. Rocketship’s holistic approach creates a comprehensive safety net to help families overcome any challenge while keeping education at the center of their children’s bright futures.

Published on agosto 4, 2025