Harlem Children’s Zone To Serve As Model for Surround-Care Project in Rochester

An acclaimed community support project for children in Harlem is serving as the model for a new surround-care initiative being launched by Superintendent of Schools Dr. Manuel J. Rivera to serve students and families in northeast Rochester.

Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone, was the featured speaker at a forum hosted by Dr. Rivera on January 25, 2005. The Harlem Children's Zone works to create opportunities for success for children in a 60-block area of Central Harlem by helping parents, residents, teachers, and other stakeholders create a safe learning environment for youth. Its work focuses not just on education, social service, and recreation, but on rebuilding the basic fabric of community life.

"Today the world is so much more complicated in terms of raising children than it's ever been before," said Mr. Canada. "Part of what I've seen is a breakdown in the socializing forces between home, school, and community. If you end up with a different set of values in each one of those places, you're going to end up with a misalignment. And the worse that misalignment is, the more damaging it's going to be on children who have no protection, meaning their parents don't have money or resources to 'buy' them out of the issues they're going to end up facing. And if we're going to change that, we've got to do something different that realigns these values."

The plan that is working in the Harlem Children's Zone, Mr. Canada said, has five components:

1. It begins early. Research clearly shows the importance of beginning to teach children from birth. "You can't bring your child to kindergarten and say 'Educate my child.' It is way over by then--you are so far behind the curve, right from the start. Learning starts at birth, so we have to start at birth."
   
   
2. Parents are involved as partners. "We've got to give parents strategies that really help them, that they can have some success with....Being a parent is the hardest thing a person can do. We've got to let parents know that we're with them, we care, and we understand what they're going through. We've got to help parents become our allies."
   
   
3. Schools are redesigned for success .   "If most of our kids are failing, and they are significantly failing, there's no way we're going to catch them up unless we extend the school day and extend the school year.   If these kids don't have more time on task, I don't see how we're going to change the education outcome."
   
   
4. The community must become a positive support medium for children. "Schools can't do it by themselves. We've got to rebuild our communities so that adults are involved in the lives of children--this is tough work, but it's totally doable. We must reinvigorate our communities with our own sense of culture, our own sense of pride, our own sense of togetherness."
   
   
5. Evaluation has to be a tool to help drive student outcomes . "We ought to know how our children fare in comparison to others. But testing and evaluation ought to help us as adults figure out what we should be doing to help children based on their strengths and weaknesses. The question is: Are we doing what the kids need so we get all of them to succeed?"

For Dr. Rivera, Mr. Canada's visit was the first step in establishing a "Rochester Children's Zone" in northeast Rochester that will provide services to address school- and home-related factors impacting student academic performance.

"The Harlem Children's Zone can serve as a model for advancing the goal of 'surround care' for Rochester's children--broad-based community support that meets their academic, social, and emotional needs around the clock, seven days a week," said Dr. Rivera. "I believe that, working collaboratively in our community, we can establish a 'Rochester Children's Zone' to make fundamental change in some of our own most needy neighborhoods."

The zone proposed by Dr. Rivera would encompass the neighborhoods in northeast Rochester around Schools No. 6, 8, 9, 22, 36, and 45. That area is home to 15% of Rochester's elementary school students (more than 2,600 children). It has the city's highest rates of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, and crime, as well as low student academic performance.

Dr. Rivera is in the process of forming a steering committee for the Rochester Children's Zone. News and updates on the project will be publicly announced and will also be posted here on the District's website.

Rochester Superintendent of Schools Dr. Manuel J. Rivera and Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO of "Harlem Children's Zone"