Now is not the time for trial and error. We need to see positive results in our community schools. Simply throwing money at problems does not solve them. If you have students who can’t count to 10, and you throw $100 at them, do they magically learn how to count to 10? No. We need to design programs that will teach them how to count to 10.
My biggest fear is that the programs schools need to deliver on the mayor’s vision do not exist at the needed scale.
In the five years I’ve been running Practice Makes Perfect, I’ve heard several horror stories where school leaders have been called with two or three days notice, and were asked to spend upwards of a quarter million dollars. This forces schools to pinch pennies all year and compromise the quality of the interventions they provide, only to find themselves at the end of the school year with a surplus that must be spent superficially. If this pattern continues, this could turn into millions of dollars by the community schools.
In line with my first recommendation, let providers deliver services across the schools based on their area of expertise. The office of community schools can coordinate the supports without the additional overhead. A quick analysis of the lead CBOs shows many familiar organizations that have been in these struggling communities for decades with very little outcomes to show.
Karim Abouelnaga is the Founder and CEO of Practice Makes Perfect, an evidence-based, full-service summer school provider for K-8 schools.
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