Philadelphia Public School Notebook/ May 2013
Advocates here are educating the public about the concept, which has taken off in other cities.
…The idea of community schools, long discussed in Philadelphia but never quite a reality, takes to a whole different level the notion of maximizing time and optimizing resources for children.
More than just a place for students to have something stimulating to do in the afternoons, community schools integrate services for families right in the building. Other cities have developed the idea in ways that have been transformative, prompting a movement to bring community schools here.
Advocates in Philadelphia, in the wake of the widespread school closings, see community schools as not just an educational strategy, but as a way to revitalize neighborhoods.
“Community schools is not just afterschool, but the total integration of a neighborhood and city’s assets in the schools,” said Quanisha Smith of Action United.
Smith is co-chairing a task force on community schools for Philadelphia Coalition Advocating for Public Schools (PCAPS). “We are still very much in the planning phase,” she said.
In Cincinnati, the Community Learning Centers initiative is being credited with stemming flight to the suburbs, helping to spur academic achievement, and increasing the graduation rate – now above 80 percent…
In Cincinnati, “we had no money,” said Annie Bogenschutz of the city’s Community Learning Center Institute. She said the community school movement grew out of a “crisis” in which the schools had lost residents’ confidence.
The Community Learning Center model developed in 1999, when the federal government declared Cincinnati’s public school facilities the worst in Ohio.
The federal government promised to contribute a third of the $1 billion needed to rebuild the infrastructure, as long as Cincinnati raised the rest. A bond issue failed; then advocates thought of creating community schools. The new and renovated buildings would serve as community hubs, bringing together services from preschool and adult education to medical, mental health, dental, and vision care, as well as programming before and after school.
Bogenschutz stressed that the capital investment did not come with an infusion of more money for implementation and maintenance. Instead, an unprecedented level of coordination maximized funds already available.
For instance, health providers who can bill Medicaid per patient for reimbursements get more clients and revenue when the services are right in the school. Plus, students get services they might not get otherwise.
Almost all the 52 community schools in Cincinnati have health services – 49 have mental health providers – but each community decides what it needs.
Each school has a leadership team composed of the principal, teachers, parents, students, community members, and representatives of the programs that serve the school. Most important, there is a coordinator at each site who manages the partnerships.
Bogenschutz’s organization supervises and supports the 33 community school coordinators in Cincinnati.
PCAPS is making the establishment of community schools in Philadelphia a priority. It is educating the public about the model and hopes to have a pilot project running next year.