Last month, the Association awarded planning grants to three innovative school district and community partnerships to support a six-month planning process to enhance their summer programming for students transitioning from middle school to high school. The partnerships selected for this planning opportunity are the Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN) and the School District of Philadelphia (PA); Open Meadow Step Up and the Portland Schools Foundation’s Ninth Grade Counts Initiative (OR); and BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life) and the Springfield Public Schools (MA).
The Association’s summer transition team is excited to kick off our work with the “pilot sites” with visits to their current programs this summer. We will use what we learn about the unique needs of each site to help guide the focus of a professional learning community, which will include planning meetings and field experiences that aim to expose pilot sites to expert knowledge and exemplary program models, in order to help them build knowledge in a collaborative manner to inform their enhanced program plans. We’re also looking forward to presenting with the pilot sites on this initiative at the Association’s national conference in Indianapolis this November.
The grants were made available through the Association’s ongoing field-building work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which aims to use the summer time strategically to support the needs of youth entering high school to help keep them on track to graduate. The grantees were selected based on feedback from advisors and experts from the field on the key needs for supporting the bridge to high school during an event hosted by the Association this past march in Tampa, Florida.
If you would like to learn more about this work and contribute ideas about inventive ways to use educational technology and digital media to boost college readiness, please visit the Next Generation Learning Challenges website or visit the initiative’s page on Facebook or Twitter.
August 5th, 2010
Earlier this week, an Education Week
article spotlighted the plight of community schools in trying to get the attention of policymakers as a key education reform strategy (See “Community Schools: Reform’s Lesser Known Frontier”). But it appears that 2010 may open doors for fans of community schools. The Obama administration’s approach to school reform is two-pronged: 1) a continued focus on accountability; and 2) linking schools with networks of social support – exactly what community schools do.
In order to capitalize on the Administration’s support and foster the growth of community schools, the author argues that we, as stakeholders, need to shift our thinking. She says, “Schools have to recognize that non-academic factors play a key role in determining academic outcomes, and service organizations have to reimagine themselves as actors in the education domain.”
As I read this quote (and by the way, I couldn’t agree more), I found myself pondering the great many summer program providers who are pioneers in living out this paradigm shift. These programs have carved out a niche for themselves as agents of change in a young person’s life, and as allies with both schools and families in support of a child’s academic achievement and healthy social, emotional and physical development. Might we put forth these “summer stars” as excellent models of collaboration? Take it from them, linkages make everybody’s life easier. In a recent
NSLA publication sponsored by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation and the Rhode Island Afterschool Plus Alliance, summer program providers offered these benefits to forming meaningful linkages between schools and community partners:
- Better access to information about youth and families,
- Greater alignment in content and curriculum,
- More and varied enrichment offerings,
- Unique, yet complementary, staff skill sets and expertise,
- Greater variation in instructional delivery methods, and
- Increased likelihood of positive relationships with youth and families.
As legislators deliberate the merit and mechanics of the
Full Service Community Schools Act and the
“Promise Neighborhoods” initiative, I hope summer providers will share their knowledge and strategies in forging strong partnerships and embracing both academics and healthy development as core to their mission. Summer providers are natural allies to schools and communities. And they can fill a critical need in Promise Neighborhoods – continued learning opportunities during the summer months.
Who would you recommend as outstanding examples of summer collaborators?
February 3rd, 2010
Last week, I had the great pleasure of participating in a series of meetings in San Francisco hosted by Margaret Brodkin, who heads up an initiative called
A New Day for Learning funded by the C.S. Mott Foundation. The meetings were designed to generate ideas for how a community can come together in the wake of serious cuts to summer school programs. Here are a few of the ideas that were generated:
- The San Francisco Unified School District and the Department of Children, Youth and their Families are organizing a Summer Resource Fair for parents and children on March 6th.
- The head of the public library said his department could work with Rec and Parks, CBOs, and the school district to provide professional development for summer staff on literacy, bookmobile stops at programs, reading resources such as summer reading lists, staff visits to summer programs, and field trips to local libraries.
- The Arts Commission can mobilize community arts providers to support programs, and can help organize kids’ art shows and weekend culture clubs.
- Health and nutrition education and activities can connect to programs through the summer lunch program. Outreach to farmers markets, food banks, and other health-related programs can generate new summer program partners.
- California Academy of Sciences will be sharing resource kits, training providers, and organizing access to their institution.
- The San Francisco Opera is open to experimenting for the first time this summer with partnerships focused on summer learning.
What do you think about these ideas and what are some of yours? How can we get more cities engaged in this type of collaborative planning and inter-agency cooperation during the summer months?
January 28th, 2010
