Home Managing Government Promise NeighborhoodsPromise Neighborhoods

January 9, 2011Against Tough Odds, a 'Promise Neighborhood’ in D.C.Gears UpBy Suzanne Perry

Washington

Editor's Note: This story is part of an ongoing series.

The Parkside-Kenilworth neighborhood is just a few miles fromCapitol Hill, though it’s unlikely that many members of Congresshave ever visited there.

The neighborhood, tucked away in a far eastern corner ofWashington, bears all of the hallmarks of poverty: high rates ofcrime, teenage pregnancy, single mothers, and unemployment—andlow-performing schools.

But community leaders have embarked on an ambitious project toturn the area around—with help from money that members ofCongress approved last year.

Led by Irasema Salcido, an educator who was dismayed at theobstacles that hindered her students from learning, the projectsnatched one of 21 grants offered by a new federal program calledPromise Neighborhoods.

The grants, totaling $10-million, went to communities that outlinedplans for providing an array of academic, medical, and socialservices for children in troubled neighborhoods from “cradle tocollege” —a model that was pioneered by Geoffrey Canada, founderof Harlem Children’s Zone, in New York.

Mr. Canada’s approach has won widespread acclaim, most recentlyin the documentary film “Waiting for Superman,” and strongsupport from President Obama, who proposed the PromiseNeighborhoods program while still on the campaign trail.

Charities, foundations, policy makers, antipoverty activists, andothers have been flocking to Harlem for years to observe theChildren’s Zone method , hoping they will uncover at last a formulafor ending the cycle of poverty.

“People see something that seems to be working,” says Patrick

Lester, senior vice president for public policy at UnitedNeighborhood Centers of America, an umbrella group forneighborhood social-service centers. The country spends hundredsof billions of dollars each year to fight poverty, he says, yet manypeople have become discouraged, concluding: “We had a war onpoverty and poverty won.”

Coalitions of groups across the country have started their ownversions of the Harlem project, and the prospect of federal moneyhas accelerated and helped shape many of those efforts. More than300 applicants vied for this year’s round of Promise Neighborhoodsgrants.High Expectations

Now the 21 winners face the challenge of showing they cantransplant Mr. Canada’s vision outside of Harlem, whiledocumenting what works and what doesn’t in great detail, asrequired by the federal program. The winners are also facing carefulscrutiny, both from other nonprofits and from the political world,where social programs that get government money are facing aclimate that is hostile to new federal spending.

Ms. Salcido, head of the César Chávez Public Charter Schools forPublic Policy, found out the hard way that a comprehensive strategylike the one Mr. Canada championed could be the only hope forschoolchildren in the Parkside-Kenilworth community.

Ms. Salcido—the daughter of Mexican farmworkers who came to theUnited States when she was 14 and spoke no English —was the onlymember of her family to finish high school.

After she earned degrees from a community college and a four-yearcollege, she dedicated her career to helping minority and low-income students have the same opportunities she did. Armed with amaster’s degree in education from Harvard, Ms. Salcido, 49,operated several successful charter schools in Washington beforeshe went to Parkside-Kenilworth to open the Chávez ParksideMiddle School and High School in 2004.

“We made a commitment to the families in that community to havehigh expectations for their children,” she says, “expectations thatthey would go to college.”

But achieving that goal proved tougher than she expected. Many ofthe students had poor academic skills and were not used to workingin a structured environment. Their test scores were so low that Ms.Salcido had to step in as principal for eight months of the 2007-8academic year to help salvage the school. City authorities even

placed the school on probation in 2009 (although the scores havesince improved and the school is now in good standing).

To succeed, Ms. Salcido decided that she needed to find new ways tohelp children, and their families, long before they entered middleschool. She decided to collaborate with the principals at twotraditional public elementary schools, Kenilworth and NevalThomas, that taught students before they headed to ChávezParkside. They told her: “We have the same challenges you do.When we get the little ones in pre-kindergarten, they come to us noteven knowing how to hold a pencil or pen.”

And even when the children are getting the proper instruction inschool, the neighborhood’s poverty affects their ability to learn, saysMae H. Best, executive director of the East River FamilyStrengthening Collaborative, a social-services group in theneighborhood that is participating in the Promise Neighborhoodproject. Poverty steals children’s attention from the classroom, shesays. They may not be eating at home, they may be worried that theyare going to be evicted, they may hear their parents complainingabout lack of work.

“Everything is generally related to financial resources —the lackthereof,” she says.

To solve such problems, Ms. Salcido turned to neighborhoodactivists for advice, including J. Gregory Rhett, who now directs thePromise Neighborhood effort’s to get area residents involved in theproject. When Chávez Parkside was placed on probation, he says,“We circled the wagons and said, 'We’re going to show them. We’regoing to get out of this mess, we’re going to document how we gotout of this mess, and we’re going to make it through this.’”

He and Ms. Salcido agreed: The entire neighborhood would have topull together.

“The fabric of the community was torn, that was the problem,” hesays. “And the only way you could improve academic outcomes wasyou had to repair the fabric of the community.”A Tailored Approach

Ms. Salcido and some of her Chávez colleagues began to study theHarlem Children’s Zone, which in a 97-block area of Harlem offerscharter schools and services such as a Baby College to train parentsof small children, a pre-kindergarten program, and an office to helpstudents get into and stay in college. They set up a committee oflocal nonprofit and business leaders to lead an effort to tailor theapproach to the Parkside-Kenilworth community.

They started sketching out a project that would bridge the usualrivalry between charter and traditional public schools by helpingstudents at Chávez Parkside and the Kenilworth and Neval Thomaselementary schools stay healthy, do well in school, and graduatefrom college or find a career—and started lining up other groups tohelp (See article on Page 29).

After President Obama last year persuaded Congress to allocate$10-million to help communities plan Promise Neighborhoods, Ms.Salcido and her colleagues, dubbing their project the D.C. PromiseNeighborhood Initiative, started gearing up to apply for an award.

They raised more than $1-million in cash and donated services fromfoundations, businesses, individuals, and others —far more than the50-percent match that was required to qualify for the $500,000grant that it won from the Department of Education.

The D.C. project, which for the moment is an arm of the Chávezschools, received a score of 98.33 out of 100 from federal reviewers.

Its only low mark was in a section on “impact and significant,”because the project will not directly reach a majority of children inthe Parkside-Kenilworth area. That’s because Washington allowsstudents to attend charter schools anywhere, so many students inthe neighborhood attend schools in other parts of town. But theproject leaders decided to focus first on the three schools so they didnot diffuse their efforts.Seeking 'Early Wins’

While the D.C. Promise Neighborhood Initiative is working to meetthe terms of its planning grant, it is already preparing to apply forthe next round of federal grants —although the fate of that money isunclear.

President Obama proposed to spend $210-million in the 2011 fiscalyear, most of that to help groups put Promise Neighborhoodprojects into effect over five years. But a House subcommitteeproposed spending only $60-million and a Senate committee only$20-million.

Congress has still not adopted a 2011 budget, meaning PromiseNeighborhoods spending is frozen for now at the 2010 level of $10-million in planning grants. And this program, like others, could runinto trouble in the new Congress, where Republicans who controlthe House have vowed to trim spending to 2008 levels and allmembers are under pressure to cut the budget deficit.

But Ms. Salcido says the project will move forward, with or without

The Chronicle of Philanthropy 1255 Twenty-Third St, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037

those grants, adding that it is exploring other ways to getgovernment money.

“We have the community support,” she says. “We’re not goinganywhere.”

In one sign of faith in the effort, several groups have vowed to buildan early-childhood program that specializes in helping childrenfrom low-income families prepare for school, next to the NevalThomas school.

Some participants say it will take time, however, to convince thecommunity, which has seen other antipoverty projects come and go,that the Promise Neighborhood effort is here to stay. The project isstriving to involve neighborhood residents, asking them to serve onthe planning groups and advisory board and holding monthlydinners to consult and update them about the group’s progress.

Melinda B. Hudson, executive vice president at America’s PromiseAlliance, an advocacy group for children, says the participants arewrestling with the “press of time”—that is, trying to get some “earlywins” that would build community support but knowing that theyare tackling some highly complex problems. The trick, she says, willbe to keep trying if success does not come quickly.

“If third-grade test results don’t improve, it doesn’t mean we goaway,” says Ms. Hudson, a member of the project’s advisory board.“What it means is that we keep looking at what did we do wrong.”

Copyright 2013. All rights reserved.