The D.C. Council is moving forward with legislation to transform at least five at-risk public schools into “community schools,” providing adult-education classes and hosting health clinics on evenings and weekends. The Community Schools Incentive Amendment Act would create grants of up to $200,000 per year to schools that develop a plan approved by an advisory committee made up of leaders from D.C. Public Schools, the parks department, the health department, and other agencies. The council has scheduled a community roundtable on the bill for Wednesday.
Lawmakers say the idea is to turn schools into community hubs — free, public space for health clinics and tutoring sessions alike. At-large Councilman Michael Brown, who introduced the bill in 2010, said he hopes adult-education classes in nutrition and literacy would result in better-fed students with more involved parents.
“On a PTA night, or a back-to-school night, you go to the eastern part of the city and only see a handful of parents — it’s not that they don’t care, they might be working,” Brown told The Washington Examiner. “But you go to the western part of the city, and you can’t even find a seat.”
Expanding such services for DCPS and charter school students isn’t a new idea, but is a requirement of the Public Education Reform Act of 2007, which put schools under mayoral control and mandated the modernization of school facilities.
Council Chairman Kwame Brown, who is co-sponsoring the bill with Ward 5’s Harry Thomas Jr. and Ward 1’s Jim Graham, said these services got lost.
“The implementation of school reform was so focused on firing teachers, and so focused on school modernization, that this part clearly didn’t get as much attention as it should have,” the chairman said.
At least 30 percent of D.C. children come from families living in poverty, and well over half of children live in single-parent households.
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Chicago, Cincinnati and Portland, Ore., have introduced community schools, with encouraging results: In its first year, nine Cincinnati pilot schools saw student enrollment increase 10 percent, behavior incidents drop 10 percent, and 10 percent more students pass state exams.
Michael Brown’s staff estimates that the program would cost $1 million to $2 million each year, a piece of the puzzle he and city leaders are still figuring out. Officials want the program to be covered by a mix of local, federal and private dollars.
