Great things happen to city neighborhoods when housing authorities, schools districts, and community organizations work together.
On November 17, 2005,
the “Building Successful Mixed-Income Communities” forum revisited a topic explored last year with local policymakers
and national experts from Atlanta: the role of quality schools and education
opportunities when redeveloping public housing into mixed-income communities.
At the forum, MPC also released its November 2005 CHA Plan for Transformation Update
.
That first forum included Terry Peterson, CEO
of the Chicago Housing Authority, Barbara Eason-Watkins, chief education officer
of the Chicago Public Schools, Renee Glover, executive director of the Atlanta
Housing Authority, and Norman Johnson, founder of the Centennial Place school in
Atlanta. Those panelists and their audience looked at local collaborations
between CPS and CHA, including the launch of the MidSouth Plan, and learned best
practices from Atlanta. One year and a half later, experts explored this
topic in the context of Chicago’s more recent public school reform efforts and
listened to lessons learned on-the-ground locally and in Portland, Ore.
Moderator Warren Chapman, Chase' vice president of
corporate philanthropy and
an MPC Board member, began by reminding the
audience that the strong connection between quality schools and successful
mixed-income communities has been highlighted by a number of recent studies
(downloadable at MPC’s “Public Housing in the Public Interest” site
). More
recently, Chapman continued, proposed legislation to reauthorize the HOPE VI
program (one of the key funding tools for public housing authorities
transforming their housing stock into mixed-income housing) has explicitly
introduced the need
to connect local school and
public housing revitalization, requiring every HOPE VI grant recipient to
establish a comprehensive education reform and achievement strategy to turn the
school that serves the new development into a high-performing
school.
“Many of us,”
asserted Chapman, “know first hand how important quality educational
opportunities are for the success of individual and communities, and
how crucial is the support of private, public and civic partners to guarantee
that those quality opportunities are enhanced and sustained over time."
Accoding to Chapman, schools are educational institutions, but also gathering
places, community anchors and indicators of a neighborhoods health and appeal:
"There aren’t great neighborhoods without great schools: that’s why a viable Plan
for Transformation needs to be coordinated with school reform plans." Before
introducing the panel, Chapman asked panelists to “dream a little,” and
articulate what they might need from the audience and other stakeholders to
achieve their common goals
.
From left to right: Tim Knowles (Center for Urban School Improvement),
Meghan Harte (CHA), Warren Chapman (Chase and MPC Board of Governors), MarySue
Barrett (MPC), Vicki Phillips (Portland Public Schools), and Arne Duncan
(Chicago Public Schools)
Panel presentations started with remarks from two key
policymakers working to transform troubled
Chicago
neighborhoods into stable communities,
anchored by quality housing and schools.
- Meghan Harte, Managing Director of Resident Services
at the CHA
- Arne Duncan, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools
Standing in for CHA CEO Terry Peterson, Harte started
pointing out that mixed-income communities are not different from any other
neighborhood in that they need quality schools nearby to thrive. Such schools
should provide an array of services beyond education, including daycare, youth
activities, community centers, and technology hubs. Mixed-income communities are
very diverse and one-size-fits-all approaches are unlikely to work, said Harte.
“CHA is not an expert in schools,” she acknowledged, “and that’s why our
partnership with CPS is key.”
Major public housing and school reform efforts happening
simultaneously in
Chicago
open up a world of challenges and
opportunities in a city historically marked by racial and economic segregation.
Arne Duncan’s list of elements that make a school successful included a good
academic curriculum, early-childhood programs, after-schools activities, and
services that link the school to the surrounding community. All these elements
are considered when proposals to create Renaissance 2010 schools are evaluated.
Renaissance 2010 is a citywide effort to open 100 new quality schools by the
beginning of next decade, and now includes the initial goals and lessons learned
in the MidSouth Plan. The initiative encourages private sector and civic
organizations to submit proposals to sponsor and start new schools.
According
to
Duncan, one of the most important factors to
guarantee functioning schools is getting parents involved in school life and
governance. “We need to change a culture that identifies parent involvement with
dropping the kids at school on time in the morning and picking them up after
school hours”
Some examples of successful schools near public housing
sites in redevelopment include Dodge near Westhaven, and Terrell and Williams,
located along the
State
Street
corridor. The three of them reopened recently
and, in some cases, returning kids are doing up to 15 times better in their
tests and attendance than before the closings, Duncan pointed
out
. Another hopeful
example is
Smyth
School
, near the
Roosevelt
Square
community (formerly ABLA), which was awarded
an International Baccalaureate Program.
After the local policymakers presentations,
Chapman introduced two seasoned experts with first-hand experiences on school
revitalization around mixed-income communities:
- Vicki Phillips, Superintendent of Portland Public
Schools (PPS)
- Tim Knowles, Executive Director of the University of Chicago Center for
Urban School Improvement (USI)
Vicki Phillips started her presentation sharing with the
audience her experience as a child born in a low-income family. “No principal at
elementary school ever told me that I could one day go to the university, and
even my parents discourage me from entertaining the idea: it was through
personal exposure to other kids in a mixed-income high-school that I found the
support and hope I needed.”
Ultimately, it was her exposure to kids from more diversified
backgrounds, and one of her college-bound friends, that insisted she should also
take college entrance exams.
Through her career, Dr. Phillips learned that,
unfortunately, most of the times we only respond to poverty when a big
catastrophe (such as hurricane Katrina) strikes, and we lack long-term
strategies to fight poverty on a daily basis. As one of the senior leaders of
the Kentucky Dept. of Education, Dr. Phillips helped implement the Education
Reform Act which, for the first time, mandated schools with 40% of kids or more
living below poverty levels to collocate supportive services within or nearby
the school facility. Later on, while working as Superintendent of the Lancaster
Schools in Pennsylvania, she learned the hard way the high price that a
community must pay when structural damage affects a major school building: 1,500
students had to relocate from McCaskey East High School, and effort that
succeeded only through the tireless commitment and support of parents and
community members.
In Portland, the Public Housing Authority was the
driver of the New Columbia redevelopment effort, which in the next years is
expected to produce an 850-unit mixed-income community. When Portland Public
Schools was approached by the housing authority to help with the redevelopment of the on-site school
, Dr. Phillips confronted a dilemma: in a time of budget
cuts, should the school district invest in creating a new school from scratch
for a neighborhood “in construction” where most residents were being relocated
to other areas, or should they use their scarce resources to assist the
overcrowded schools in other city neighborhoods?
PPS decided to take the risk and invest in the new
school, due to a great extent to the strong partners
participating in
this endeavor: the housing authority, the city’s Parks and Recreation Bureau and the
Boys and Girls Club. Through this creative partnership, PPS was able to
leverage a “patchwork of grants and funding tools”, including New Markets Tax Credits
( Portland is the first city in the country to use these
credits
to
create a
new school) which helped reduce the campus redevelopment costs from $21 to $16
million.
Strong leadership, committed staff and a will to
coordinate education and services are the three ingredients that Dr. Phillips
considered basic in this effort. “Never say never” and “One child at a time”
were the two mottos that are made plans move along from the feasibility study to
the actual site development.
Tim Knowles used the example of
Boston
’s “pilot schools”
to explain how in this city, mixed-income schools were created “by accident”
thanks to state legislation introducing flexibility principles to be applied
to:
-
hiring and firing
- use of resources
-
length of school day and season
-
governance
-
policy
This new flexibility ended with a culture that promoted a
“one-size-fits-all” approach to solving school problems throughout the district.
Pilot schools in troubled or transitioning neighborhoods achieved better results
than others in every indicator, attracted creative and motivated staff and,
indirectly, achieved a mix of incomes and ethnic backgrounds: many middle-class
African-American and Latino families who could opt for parochial schools decided
to enroll their kids in these “pilots.” In
Chicago
, the philosophy behind Renaissance 2010
is also based in flexibility and choice, asserted Mr. Knowles. He also pointed
out that, although we cannot make the success of schools depend on attracting
middle-class kids, when this attraction happens it plays a crucial role.
The University of Chicago Center of Urban School
Improvement (USI) operates two schools, North Kenwood/Oakland (NKO) at
46
th
St.
and Woodlawn, and Donoghue Charter at
37
th
St.
and
Cottage
Grove
. Recently, USI received a $5 million endowment
grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Over time, USI’s goal is to create a
network of quality schools in
Chicago
’s Mid-South area which, once in place,
will lead to radical, not incremental changes.
The three main goals of USI’s schools, according to Mr.
Knowles, are:
-
provide quality education to kids, starting college preparation at
an early age
-
provide professional development opportunities for
teachers
-
support the community around the school, which usually lacks
strong institutions
Despite the huge differences in funding between urban and
suburban schools (
Chicago
spends an average $5,500 per child per
year vs. suburban districts spending up to $18,000), the
NKO
School
outperformed schools from
throughout the state in writing tests.
After the presentations by
panelists, Warren Chapman moderated a Q&A session which included the following:
- How do CHA and CPS coordinate their work?
- Meghan Harte:
With two huge and complex citywide efforts such as
the CHA Plan for Transformation and Renaissance 2010 happening at the same time,
it is very difficult to coordinate timetables perfectly, but progress is being
made. In Donoghue, for instance, the school was getting ready to open last
September at the same time that families were returning to redeveloped public
housing. The developer, The Community Builders, helped with coordination and
outreach and worked with school reps to obtain flexibility in enrolment
requirements. As we move forward, we’d like to see more of this. Also, kids
moving out of public housing to be demolished should go through a smooth
transition process and, if possible, keep using their school of
origin.
- Arne Duncan:
Another problem we are finding in terms
of coordination is how to respond to the large numbers of families relocating to
a handful of South Side neighborhoods such
as
South
Shore. Many schools in these neighborhoods
are operating at maximum capacity, and the State has frozen funding for capital
improvements.
- Will teachers be prepared to deal with a mix of
incomes and cultures in the new schools?
- AD:
Yes. Through better preparation programs, partnerships with
the teachers union and active search of “underused” teachers, we’ll guarantee
that schools are served by well-trained professionals. We are proud to say that
for every job opening we have 10 applicants to choose from.
- Tim Knowles:
At NKO, we asked parents what worried them, and they
responded that the school was great, but they were deeply worried about the
“trash talk” in the way to and from class every day. Parents wanted more
diversity (the vast majority of kids are African-American). Also, they were
concerned about the fact that, by concentrating efforts in accelerating kids
left behind, those children doing well might not receive sufficient attention.
At NKO we are firm believers in keeping kids at different levels in the same
class.
- Renters, including CHA families, moving into new
mixed-income communities have to meet a 30-hour per week work requirement. How
do you plan to help them meet this criterion?
- AD:
One key service to provide is early childhood programs and
daycare for these families, as well as longer school days that allow kids not to
be alone while their parents are working
- What do you say to “market-rate” families to
attract them to schools previously populated almost exclusively by public
housing kids?
- AD
: You need to have a group of committed parents to help shape
these communities. Also, parents are attracted to quality. Many parents are
sending their kids to
Sudder
School
, in the heart of the
West Side
, near the former Henry Horner Homes, because of
its quality.
- TK:
You have to tell parents to come and look for themselves.
Pre-school opportunities are key: getting families into the schools network as
soon as possible helps attracting them later to public schools and high schools.
Also, parents want to be offered not just a school, but a trajectory, or better,
a menu of pathways from pre-school to college for their
kids.
- Do you think that test scores are a valid measure
of success?
AD:
20 years ago we were the worst school system in
America
. Today,
the changes in our district cannot be grasped jut by looking at test scores:
attendance rates and satisfaction measures are very important
too.