School leaders say Oakland’s community school movement will continue, even without Tony Smith
Students at Life Academy in Oakland participate in an afterwards school "Futbolistas 4 Life" program. Credit: Roberto Daza. Photograph courtesy of the documentary film "Futbolistas four Life" by Jun Stinson.
When Tony Smith became Oakland schools superintendent iv years agone, he vaulted the struggling district into the national spotlight with his vision of creating a "community school commune" that would vastly aggrandize the part of schools in the lives of their students and the community equally a whole.
Instead of just focusing on what goes on in the classroom, Smith argued, the schools should focus on serving the "whole kid" by partnering with community organizations to offering a range of enrichment, wellness, social and other services for children and their families.
Now, Smith has stunned fellow educators by announcing that he volition leave the district in June, raising questions about whether his community school initiative will be sustained after his divergence.
Those concerns are not necessarily unfounded. The departure of an urban school superintendent, often after a relatively brusk tenure, tin bring an abrupt end to one series of reforms and the introduction of another.
Smith himself says his deviation is "bittersweet."
"We're right on the verge of some actually important next level change," said Smith, 46, who said his resignation was prompted by a need to motility to Chicago to assist care for his wife's ailing parents.
Tony Smith
So far, the district is in the "implementation stage" of the plan – the commencement cohort of 27 commune schools have a defended community school coordinator working to develop a full service community school strategy at those campuses. At full gyre-out, all of Oakland's 87 schools, from the highest- to lowest-performing, are supposed to become total-service community schools.
Smith believes his divergence will not derail the try.
"This is actually a movement," he said. "Information technology's get about the community thinking that what we demand is support and high-quality schools in every neighborhood. People are now expecting the district to behave this manner, not just Tony Smith."
Keeping momentum
In fact, several key players involved with the initiative say Smith's departure is unlikely to halt the reform initiative, which they say has too much back up and is too far along to stop now.
"If it only depended on a single person, then for sure it'southward going to fade out," said Gary Yee, who will serve every bit interim superintendent after Smith's departure on June thirty while the commune looks for a permanent replacement. Yee was a erstwhile teacher, chief, administrator in the nearby Peralta Customs College District, and, most recently, an elected member of the commune'due south school board. "I'one thousand proud to say the five-year programme was i the board worked on in partnership with Tony. We're in the third year of the five-twelvemonth plan, and I'm determined to see this through."
When Smith came to Oakland in 2009 the district was fresh out of state receivership, and connected to struggle with entrenched bug, including low exam scores and high concentrations of students living in violence-plagued neighborhoods. Later meeting with community groups later his arrival, Smith initiated a plan to brand every school in the commune a full-service customs school.
"Oakland was ane of the most pregnant developments in the community school motion," said Martin Blank, director of the Washington D.C.-based Coalition for Community Schools. "Not only did Tony Smith say he wanted to organize community schools, he said, 'I want Oakland to be a full-service customs schoolhouse district.'
"That's a big distinction," Blank said. "It ways he wants the district'due south relationship with the community to be fundamental" to student success.
Only a few other districts in the nation, including those in Cincinnati, Evansville, Ind., and Tulsa, Okla., have committed to the total-service model across all their schools. Oakland is among the most prominent.
Simply the energetic superintendent focused and greatly expanded the effort in Oakland, created a critical mass of support and helped arts and crafts a v-twelvemonth "Community Schools, Thriving Students" plan for the district.
Smith framed the result as 1 of equity and necessity: The holistic approach would ensure that all students get the support and programs they need to graduate, while also making the larger community a partner sharing responsibility for the achievement of Oakland'south students. 1 cardinal focus is around improving the academic accomplishment and opportunities for African-American boys in Oakland.
"In any loftier-poverty district, educating the kid or the immature person means much more than than educational activity them within the hours of the school day," said Katherine Schultz, dean of the School of Education at Mills College and a member of the Oakland Education Cabinet, an advocacy group that strongly backed Smith's customs school program. "Electric current research and experience suggest information technology is very of import to have families and communities deeply engaged in schools for children to be truly educated."
Reaching students
A community schoolhouse called Life Academy of Wellness and Bioscience in Oakland's Fruitvale District is one model of the type of school Smith envisions. Open from 7 a.thousand. to half dozen p.m., Life University offers core academic programs during the day and a host of afterwards-school programs offering everything from recreation to academic enrichment. The extended twenty-four hours programs offer a range of services for students; juniors and seniors likewise participate in after-school internship programs in the health and sciences field. The 330-student campus opened in 2001 every bit a high school sharing a campus with another small schoolhouse, United for Success Academy; Life Academy is expanding this year to include grades six through nine.
Life Academy student Francisco Garcia participates in an later on school "Futbolistas four Life" program. Credit: Roberto Daza. Photo courtesy of the documentary moving-picture show Futbolistas four Life by Jun Stinson.
On a recent afternoon, the campus was bustling hours after classes concluded at 3:30, with groups playing basketball on the playground, studying in small groups or receiving one-on-one tutoring, and others attending formal classes. In one room, a group of ninth and tenth graders led sixth graders in a grade on recognizing the cycles of violence and promoting healthy relationships. Across campus, some other group of students participated in a program called "Futbolistas 4 Life," which uses soccer as a way to engage students in solving social bug, while yet another group attended a session on visual art.
The school holds a weekly breakfast for parents as well as classes and seminars for families, which could vary from offerings on parenting to applying for financial aid for higher.
The after-school programs are run through a partnership with Alternatives in Activeness, an Alameda-based customs organization that offers like programming at McClymonds High School in Oakland. Such partnerships are a key part of the community schools model.
"It'south a very adept school," said Christian Coxdiaz, 16, a Life Academy inferior who said his mother pushed to get him into the school afterward he initially enrolled at a different Oakland high schoolhouse for the beginning of his freshman yr. If he had stayed at the other school, Christian said, "I would have dropped out, based on the path I was on."
At Life University, he institute courses and teachers who engaged him. He helped offset an anti-violence program at school called Season of Peace Building and is working in an after-schoolhouse internship programme in the health field and hopes to go a pediatrician or an emergency medical technician.
"The ane affair I really want to practise is to go on going to schoolhouse," Christian said.
The campus has seen results: Life Academy, where 88 pct of the students qualify for free and reduced luncheon, has an 84 percent graduation rate, co-ordinate to data provided past the school, compared to the commune's average high school graduation rate of 63 percent. The school'southward 2022 Academic Performance Index, the state's chief measure of a schoolhouse's academic success based on test scores of its students, is 719, a big jump from its score of 635 in 2008. Simply it is still far curt of the API goal of 800, the proficiency target the state has set up for all its schools.
Districtwide, progress on the community schools effort been steady, schoolhouse officials said, yet significant challenges remain. Those include finding a undecayed funding stream to aid sustain the programs, which at present are funded through a tapestry of district, country and federal coin and grants. In improver to support from community-based organizations, large foundations, such equally the Kaiser Permanente Foundation and the Bechtel Foundation, among others, help fund specific efforts.
Smith's resignation was non among the predictable challenges.
"Whatever time you lot lose a leader of Tony's caliber, it has impact, not only because of the leadership (he showed) within the schoolhouse district, only too the leadership he represented in the customs in terms of the demand for radical reform to improve conditions," said Junious Williams, chief executive officer of the nonprofit Urban Strategies Council, which worked closely with Smith and the commune to develop the community schools plan.
"All of usa really appreciate the many contributions of Tony," Williams said, "but one of the lessons out of this is that we all demand to really own information technology."
This written report is i of a series of reports on expanded learning fourth dimension supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation.as office of of a multi-city reporting project by EdSource and EdNews Colorado, EdSource Today, GothamSchools and the Philadelphia Public School Notebook.
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Source: https://edsource.org/2013/school-leaders-say-oaklands-community-school-movement-will-continue-even-without-tony-smith/32558
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