I spent a couple evenings this week at Back-to-School nights for two of the highest-poverty schools in Boulder County. My experiences sobered me up pretty quickly about the reality of the challenge The Community Foundation has taken on.
First stop was Spangler Elementary in north Longmont. This is the final year of Spangler’s existence before it’s vacated and its students are scattered to other neighborhood schools. Most will enroll next year at Loma Linda Elementary School, about a half-mile away. Many of the school’s long-time teachers have already gotten jobs at other schools. I can’t say I wouldn’t find another job myself if I found out my office was going to close its doors in a year.
Located in the middle of one of the lowest-income neighborhoods in Boulder County, Spangler gets a lot of tough cases. Many of the students’ parents don’t speak English and some are illiterate. It’s also a neighborhood with a lot of turnover. Many who move there are hoping their fortunes improve and they are able to move to a nicer area soon.
The teachers and support staff at Spangler have their hands full just keeping the families in their school engaged, and making sure their children enroll and come to school most days. Meanwhile, The Community Foundation’s research shows that these are the kids in poverty with the best chances for academic success. The ones we’re really worried about aren’t even enrolling in school until first grade. They are somewhere in the neighborhood until age six, falling behind rather than having an early learning experience like their peers.
The new statewide standardized test scores for 2012 are out, and the verdict is that our achievement gap remains stuck in Boulder County. The St. Vrain Valley and Boulder Valley School Districts had a total of 466 3rd-graders on free- and reduced-lunch not reading at grade-level this spring. That’s compared to 467 in spring 2011. Okay, so we’ve improved by one student. Closing the achievement gap is going to take a while at this pace.
This reality is the reason why it’s so crucial to find more sustainable funding sources for at-risk kids to have early learning experiences. Voters in the St. Vrain Valley School District this November will have the opportunity to vote for ballot issue 3A and bring some of this badly needed funding into the district, and into the schools I visited this week. The funding will take some of the financial strain off a school district that has made great strides in the past four years, including ensuring that a preschool and full-day Kindergarten is in each of the 26 elementary schools.
My reason for attending the back-to-school nights was to staff a booth for the volunteer nonprofit parents group Grassroots St. Vrain. At Spangler, I was there on my own, handing out fliers about Grassroots and about why folks should support 3A. I was also collecting names, emails and phone numbers, and signing up parents and teachers to volunteer for the campaign. I got 11 names.
The next night, I decided to call in some heavy artillery, and was ecstatic when Marta Moreno, founder of El Comite, agreed to meet me at Longmont’s Columbine Elementary School. Seems that everyone in the Latino community knows and/or trusts Marta implicitly. They were signing up before she’d even finished her pitch. Ninety minutes later, she had collected 60 names and numbers.
Here’s a photo the AP recently took of her shaking President Obama’s hand at a rally in Denver (she is extremely proud of this photo):
The experience told me something significant: If we mean to win 3A, we would do well to harness the volunteer support of the Latino community. And we will need leaders like Marta to help us rally this support.
The next day I invited Marta and her board president, Bob Norris, to the 3A campaign committee meeting. They agreed to join forces with our efforts.
Here’s hoping 3A wins in large part because the neighborhoods that would benefit most rise up to ensure its passage. At the least, it will be a good community-building exercise. Visit www.yeson3a.com for more information. I can be reached at chris@commfound.org.
