Enquirer / April 12, 2014
At Cincinnati Public Schools, the school day doesn’t end after the math and reading classes are finished. Students stay for dinner. They get help with their homework. They participate in activities like theater or karate. Between classes they visit in-house clinics to get their teeth cleaned and their eyes checked.

These “wrap-around” services are critical to helping students succeed in the classroom, advocates say. And this week, more than 1,500 educators and community leaders from across the country converged on the Queen City to see the strategy for themselves.
Cincinnati’s community learning centers are used as a model for districts around the country because of their staying power and the difference they have made in the district’s most impoverished neighborhoods.

Created more than a decade ago, they aim to bridge the academic gap poverty creates when families can’t afford or get access to basic services. The premise: If a student can’t read the white board because she’s nearsighted or can’t concentrate on her math assignment because of a toothache or empty stomach, she’s much more likely to fall through the cracks. The school gets her glasses, fixes her teeth and feeds her. It’s an idea now reaching beyond cities into the suburbs – suburban poverty has grown by 64 percent in the past decade, according to a national study by the Brookings Institution.

Advocates see these services as pivotal. “That blanket of support is lifting up students. It’s accelerating the academic piece,” said P.G. Sittenfeld, assistant director of the Community Learning Center Institute in Cincinnati and a Cincinnati city councilman.