Is Harlem Program a Fix for York City’s Education Troubles? (PA)

April 4, 2011

York, PA – About two years ago, a group of York community leaders visited New York’s Harlem Children’s Zone.

The project, founded by education reform advocate Geoffrey Canada, aims to guide children who live in certain blocks from birth through college, providing them not only an education but other services they need, whether that’s housing, health services, social services or something else. It’s often touted as a solution to the problems plaguing urban education.

After leaving Harlem, a few in the group had the same thoughts.

Couldn’t they do that in York?

“It’s just a matter of coming together as a community to make this work,” said Deb Stock, chief executive officer of the YWCA.

New Hope Academy charter school opened in 2007 with grades seven and eight and has since expanded to grades six to 12. Its first seniors will graduate this year, and the school will add fifth grade next year.

The school and the YWCA want to be able to start with babies and work with them straight through college, not only with education but by providing access to social services, health services or whatever they might need. School officials say they’re already doing some of that at New Hope and want to do more.

But there are hurdles.

The York City School Board recently rejected New Hope’s request for a new charter to start an elementary school in partnership with the YWCA. Some board members said they aren’t sure the program proposed is different enough from city schools, and are concerned about New Hope’s academic performance.

In the fall, New Hope will have to ask the school board to renew its charter so it can continue educating kids.
 
Bringing Harlem ideas to York

The YWCA and the Urban Impact Community Fund, a nonprofit arm of the education management company that runs New Hope, brought Canada to speak in York Saturday at a scholarship fundraiser.

Canada said in an interview Monday that he thinks the broad principles of Harlem Children’s Zone can be replicated and tweaked to suit a particular community.

But first, he said, there has to be recognition in a community that something needs to change.

“One of the biggest challenges lots of places I go is (people) think things aren’t really bad enough that we need to think about doing things differently,” he said.

New Hope’s plan for an elementary school was to start with babies in the YWCA’s early learning programs and then have those kids move into a New Hope elementary program, to initially be housed at the YWCA.

Stock was on the Harlem trip. She remembered thinking that the YWCA offers services like after-school programs and early childhood education and thought about a partnership with New Hope.

“If we could get together philosophically on curriculum, we could then bring kids in in infancy . . . we can take these kids all the way through college,” she said.

The Harlem project aims to break the generational cycle of poverty, according to its website. It targets children in a particular geographic area, starting when they are babies.

Their families are offered services such as workshops for parents, after-school programs, social service and health programs. Those continue while the students attend either public schools or the Promise Academy charter schools run by Harlem Children’s Zone.

Advocates say the program is an innovative way of addressing poverty to get educational results.

Isiah Anderson, managing officer for Three Cord Inc., the company that runs New Hope, said many community organizations in York are offering the services needed by kids but do so in isolation.

Stock said a child’s needs — educational, emotional, health, social — are all in the same package.

“You can’t address one without all the others,” she said.

The city school board denied the elementary application in March, with six members opposing,