- Kenilworth-Parkside Residents See Brighter Future [Educare PCS and Cesar Chavez PCS mentioned]
- SIMMONS: On discipline of school children, spare the rod, bolster the unions
Kenilworth-Parkside Residents See Brighter Future [Educare PCS and Cesar Chavez PCS mentioned]
The Washington Informer
By Stacy M. Brown and Barrington M. Salmon
June 4, 2014
With great fanfare, the nonprofit D.C. Promise Neighborhood Initiative (DCPNI) designated the Kenilworth-Parkside area in Northeast as a Promise Zone.
Following the 2010 designation residents and others, who had suffered through decades of a decaying infrastructure and a fractured community that crime and drugs ravaged, rejoiced.
Today, in different parts of the community there are signs of progress, despite some who said the pace of change has moved too slowly to suit them.
“I wish we had made a bigger difference faster but I understand it’s not realistic,” said Wendy Goldberg, the initiative board’s leader.
However, hope certainly springs eternal as tangible evidence abound that Kenilworth-Parkside has started to turn the corner.
“We got involved in 2010 when it was still in the planning stages because this initiative aligns with our mission to help community-based organizations to create healthy neighborhoods,” said Oramenta Newsome, executive director of Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a New York-based organization that helps rebuild blighted neighborhoods through loans and other assistance to improve the quality of life for residents.
“Where you want to conduct your business, where you raise your child, that’s important,” Newsome said. “The information that we’ve been provided about Kenilworth-Parkside indicates that they are definitely making small but ongoing progress.”
A new executive director for the initiative will soon be appointed by DCPNI officials, one who’s expected to further energize a community that’s finally sensing change.
Already, the abandoned Kenilworth Elementary school which closed in 2013 has been transformed into computer labs and children’s play areas and a gym has been converted into a boxing training facility.
Officials have started training adults on computers and they have also provided a Parent Resource Center at the Neval Thomas Elementary School where after-school programs include homework assistance, hip-hop dancing, boxing and digital media courses.
Thanks to the late Abe Pollin, who once owned the Washington Wizards and Capitals, new condominiums along Barnes Street have opened for low-income individuals and families.
The development includes 83 brand new three-bedroom units with minimal down payment requirements. “I know that I’m very optimistic because we are seeing younger people move in and we are seeing them buy the new houses and also join our church,” said Ulysses W. King, a trustee at the Zion Baptist Church on Kenilworth Avenue in Northeast.
King, 65, said he’s been with that church since 1966 and he’s seen the worse of the neighborhood, but a renaissance beckons.
“There’s a lot going on. Mayor Vincent Gray recently attended one of our town hall meetings at the church and, like he said, I believe everyone should be patient because great things are now starting to happen here,” King said.
For many, the crown jewel in the transformation is Educare of Washington D.C., a public charter school which opened in 2012. Since Educare opened, the goal has been to provide equality in education to children living in conditions that are starkly different from those residing in wealthier sections of the District.
Educare receives funding from private and public partnerships and stakeholders who are committed to educational reform.
A who’s who of business, education, government and civic organizations has visited the school, including presidential senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, Alma Powell, chair of the America’s Promise Alliance, Mayor Vincent C. Gray, Ward 8 council member Marion S. Barry, former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Susie Buffett, daughter of businessman Warren Buffett and chairman of the Buffett Early Childhood Fund.
“The first five years lays the foundation for a successful future,” Susie Buffett told an audience at an event marking the school’s first anniversary. “Education serves as an immensely powerful showroom for best practices and shows legislators a level playing field.”
Educare fits nicely with DCPNI’s vision that children in the neighborhood will attend and graduate from excellent schools, obtain the education necessary for productive careers, and have the additional support needed to thrive and some day provide those same opportunities to their own children, officials said.
“I know that outsiders talk a lot about the violence, but there’s more crime in Georgetown than there is here but the perception from the outside is really bad,” said Darlene Smith, 57, a property manager at Kenilworth-Parkside Resident Management Corporation on Anacostia Avenue in Northeast.
Charlotte Mann, a single mother of three, said she’s prayed often for an improvement in education to help local youth avoid pitfalls.
“I know one of the emphasis for the Promise Zones is transforming schools, making them better and that’s the one thing that cannot be compromised,” said Mann, 49. “Our children deserve better and hopefully the government and everyone else will see that.”
DCPNI officials said residents should trust that change will indeed occur in Kenilworth-Parkside, a community located in Northeast and whose borders are Eastern Avenue, Benning Road, Interstate 295 and the Anacostia River.
They said DCPNI personnel are onsite at Neval Thomas and Cesar Chavez schools, and grant money has helped provide computer tablets, after-hour programs at Cesar Chavez, a math coach and more.
“Local leaders are on the forefront of addressing some of our most complex social problems with limited resources and capacity,” said Tracey Ross, senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress and one of the authors of a new report released May 29 about the Promise Zone initiative.
“The initiative presents an opportunity to transform these communities while making the federal government a more effective partner,” Ross said.
Until that happens, there are still daily challenges to overcome.
“We still don’t have a supermarket or a grocery store,” said Amanda Dolphin.
“We still don’t have a pharmacy that’s close enough to walk to. I wish [government officials] would consider that a priority, especially because you have senior citizens and small children here who need those services,” said Dolphin, 55.
Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968, angry groups rioted and burned neighborhoods in cities across the country, including sections of Washington such as U Street and the Kenilworth-Parkside community.
Since that time, some residents said they’ve relied on a neighborhood convenience store for groceries, but because of the attention the Promise Zone initiative has received, many remain hopeful.
“I’m sure that since there is attention from the media and from the president, we’ll see some kind of a turnaround even if it isn’t everything that’s needed,” said Ruth Hassell, 64, who’s lived in Northeast for 35 years. “People tell me that patience is a virtue, and I’ve been patient, there isn’t much more you can do but to wait and see,” Hassell said.
The Promise Zone designation means that grants of between $25 million and $30 million are used to end the intergenerational cycle of poverty and revitalize neighborhoods.
The designation translates into access to federal resources to support job creation, increased economic security, expanded educational opportunities, and better access to quality, affordable housing, and improved public safety.
President Barack Obama has also promised that things will be different in places like Kenilworth-Parkside which has a population of 5,725, including 1,800 children.
Roughly 98 percent of residents are African American and 55 percent are females. Approximately 85 percent of households with children in the neighborhood are headed by single women, while 50 percent of adults in Kenilworth-Parkside live in poverty and 49 percent experience food insecurity.
Research further reveals that 70 percent of the residents have a high school or above education, a low figure when compared to the 88 percent of other District residents with similar educational credentials.
“What we saw when we decided to offer funding were engaged people in the neighborhood,” Newsome said. “We believe with the resources that they were gathering and putting people in place and the ideas that they have will bring results.”
SIMMONS: On discipline of school children, spare the rod, bolster the unions
The Washington Times
By Deborah Simmons
June 5, 2014
How best to discipline schoolchildren?
Well, that depends.
But whether you stand among the hardliners or the he-didn’t-mean-it deniers, one thing is certain: Give-‘em-a-break discipline policies are coming to a schoolhouse near you.
The Council of State Governments Justice Center on Tuesday released a report that not only says zero-tolerance school discipline policies should be modified, but that in too many cases, we’re just too doggone hard on kids.
This report won’t be easily dismissed or tossed on a shelf to gather dust.
No, this report is the work of an organization that advises state governments, which decide how to develop statewide policies and the budgets to go along with them.
The report, titled “School Discipline Consensus Report: Strategies from the Field to Keep Students Engaged in School and Out of the Justice System,” echoes a common socioeconomic talking point: Black and brown kids, poor kids, disabled kids, at-risk kids are disproportionately hurt by zero-tolerance policies.
Or healthy, white kids are essentially disaffected.
Hmm.
Come to think of it, that goes for a lot of policies, am I right?
I’m not trying to make light of the school discipline issue.
Here in the nation’s capital alone, more than 18,700 public school suspensions were handed out in the 2011-12 school year — and that doesn’t take into account private and parochial schools.
And, by the way, special-needs students are included among those 18,700 suspensions.
Also, during that same school year, more than 200 expulsion orders were issued.
The D.C. data I gleaned from the Every Student Every Day Coalition, a nonpartisan advocacy organization which issued its own report — “District Discipline: The Overuse of School Suspension and Expulsion in the District of Columbia.”
The coalition’s report was authored by the D.C. Lawyers for Youth, which means that, like the Justice Center’s report, one of the key goals is to get kids out of the pipeline to prison.
How noble.
Suspending and expelling kids because of truancy problems is a surefire setup for failure.
It would be nice if the unions, which perpetrated the pipeline, concede as much ASAP.
But that’s unlikely, considering one certain result of the recommendations to end the pipeline is more union jobs.
More school counselors.
More school attendance counselors.
More social workers.
More school date gatherers.
More special-education teachers and aides.
More school-discipline mitigators.
You get my drift.
So, let’s recap.
How best to discipline school children?
If you’re a member of the zero-tolerance crowd, then it’s locked ‘em down or lock ‘em up — the universal hard and fast rule that’s hardly implemented anymore.
There’s a timeout group, those who believe in giving little Suzette time alone to think, or rethink, her actions.
It’s a question the “experts” continue to study long and hard.
Two organizations release reports that say school discipline policies are unfair to black and brown kids.
Two organizations recommend loosening policies that require new rules and implementers.
Two organizations have justice on their minds and intentions to reconfigure the pipeline-to-prison equation.
Prevention is the best cure — and a swat with a flat hand sometimes helps, too.