Vindicator / May 25, 2020
We’re in a difficult time for public education. Spending at the state level has been cut, and with a slow economy we can expect more funding struggles statewide and locally. At the same time, our students’ academic, emotional and physical needs are greater than ever due to the challenges of remote learning, remote delivery of support services and increased stress, trauma and grief.
This is not a new dilemma for Mahoning Valley public schools. When General Motors first announced it would close its Lordstown plant and abandon the communities that built billions of dollars of wealth for the company, educators knew what that would lead to: underfunded public schools with more students who would be experiencing poverty and needing resources and emotional support.
In addition to standing with their community in the Drive It Home campaign to keep the Lordstown plant open, Lordstown teachers asked themselves, “How do we leverage all the resources that are available to us — from our school district, from local, state and federal government and from local businesses and nonprofits — to meet the needs of our students and effectively do more with less?”
They looked toward a proven model for doing this: community learning centers, which are built on the principle that public schools are natural neighborhood hubs of educational, cultural and health resources. Each learning center is both a place and a set of partnerships that provide resources and services based on the assets and needs of each school community.
Cincinnati Public Schools, a great example of this model in Ohio, have been better prepared to deal with the pandemic and school closures because of their community learning centers. Through school-based health centers and telehealth services, online early childhood instruction, food pantries filled with donations from community and business partnerships, free wi-fi hotspots, legal aid and more, the community learning center model has given CPS students and families the resources they need to get through this crisis together.
At Roberts Academy, a pre-K through eighth grade school in Cincinnati, the school building may be closed, but the community learning center team is working seven days a week. Tracy Power, a resource coordinator with the Community Learning Center Institute, organizes Roberts’ Community Learning Center and coordinates a team of teachers, volunteers, and staff from different partner organizations that has called each of the school’s families to check in, identify needs and connect kids and families with services.
Services at Roberts include a school-based health center, early childhood learning and an Immigrant and Refugee Law Center. Though they don’t all provide the same services, Roberts is just one of dozens of community learning centers in Cincinnati.
Community learning centers are not for crises only. They are how we should structure education even in the best of times. This model deals with the everyday, real life that is in our schools.
Melissa Cropper is president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers. This is a localized version of an earlier commentary that appeared in the Ohio Capital Journal.