Schools focusing on services: ; Conn. schools consider health clinics, adult learning courses - Sunday Gazette-Mail

HARTFORD, Conn. - Imagine a public school where parents gather inthe mornings to eat breakfast with their children. In theafternoons, they come to take adult education classes, learn Englishor attend a workshop on keeping track of spending.

Or imagine students getting braces at the school's orthodonticsclinic, receiving annual checkups at the clinic in the studentwellness center, and, when they're older, gathering in the eveningsto study or play basketball in the school's gym.

Services such as these are available at established communityschools around the United States - and Hartford educators have takennotice.

Three groups in Hartford are developing their own communityschools - which serve as hubs of activity in the neighborhood andprovide expanded services for students and their families.

'If you ignore community, a whole half of the equation ismissing,' said Robert Travaglini, the principal at Naylor School,which, in 2004, became the first in the city to launch a communityschool program.

Now, the Hartford Board of Education is working to set upprograms at five other schools, and the Greater Hartford InterfaithCoalition for Equity and Justice has set its sights on Noah WebsterMicroSociety Magnet School.

Nationwide, despite the recession, the community school movementis growing.

There are as many as 5,000 such schools around the country, saidMartin Blank, director of the Coalition of Community Schools. Theadvocacy group is based at the Institution for EducationalLeadership in Washington, D.C.

'Intriguingly, it's grown in the No Child Left Behind era, evenas some have focused only on test scores,' Blank said. 'Bold leaderswith a broader vision of what's needed to help educate our kids havemoved forward to help create community schools.'

Community school advocates hope that the recent appointment ofArne Duncan as U.S. secretary of Education will help propel thetrend. As chief of Chicago's public schools, Duncan oversaw thedevelopment of more than 100 community schools. Since hisappointment by President Barack Obama, Duncan has continued toexpress support for the model.

Many services - such as after-school programs, volunteer mentorsand in some cases a medical clinic - already exist in traditionalschools.

But community schools are a cohesive, planned effort to bringthose services together on a broader and more intense level.

The goal is to raise student achievement, but the result often isan infusion of services for people living around the school as well.

The two go hand-in-hand, said Jane Quinn, the assistant executivedirector for community schools at the Children's Aid Society in NewYork, which runs a training program for districts looking to developtheir own programs. The Children's Aid Society is working with theHartford Board of Education on its initiative.

'We find that community schools, compared to traditional schools,have higher rates of academic gains, better student and teacherattendance. They have greater levels of parent involvement, and theyhave better climates,' Quinn said.

'The kids feel more connected to the school, and the graffiti andviolence in the neighborhood are less.'

Naylor can provide an example of where Hartford's developingprograms may go.

On a recent afternoon after school was dismissed, a handful ofBosnian parents sat in tiny chairs around a table in SusanaVillalobos' second-grade classroom. Grasping flimsy workbooks andhopes of employment, they worked through basic English as Villalobosencouraged them.

The English class is one of several services already set up atNaylor, whose partner is Central Connecticut State University.

Two mornings each week, parents can join students for yoga beforeschool. Other days, there are workshops to help mothers return toschool or to teach parents about finances.

The effort involves businesses, Central students and nonprofitorganizations such as the Charter Oak Cultural Center. Communityschools usually pair with a lead community organization and recruitother groups to help with workshops and services.

After nearly five years, Travaglini said, each parent is involvedin at least one aspect of the community school, although Naylorseeks to empower parents even more.

Travaglini stressed that the community school model had to beable to survive on its own by getting the staff and community totake ownership of the development.

'It's embedding all of this into the climate and culture of thecommunity,' he said. 'It's not dependent on any single entity.'

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