Smart Business Magazine / January 2015
2015 Pillar Awards: Honoring greatness in the name of outstanding community service
Education is a passion for Darlene Kamine, executive director of Community Learning Center Institute, an offshoot of Cincinnati Public Schools Community Learning Centers. These outlets serve as community hubs that promote academic excellence and provide recreational, educational, social, health, civic and cultural opportunities for students, their families and the community.
Prior to founding the organization, Kamine was a juvenile court magistrate. She is also the founder of ProKids, a guardian ad litem program for abused and dependent children in the child welfare system.
Through this experience, she is able to bring her unique perspective to help drive the community learning centers to provide the programs and services that students, families and communities need to be successful.
In 2009, Kamine founded Community Learning Center Institute to continue to support and promote this approach to academic reform and community revitalization. Knowing that there was not new money to create Community Learning Centers, Kamine based the model on realigning services that already exist in the community and co-locating them in schools. The mission is to support academic achievement, revitalize neighborhoods and increase return on investment in public schools.
Kamine is the driving force of the nonprofit agency, the work of which has led to the formation of Alliance for Community and Educational Success, a committee led by a Cincinnati city councilman and the Cincinnati School Board president. Not only is this work impacting the entire city, it is making an impact nationally, as leaders from around the country have come to Cincinnati to explore the model.