Harlem-bound

Education Foundation board members, staff and a few district employees such as Superintendent Hector Mendez will be on their way to New York City Tuesday.

They will attend a workshop at an innovative, community-centered school called the Harlem Children's Zone. From Wednesday to Friday, the attendees will listen to a series of workshops from HCZ program directors. The Zone is known for having an approach much bigger than just academics and has an incredible graduation rate of 95 percent in a city where half of the students do not finish high school.

"That's above the Texas state average, and we want to see what they are doing and look at why they are having the outcomes they are producing," Jaclyn Gaona, Education Foundation director, said.

Graduation rates are particularly important for ECISD as the district works to keep its dropout rate low in order for schools to maintain an acceptable rating from the Texas Education Agency. The district would have had some schools rated academically unacceptable last school year due to that reason alone if TEA did not exclude that count from ratings temporarily.

Superintendent Mendez said he was invited to attend by the Foundation, and he wants to look at how the program can work in ECISD.

"It's basically a program that addresses turning children into productive adults," Mendez said. "We are going to see how the entire program works in real life and what parts we can borrow."

The attending board members have paid their own way for everything from airfare to hotel, Gaona said. Only Gaona and her secretary Celeste Potter are going on the Foundation's dime. Mendez's travel costs are being covered by ECISD.

The Harlem Children's Zone is not your ordinary school. For starters, the school website says it takes up 97 blocks of Harlem. But what really makes it unique is the widespread diversity of education, parenting and health services provided. Gaona said the intent is to tackle not just one problem, but all the related problems that are involved in student's struggle to succeed.

The Zone takes the phrase neighborhood school and not only turns it on its head, but rather creates a whole new mold as part of community revitalization. In less than a square mile, 10,000 children call the Zone home for more than just the three R's.

Mostly privately-funded, the Zone has a budget of $40 million, new science labs and innovative programs going beyond student classrooms. It is this approach going beyond student instruction that is of particular interest for the Foundation members.

"It is a very comprehensive approach to lifting up the entire community, and they attack the mindset separating academics from everything else impacting children," Gaona said.

One program the Foundation will look at is Baby College, a nine-week program teaching parents how to stimulate their child's brains while growing so they will be ready for school when older. Parents even receive baby-sitting and transportation services to attend.

Zone programs also include health awareness programs as well as a career and technology center and training in the arts and media.

Gaona said the school has been featured on such programs as "Larry King" and "60 Minutes."