DOCUMENT RESUME PS 028 397 ED 446 810 Coltoff, Philip; Kaplan, Marsha; Moses, C. Warren; Stack, AUTHOR Kathleen Building a Community School. Revised Edition. TITLE Children's Aid Society, New York, NY. INSTITUTION 1997-00-00 PUB DATE NOTE 81p. Children's Aid Society, 105 East 22nd Street, Room 504, New AVAILABLE FROM York, NY 10010 ($15). Descriptive (141) Reports PUB TYPE MF01/PC04 Plus Postage. EDRS PRICE Educational Change; Educational Finance; Educational DESCRIPTORS Philosophy; Elementary Education; *Integrated Services; Interprofessional Relationship; Needs Assessment; *Partnerships in Education; Program Descriptions; Program Development; *School Community Relationship Childrens Aid Society of New York City; New York City Board IDENTIFIERS of Education; *School Based Services ABSTRACT This manual provides a detailed outline of the innovative school-community collaboration between the New York City Public Schools and the Children's Aid Society of New York City to meet the pressing needs of children and families in the Washington Heights neighborhood. The manual describes the steps taken to develop the program of social services and high educational goals and standa::ds, some of the obstacles encountered, and the "What Is a philosophy guiding the program develonment. The chapters are: (1) "Community School Philosophy and Key Ingredients"; Community School?"; (2) "Building the "Washington Heights: A Look at What Is Possible"; (4) (3) "Assessing Community Needs"; "Overcoming Turf Issues"; Team"; (7) (6) (5) "Paying for Your Community School"; "Planning Your Community School"; (9) (8) "Postscript: Washington Heights Five Years Later." "Next Steps"; and (10) Lists 39 suggested readings. (KB) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. IfictAL_ -.1111MC" U S DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement O EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION .10 CENTER (ERIC) 'This document has been reproduced as 0 0 (received from the person or organization fD originating it 4 Ai& Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality Points of view or opinions stated in this 4111° document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy MN, Mrdno &mon° bboo Revised Edition 91_ . 40 The Children's Aid Society R PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS . . BEEN GRANTED BY E tky, LuAcz.\\ is TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) ., 4 I . 2 mrdtTE 2ommullv bhoo Revised Edition The Children's Aid Society Veda off &Vim% Acknowledgments 4 Preface 5 What is a Community School? 9 Community Schools in the Context of Public School Reform 10 New Realities for Families and Children 11 Academic Achievement Has A Social Context 12 Community School Philosophy and Key Ingredients 13 Community School Philosophy 14 Key Ingredients 15 Helping Children Succeed 17 Washington Heights: A Look at What is Possible 19 Parent Support and Involvement 22 Curriculum and Structure 24 Extended-Day Programs 25 Summer Programs 26 Health Care 27 Mental Health 29 Early Childhood Programs 29 Community Development 30 Building the Team 31 The Critical Partners 32 Other Possible Partners 35 Clear and Common Goals 35 Challenges and Rewards 36 Overcoming Turf Issues 37 Issues to Confront 38 Building a Basis for Collaboration 40 Assessing Conununity Needs 43 Laying the Groundwork in Washington Heights 44 Essential Steps in Assessing Need 45 Planning Your Community School 49 What, Where, How, When 50 Measuring Impact 52 Who Can Help 52 Paying for Your Community School 55 Community Schools are Cost-Effective 56 Full Services, Small Incremental Expense 57 A Menu Approach 58 Funding Strategies 59 Federal Support for School-Linked Services 60 Next Steps 65 Postscript: Washington Heights Five Years Later 69 Suggested Reading 74 3 4 Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund are supporting adapta- Inherent in the nature of the community school is the assumption that we can overcome many more tions across the country; Hasbro Children's Fund has sustained our early childhood programs; and the challenges when we work together that we can on our William T. Grant and Charles Stewart Mott own. That was certainly true of the effort in Foundations have supported our evaluation efforts. Washington Heights that you learn about in this manu- The Drucker Foundation has honored our schools al. To that end, we would like to extend our sincere with the national Drucker Award for Nonprofit gratitude to all of the people who made this vision a Innovation, and Equitable Foundation has underwrit- reality. ten this new edition of our workbook, as it did the First of all, we must thank the City of New York, reprints of our original book. Support from the Mayor Rudolph Giuliani whose support has been criti- Brookdale, Dodge, Goldsmith, Tiger, and Travelers cal to our ongoing success, and Mayor David Dinkins Foundations, and so many others, has also been so who proved his innovative spirit by accepting this important. Our deep thanks to all of these generous challenge in 1989. institutions. Thanks also to the City Schools Chancellors who Thanks must also be extended to many other have encouraged our efforts: the late Richard Green, partners and colleagues in Washington Heights, Chancellor Joseph Fernandez, who gave us the oppor- tunity to join forces in Washington Heights; including the Association of Progressive Dominicans (ACDP), the Northern Manhattan Improvement Chancellor Ramon Cortines, and Dr. Rudy Crew, whose personal interest and that of his staff have been Corporation, and many elected officials and communi- ty leaders. Thanks also to our health partners, Mt. so helpful as the project has expanded to a third and Sinai Medical Center, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, fourth school. and the Visiting Nurse Service, and to Fordham Special thanks go to Community School District 6 University for helping us develop and conduct our Superintendent Anthony Amato for sustained leader- evaluation. Special thanks to the Society's Trustee ship to make our unique partnership a reality, not only Judy Dimon and the generous members of the in the beginning but every step of the way. As the pro- ject has grown, so have requests for Tony's time and Education Advisory Board which she chairs; to Helene support, and he is continually gracious in offering and Alexander Abraham for early and sustained assis- both. We are also grateful to the members of tance; and to the many people whose numbers make it impossible to list them by name, but who are crucial Community School Board 6 for their willingness to to our success every day. open up their schools to include new partners. Without the financial support of The Charles Last, but by no means least, we wish to extend Hayden Foundation and The Clark Foundation when our thanks to the people of Washington Heights. Their determined spirit and overwhelming commitment to this project was still in its planning stage, none of our securing a quality education and a better future for ambitious plans and good intentions could have been their children has been a constant source of inspira- executed. Since opening these schools, the support of the Carnegie Corporation has enabled us to open a tion for us all. Technical Assistance Center; the Freddie Mac Foundation, Ambrose Wilder Foundation. and DeWitt 5 In 1989, The Children's Aid Society of New York City joined in an unprecedented partnership with the New York City Public Schools, the city's Community School District Six and community-based partners to develop a comprehensive response to the pressing needs of children and families in the northern Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights. The challenge was a formidable one. A 1987 needs assessment conducted by The Children's Aid Society found a neighborhood struggling with the city's most overcrowded schools, a large population of poor, first-generation immi- grant families, many young people at risk of dropping out of school, and a dan- gerous scarcity of health and social service providers. It also found a commu- nity with a drive to succeed and a determination to help its children succeed. Recognizing the urgent need for services, The Children's Aid Society began to survey the community for possible sites to open a new community center in Washington Heights. The answer quickly seemed obvious, however: Instead of building a new community center, we would build a new alliance with the public school system and community to create what was needed: a "community school." The community school would be an integral part of the community, reach the highest educational goals and standards, and contain all of the health and welfare services of a large social service agency. It would serve as a focal point in the community to which children and their parents could turn for education as well as a vast range of other supportive services. Medical, dental, mental health, recreation, youth programs, family life educa- tion and summer camping services would all emanate from this one institution, while the clear focus of every activity remained on academics and learning. And the institution would be open six or seven days a week, 15 hours a day, year-round. What we proposed was not simply to use the schools in the after- school hours, but to work side-by-side with the parents, teachers and communi- ty to ensure that children are given every chance to succeed. 5 6 The plan answered the calls of many policy experts who have contended for years that services for disadvantaged families were too fragmented to meet their multiple and interconnected needs, that educational achievement cannot occur if children and their families are in crisis, that teachers are too often required to serve as social workers, and that parents were being left out of the educational picture, and often alienated from the schools their children attend. Our vision became a reality in March of 1992 when Salome Urefia Middle Academies IS 218 opened its doors. Since then, three additional community schools, PS 5, IS 90 and PS 8, have opened in Washington Heights, bringing the total number served by the Society to nearly 7,000 children and an additional 3,500 teens and adults. All of these schools, while differing structurally and pro- grammatically, have created a sense of excitement and renewed hope in this community. The Children's Aid Society published the first edition of this workbook in 1993, shortly after the first two community schools opened. Our purpose was to inspire communities throughout the nation to create their own "community schools" and to guide them through the process. The book has been enormous- ly popular and a useful tool to educators, government leaders, social service providers, parent groups and countless others who are concerned about the educational prospects of our young people. A total of 15,000 copies have been distributed in three separate printings. In the five years since opening our first school, and the four years since publishing the first guide, we have accumulated a wealth of experience and practical lessons about the day-to-day challenges of running a community lessons we believed would be extremely instructive to anyone start- school ing down this exciting path. With the 20/20 vision that hindsight so kindly bestows, we believed we had an obligation to update this book and share our experiences with both an old and new audience of educational innovators. One thing is for certain: the audience for this message has clearly grown. When we published our first guide, there were some existing models of school- 7 community partnerships, but the movement could best be described as a fledg- ling one. In the intervening years, a whole new wave of school-based programs has emerged, constituting a legitimate public school reform movement. While the models may differ in methods, scope or philosophy, all of these programs share the goal of bringing the community's best resources directly into the schools to ensure that children are physically, emotionally and socially ready to learn. In 1994, The Children's Aid Society responded to this wave of interest by launching the Community Schools Technical Assistance Center at IS 218 to help other communities learn from our experience and adapt their own model. With support from the Carnegie Corporation, the Center has introduced nearly 2,500 visitors from government agencies, foundations, corporations, parent associations, schools and social service agencies nationwide to the CAS model through site visits and workshops at our schools in New York and, on occasion, site visits to the city thinking about establishing community schools. Since 1996 the Center has been providing intensive technical assistance to six cities establishing community schools modeled after our program. The DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, Fordham University and Children's Aid are supporting efforts in Long Beach, California, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Boston, Massachusetts. A planning grant from the Freddie Mac Foundation is helping with start-up activity in Washington, D.C. In Berkeley, California, a community schools project is currently underway and will serve as a model for three other counties. In St. Paul, Minnesota, the Ambrose Wilder Foundation is working with state and city partners to open three schools in 1998; and similar work is being planned for Atlanta, Georgia with support from IBM. Dozens of other communities are being helped with less formal assistance, and as this book goes to print, the Society is exploring the possibility of designating two schools as training sites for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, which works in 2,600 locations nationwide and reaches hundreds of thousands of children and teenagers daily. As was the case in our first workbook, this book provides a detailed out- line of the innovative collaboration at work in Washington Heights, the steps we had to take to reach our goals, some of the obstacles encountered, and the philosophy that guided us every step of the way. It also presents the community schools movement in the context of substantive school reform, and includes expanded chapters on planning the program, sustaining the partnership, and perhaps most critically funding the community school. This manual is designed to serve as an illustration of what is possible, not a rigid plan. More than anything, we hope this book illustrates that, despite the challenges of collaboration, the seemingly rigid nature of our public school sys- tem, and stubborn cynicism, it is absolutely possible to radically transform our schools into powerful institutions that offer children, their families and entire communities true hope for a better future. Philip Coltoff Executive Director The Children's Aid Society New York, New York October, 1997 MO ftefamuiEM bhact? @ormurnft Saab h ConilW off Mk 0h000 Rehm fog Reann 'for? Venthg eind MgOdna nozigade AzhIsuormsr0 kokil 1&1DUV 10