Geoffrey Canada has become a bit of an ed-reform rock star since he began the Harlem Children’s Zone in the 1990s. That initiative provides wraparound services—including schooling, healthcare, healthy meals, and after-school activities—for children and their families in a sixty-block square of central Harlem. And the idea has grown legs across the country (look to the “promise neighborhoods” initiative for proof). Yet, in Columbus, a similar effort led by Columbus Collegiate Academy (one of the top-performing urban schools in the Buckeye State) and the Boys and Girls Club risks having its legs swept out from under it. (Full disclosure: CCA is a Fordham-authorized school.) The partners hope to open a new school in a vacant building near the Boys and Girls Club on the city’s near west side, where existing middle-school options are paltry. Planning was going smoothly, with grants and donors lined up to support the CCA-BGCC joint program, until the state’s biennial budget bill was finalized in late June. Under the new law, districts no longer have discretion about whom they rent space to. That decision must now be done by lottery. (Ironically, the change in law is meant to ensure that charter schools have greater access to vacant district buildings, as districts have been remiss to rent space to them.) Yet now, CCA might miss out on this prime school-system real estate, putting the entire children’s zone partnership—and a much-needed network of services for needy kids—at risk. And that would be a sad day for Columbus and for its children.
“Project would go beyond school,” by Jennifer Smith Richards, Columbus Dispatch, August 14, 2011.