@GRASSROOTS.ORG/Cities in Schools

Wednesday, Jul 23, 2008

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GROUPS THAT CHANGE COMMUNITIES

Cities in Schools

Cities in Schools of Charlotte/Mecklenburg County
Cynthia Marshall, executive director
525 N. Tryon St., Suite 200
Charlotte, N.C. 28202
(704) 335-0601

This is one of the most effective local chapters of a national organization, based in Washington, D.C., that sets up effective partnerships between local schools and the business community with the idea of strengthening families to improve education.

The basic principle, as it is played out in Charlotte, is fairly simple: Through public-private partnerships, a team of full-time Cities in Schools staff -- a counselor, a social worker and a psychologist -- is assigned to a middle school or junior high school, usually in a low-income area. Children identified by counselors or teachers as being at risk of dropping out are invited to join the program, and the team goes into action before the beginning of the school year, visiting the family and determining what social barriers are hurting the family, and thus the child. Whether they need help with housing, clothing, food, benefits, drug-and-alcohol counseling, whatever, the group brings a range of services to bear, calling in private help if public services aren't sufficient, and not limiting themselves to the student but treating the family, parents and siblings, as a unit.

This already sounds like a model program, but Charlotte/Mecklenberg Cities in Schools gets even better!

In addition to the full-time professionals, the program musters more than 300 volunteers to work as tutors and mentors with the 600 kids in the program. They are asked to work with the youngsters once a week on school work and assignments, but they invariably go beyond that to become "big brothers and sisters" to them.

Then, in a delightful the middle-school youngsters in the program in turn become mentors to pupils in area elementary schools, gaining remarkable self-esteem by being looked up to and treated as important.

The program here is relatively new, but impressive numbers are already flooding in: Fully 95 percent of the youngsters in the program have been winning promotion, even though they were considered "at risk" of failure; only about 90 percent of the general student population passes. Furthermore, in a system in which 6 percent of students drop out in each year of high school -- almost one out of every four during the four years of school – the dropout rate among CIS "graduates" is negligible.

In short, the program really works.

And now, just two months ago, it has taken another bold step. In partnership with the school system and the Mayfield Memorial Baptist Church on Charlotte's predominantly black northwest side, CIS has opened an alternative high school. The 50 students in the voluntary program receive both basic education requirements and focused vocational training that goes far beyond the usual shop classes, because it is taught in partnership with prospective employers, who have agreed to provide (1) internships, (2) summer jobs, and (3) an inside track to permanent employment for the graduates.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.
Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.
Send him E-mail.
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