Rochester’s northeast quadrant is known for many things.
Children living here see more homicides and violence than children in any other
Rochester neighborhood. The area is home to about 4,300 students, and more than
97 percent of them are eligible for free or reduced-cost lunches. Most of them
will move to a new home at least once during the school year, and they are
among the least likely to graduate from high school of any group of students in
the region.
Adults in the northeast don’t fare much better. With the
highest rates of unemployment and illiteracy in the city, people here live on a
median income of less than $9,000 a year. They have the highest hospitalization
rates for asthma, diabetes, and hypertension — and the lowest number of
doctor visits.
Soon the northeast quadrant may be known for something else.
If School Superintendent Manuel Rivera can convince enough community leaders,
the area may become a springboard for one of the most significant programs for
social change the region has ever seen. The Rochester Children’s Zone, as it is
being called, targets a section of the city where poverty is so embedded that
it is producing afflicted children. Instead of focusing only on children,
however, Rivera’s strategy is to “surround” the northeast quadrant with all of
the city and county resources available to address the critical needs of its
residents: social services, adult education, health care, neighborhood
development, housing.
Rivera agrees that the school district is responsible for
education, and he says the Children’s Zone isn’t an attempt to delegate the
district’s job. “There is so much we can do with our staff in terms of more
education and professional improvement,” he says, “and we are doing it. We
agree; there’s always room to make more improvements.”
“But even if we do all that,” he says, “we still have to
find ways to overcome some of the most difficult barriers our children face
every day. They cannot learn if they have ongoing health and nutrition
problems. They cannot learn to read as well as other children if they live in a
household where literacy is a problem. They are not going to be emotionally
stable and prepared for life if they see violence and crime.”
“The ‘surround care’ concept means that we are making
certain that we are with them 24/7, playing a positive role in their social and
emotional development,” he says.
The Children’s Zone would cover the area from Norton Street
to Main Street, and Goodman to St. Paul. It would include Schools 6, 8, 9, 22,
36, 45, and the Freddie Thomas Learning Center.
As passionate as
Rivera is about the Children’s Zone, he notes that the concept isn’t his.
The idea originated with Geoffrey Canada, president of a children’s-services
non-profit in Harlem. In the early 90’s, Harlem was under siege from crack
cocaine use, gun violence, and homelessness. Canada was seeing the area’s youth
on a steady path of illiteracy, violence, crime, and prison. Yes, a few of them
broke out of the cycle of poverty and even made it to college. But most became
adults with severe limitations, which they passed to their children.
Frustrated, Canada shifted his attention away from poor
children and focused instead on the systemic problems of a poor community. He
went to business, government, and community leaders throughout Manhattan to
raise the money and resources for essentials: medical care, job training, and
parenting skills. His goal was to see healthy babies born into stronger
families.
“This represents a fundamental change in how we support
children from the time they are born to the time they graduate,” says Rivera.
“One community gets the support of another community.”
The City School District already has more than 100
partnerships with area businesses, community leaders, and colleges, including Wegmans,
Via Health, M&T Bank, Nazareth, the University of Rochester, and SUNY
Brockport. They’re offering everything from internships and scholarships to
literacy volunteers and teacher assistants. Xerox, for example, has been
supporting the school district with science and robotics training since 1968.
“There are many organizations that already provide services
and assistance to people living in that community, and another role we should
play is one of coordinating some of those efforts,” Rivera says. “We need to
coordinate with other government agencies, some of which already use their own
funding streams for the same goals we have — you know, like housing and
social services. Some of this simply involves making sure we are doing a better
integration of efforts to support families and children.”
It is 4 p.m. on a
Thursday in June. The school year is winding down, but administrators are
still working at a frantic pace. Rivera is trying to make it from the lobby to
his office on the second floor of the district’s administration building, but
he is stopped about every10 feet by students, teachers, and parents. Most just
want a little talk time with him, and he seems just as comfortable relating to
a 5-year-old as he does to his peers. There’s no question he is popular. It
goes beyond that; he’s well respected, and that may be his most important
attribute in the months ahead.
Like Canada, Rivera understands that the success of the
Children’s Zone is directly linked to how well he can sell ownership of the
poverty crisis beyond his own hallways. He’ll have to take the schools’
partnerships with the community to a whole new level.
“We have already begun the process of building community
teams,” he says, pointing to letters of support from people like Mayor Bill Johnson,
County Executive Maggie Brooks, and United Way President Peter Carpino.
In his letter to Rivera, Jasco Tools president John “Dutch”
Summers noted that 9,000 inmates who dropped out of high school were booked in
the Monroe County Jail in 2003, costing the county more than $8 million to
incarcerate them.
Letters of encouragement are one thing, however. Sooner or
later Rivera is going to need more than just cheerleading from the outside.
He’s going to need money, and he’s going to need a lot of it. His own estimate
is somewhere between $700,000 and $1 million just to plan and launch the
Children’s Zone program. This money would fall outside of his annual budget,
but he says he’s confident he’ll get it.
“We’re not saying that all this change has to happen outside
the district,” says Jana Carlisle, chief strategist and planning officer for
the school district. “We’re saying we will make the changes needed internally, too, so others can work with us. This
is not a mandate to them. We’re going to do whatever it takes.”
Carlisle is Rivera’s point person for the Children’s Zone.
She has been immersed in graphs, charts and Power Point presentations for
months. She has a 15-month window for getting community teams in place. She is
also talking with residents in the northeast section of the city about the
program.
By early 2006, Carlisle and Rivera will know the real
backers of the Zone. They’ll know who is providing what, and when to expect it.
Most important, they’ll know if the Rochester Children’s Zone really has legs.
“I think he is going in the right direction,” says United
Way’s Peter Carpino. “Problems like this are so big and so complicated that no
one organization can solve it on its own. Everyone needs to pool their
resources.”
Donna Phillips is a senior associate with United Way, but
before that she spent 33 years as a teacher with the Rochester school district.
She is clearly an advocate of Rivera and the Children’s Zone, and she has seen
the problems the school district faces with poverty firsthand.
“When you think that 12 percent of the district’s children
live within the Zone, it gives you a sense of how big the problem is,” she
says. “I think the only way to break the cycle of poverty is through literacy.”
Phillips and Carpino are already contributing, helping the
superintendent apply for a grant. If it comes through, it would solve most of
the start-up cost problem. United Way is also investing in more Student and
Family Support Centers, which are located in several city high schools and
offer counseling to students and parents. Carpino says the plan is to add them
to elementary schools.
At the University of Rochester Medical Center, CEO Mac
Evarts points to what his institution is doing in the school district: “We
provide comprehensive health services at school 17, the health clinic at East
High, the mobile dental clinic, a telemedicine program to elementary schools,
and science lab for high school students.”
“And,” Evarts says, “we are committed to building on our
partnership.”
The Rochester Business Alliance is taking a wait-and-see
approach to the Children’s Zone. “We don’t know if there is an immediate role
for us at this time,” says Sandy Parker, RBA’s chief executive officer. “We
understand the concept, and I think the surround-care strategy is excellent.”
“We could probably support with resources, people, equipment
— it depends. But I can tell you that we would not be anxious to support with
funds,” she says. “I am a strong believer that we don’t need to put more funds
into the district.”
Parker echoes concerns many business leaders have had: The
district’s budget has continued to increase, while drop-out rates are high and
test scores are low. The district’s response, of course, is that it can’t work
miracles with a high poverty population.
This is not the first
time the city tried to take on poverty and its impact on the school
district. Another big initiative came out of the Rochester Urban League back in
1986. Titled “A Call to Action,” it was an initiative led by none other than
Mayor Johnson, then the Urban League’s CEO, and its similarity to the
Children’s Zone can’t be overlooked. It called for community support in many of
the same ways: more parent participation, involvement with health and human
services, and support from local businesses. But A Call For Action didn’t
succeed in involving the full community. And the problems it was designed to
address are worse.
“A Call to Action was more child focused,” says the United
Ways’ Phillips. “It was not really the same thing.” The Children’s Zone has a
more holistic approach and emphasizes supporting the entire community.
A Call to Action did boost school partnerships with the
community. And if there is a lesson from the former program, it’s that keeping
the Children’s Zone alive and in front of the public is almost as important as
getting the money and resources. In Harlem, Jeffrey Canada was able to dedicate
himself to his efforts. Rivera has the school district to run.
“We’re going into this in a listening mode,” says Carlisle.
“We believe the answers are in the community. Sometimes the individual
organization doesn’t have the answer, but we are hoping that collectively we
can structure change. We have to do
something. Call it ‘social engineering.’ Some people don’t like thinking of it
that way, but we may be pioneering a new approach to education.”
This article appears in Jul 6-12, 2005.
