City Beat / February 12, 2014
When Cincinnati officials and Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) leaders on Feb. 6 announced plans to work closer together and align policy goals, it was under a notably positive environment that might not have been possible just 10 years ago. And many local officials say the school system’s innovation with community learning centers is largely to thank.
It’s not just local leaders crediting the model, either. Education experts now tout Cincinnati as a workable example of educating low-income populations. A few hundred miles away, newly elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is looking to Cincinnati as a model to build up community learning centers in the biggest city in the country.
The model effectively transforms schools into hubs of services that neighborhoods can rely on for the basic needs of modern life — not just education, but also food, health care and college and job preparation.
For example, Oyler School in Lower Price Hill hosts a health center, dental clinic, vision care, mental health services, tutoring, college preparation, post-graduation tracking and aid, and an early learning center, on top of myriad after-school activities. That’s far above the traditional nurse’s office and loose coalition of after-school activities most schools offer.
Some of the programs, particularly medical services, come at no extra cost to the schools — beyond the free space provided — and are funded by their own nonprofit models. Other programs rely on federal grants and more traditional funding sources to stay open.
The idea is to remove serious distractions, such as health problems, while fostering better educations than traditional institutions. In impoverished neighborhoods like Lower Price Hill, a community learning center can also provide resources the neighborhood would otherwise go without.
“Since there’s a lack of resources down in this area, the school brings all the necessary resources in-house so that the people who live down here still have access to them,” says Jami Luggen, resource coordinator at Oyler School.
But does the model work?
It’s difficult to find anyone who says it doesn’t. The mayor of New York City is so impressed he wants to take the model to his city