Great Schools in Wake Coalition launches web site

Here is a little something for the NoCanDo crowd.

School uses community connections to put focus on children and families

Lynn, Mass. - Principal Claire Crane can look out the window of her school on the outskirts of Boston, point to each house and tell you the issues inside: drug abuse, poverty, foreclosure, immigration.

The knowledge comes from the relationship Crane has with students and parents at the once-failing Robert L. Ford School, relationships that developed and thrived once the school became as focused on serving parents as on serving children.

As a "full-service" or "community school," Ford opens early and closes late, maintains partnerships with outside agencies to provide its families with social support and enrichment services, and serves as a community center for the neighborhood.

"We started by doing a questionnaire to see what parents wanted - more than half of them didn't have a high school diploma," Crane said. "The top three things they wanted were education, day care and a clean and safe neighborhood. Nobody had ever asked them that before."

Community schools have long had a foothold in Chicago and New York and are growing in cities such as St. Paul, Minn., St. Louis and Cincinnati. At a time when much of the discussion about education reform has emphasized parental involvement, the model could hold lessons for schools in Milwaukee that have struggled for years to connect with urban parents.

"A lot of parents may not have had great experiences themselves when they were in school, but we can draw them in by connecting them with services they need," said Joan Devlin, a top official with the American Federation of Teachers, a national teachers union that has been advocating for community schools.

Devlin added that as a result of helping parents, schools can relieve children of some of the non-academic baggage that's making it hard for them to learn.

Although community schools vary by design and intensity, their hallmarks include partnerships with outside agencies and some kind of coordinator who braids together the resources and matches them up with curriculum goals.

In Milwaukee, the concept is at work at Bruce-Guadalupe Community School, a kindergarten-eighth grade charter school operated by the United Community Center, and at Longfellow Elementary School, a traditional kindergarten-eighth grade school that partners with neighborhood nonprofit Journey House. Longfellow will be building an addition to be used by both the agency and the school.

Like Crane's school, the two Milwaukee schools exemplify how strong leaders can single-handedly change much of their structural design to encourage better family and community relationships.

Ford School turns around
On a typical day, Crane, 71, drives up the narrow streets of Lynn and arrives at the three-story brick school at 6:45 a.m.

Kids tend to get into trouble before and after school if their parents are working, so Crane prefers to supervise them at school rather than let them wander the streets.

Although Ford has always been a neighborhood school, parents used to wait warily on the other side of the fence while their kids walked inside. So Crane cleared a room and started offering free coffee to anyone who came in the door.

The school is old, with high ceilings and narrow hallways and one wooden-floored gymnasium that also serves as the cafeteria and auditorium. But what's most noticeable is the atmosphere: There are a lot of visitors in the building every day, talking to Crane and teachers, working with students, volunteering.

After school, an outside agency works with underperforming students on math and literacy and leads other activities until a 4:30 p.m. dinner served in the gym. Crane encourages Saturday school for chronic underachievers.

"They love it," Crane said. "All their friends are there."

A former school counselor and social worker, Crane took over Ford School in 1989. At that time, it was the lowest-achieving school in the city. Daily attendance ranged from 75% to 85%. Meanwhile, only between 10% and 20% of parents showed up at parent-teacher conferences. Each year, a third of the faculty turned over.

"I said we had to start with the family, because a family that learns together and gains together, stays together," Crane said.

In Lynn, that would take a heroic effort. Located 10 miles from Boston, the city has a population of about 87,000 and used to be a thriving factory town.

Now, the city is plagued by poverty and populated with a high number of new immigrants, many of whom cannot speak English. More than 90% of Ford students receive free- and reduced-price lunches, a common measurement of poverty. Some 86% are children of color.

Rates of child abuse and neglect outpace the nation; Ford teachers don't walk to their cars alone at night. Three murders have occurred near the school in the past year.

On the first day as principal at Ford, Crane watched as a boy rode his bicycle down the school hallway.

Wasting no time, Crane pulled out teachers who were serious about making changes and had them help her devise a new discipline plan. Teachers who didn't want to participate transferred to other schools in the system.

Then, Crane issued the survey to all the parents. The top needs: more education for themselves, day care for their kids, clean and safe neighborhoods for everybody.

Crane tackled the first by offering free night school for adults on Monday and Tuesday from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., with free care for their children. She uses a large chunk of the extra federal money Ford gets for being a low-income school - it totals around $300,000 per year - for that purpose.

To address neighborhood concerns, Crane developed a partnership with a local citizens group and allowed it to meet at the school regularly. In exchange, members raised money to start an organic garden, right on the blacktop surrounding Ford, in raised boxes.

For day care after school, Crane and parents chose an after-school program operator that keeps the kids at school working on academics and activities up and through dinnertime. Parents pay to participate on a sliding scale, supported by local government sources of funding.

Additionally, Crane has won school grants through NASA, she pays for kids to get vision screenings and glasses, and she's known for letting local immigrants apply to be aides in the youngest classrooms. The aides are unpaid, but they soak up lessons along with the children while providing an extra set of hands to help the teacher.

Recently, a woman who wanted to lead a charm school class for the girls at Ford was OK'd by Crane, as long as she agreed to do an etiquette class for the boys, too.

"They are not getting much of that at home," Crane said.

Today, Ford's state test scores are on par with the rest of Lynn Public Schools, and higher in some subjects. The school has one of the lowest special education referral rates in the city, and daily student attendance is 91%.

Attendance at parent-teacher conferences has jumped from between 10% and 20% to between 90% and 95%.

Focus on neighborhood
On paper, community schools seem sensible. But putting them into practice can be complicated.

In Milwaukee, for instance, community schools could be stymied by what MPS sees as a strength - parents' ability to choose almost any school in the system for their child.

In 2008-'09, less than 25% of parents sent their children to the school in their attendance zone. Some even elect to bus their children across town to a lower-performing building.

In Lynn, the model has worked because the school focuses on helping the neighbors, and neighbors focus on helping the school.

"All schools should be working on what their communities need," said Maria Carrasco, a Lynn School Board member, Ford School grandparent, and member of the Highlands Coalition, a group of neighbors that meets at Ford regularly to address local issues.

"We do have fights, but you don't see violence here like in other schools," she said. "And we are a violent city."

Leadership and funding are also vital. Community schools generally have a strong school leader and a full- or part-time organizer who maintains the relationships between schools and the outside agencies.

Low-income schools that receive extra money from the federal government would have to reshuffle their priorities: Do you let go of a reading specialist to implement some other program that may help parents or families?

That's a yes, if you ask Crane. Knowing parents, their issues and how to help them can go a long way toward breaking down barriers to student achievement.

Crane said the first three years of becoming a community school were a nightmare, but that the process got easier with time.

"After you get one or two grants or partnerships going, others become easier to get," she said. "Start slow, start small and it will build itself for you."

We believe that all children in Wake County, regardless of income, race, ethnicity, or residence, should receive the highest quality education possible.

I guess we all know this is lip service since the success of the parochial diversity goals depends upon diluting the quality of education at non-magnet schools.

The below paragraph:

We are a community coalition of organizations, business leaders, parents and citizen advocates who are working to ensure educational excellence in the Wake County Public School System.

should be amended to read:

We are a fanatical coalition of organizations, business leaders, parents and citizen advocates who are working to sustain the facade of educational excellence in the Wake County Public School System.

It appears that they have learned some lessons from the spanking they took in the election. While their motives are unchanged, they have adjusted their rhetoric:

Student stability: They are no longer trying to pass of a reassignment plan affecting 26,000 students as "stability."

Healthy schools: Those words do not appear in their vision statement, probably because so many have learned that it is a hallucination which succeeds only in hiding at-risk students.

Diversity: They talk of "supporting" diversity, but gone are the declarations of doom if one school goes above 40% F&R.

MYR: Steering clear of that one.

A quick review of the makeup of this organization leaves no doubt that they will augment WEP as a public relations and political arm for those who would continue the policies which have preserved the illusion of good schools while allowing thousands of students to fall through the cracks.