Coming Full Circle For Cambridge's Children

(Part I and Part II of this story appeared on May 7 and May 9, 2012.)

Walking past a kindergarten classroom at Fletcher-Maynard Academy, a public primary school in Cambridge’s Area Four district, Superintendent of Schools Jeffrey M. Young and Principal Robin Harris noticed a four-year-old boy sitting on the floor and reading a book upside down.

“It wasn’t atypical in a junior kindergarten class,” Harris says.

Inspired by moments like this, Young and Harris began casually brainstorming ways to improve children’s development before they enter formal schooling. The two toyed with the idea of a project modeled on the Harlem Children’s Zone, a nonprofit organization that has garnered national attention for providing educational resources and other forms of support to low-income families living in Harlem, New York.

Young, Harris, and others on the Cambridge Schools Committee devised “Full Circle,” a proposed initiative to better connect the residents of Area Four—a low-income area where 80 percent of elementacary school students receive free lunches, according to Harris—to the public benefits provided by the city government and local nonprofits.

Full Circle—if it comes to fruiton—will be a culmination of several youth-oriented projects that Cambridge has undertaken in past years. But financing and potential partnerships are still up in the air.

The project, inspired by the work of HCZ founder Geoffrey Canada, a Harvard Graduate School of Education alumnus, marks the next chapter in efforts to improve Cambridge’s public education—a movement that Harvard and its alumni frequently influence.

CIRCLE GAME

Full Circle is envisioned not as a single nonprofit organization like HCZ but as a collaboration between many different entities in Cambridge. Based at Fletcher-Maynard, Full Circle would focus its efforts on the children living in the one-mile radius surrounding the school known as Area Four.

In Area Four, located between Central Square and Kendall Square, the median family income is $55,857, one of the lowest in the city, according to a report issued this year by the Cambridge Community Development Department.

The initiative plans to capitalize on already-existing Cambridge programming. One of those programs, Baby University, was founded after several Cambridge officials visited the Harlem Children’s Zone a few years ago. The program is loosely based on HCZ’s Baby College, which offers nine-week parenting classes.

Baby University, a 16-week publicly-funded program under the Cambridge Department of Human Services Programs, draws support from collaborations with many Cambridge nonprofits, including the the Phillips Brooks House Association at Harvard.

As the Cambridge Department of Education begins initial preparations for Full Circle, Baby University will be held at Fletcher-Maynard this year for the first time since the program began in 2010. Full Circle will also include Toddler University, an all-day course for parents of children ages three to eight that will kick off in 2013.

Harris has had discussions with other potential collaborators, including the Cambridge Health Alliance, neighborhood clergy and churches, financial institutes, and the Cambridge Police Department.

She hopes that Full Circle, like other Cambridge educational programs, will be able to draw upon Harvard University resources as well.

After talks about the Full Circle initiative became more serious, Young approached Ed School Dean Kathleen McCartney, who expressed enthusiasm about the program, Harris says.

Harris also asked Canada for advice on the project when he visited the Ed School last month. Harris says Canada was supportive of the project and urged her to get the partnering agencies in place immediately.

Harris said she hopes to agree with the Ed School on a memorandum of understanding between Harvard and Full Circle at the beginning of the academic year. Citing the preliminary nature of the discussion, Ed School officials declined to comment on Harvard’s involvement.

Though partnerships have yet to be officially tied down, many civic leaders have said they are excited about the Full Circle initiative.

“It’s all supposed to be very intentional work, and it’s a great opportunity to take all these resources that are happening in Cambridge,” says Nancy Tauber, a former School Committee member.

IN THE ZONE

Though Full Circle has generated much enthusiasm in Cambridge, financing for the project has yet to be secured.

According to Lori Likis, chief planning officer for Cambridge public schools, financing for Full Circle will include funds from the Department of Human Services Programs, resources allocated to Cambridge public schools, and other funding put toward the Cambridge Innovation Agenda in the 2013 budget.

Likis says that the initiative has also looked to other sources for financial support.

Full Circle is known among educators and policymakers as a wraparound zone, a city-led initiative that seeks to make social services and support more accessible and foster the creation of educational resources.

Wraparound zones elsewhere have received funding and support from Massachusett’s federally-funded Race to the Top program. However, Cambridge’s Full Circle was not eligible for funding due to restrictions stipulated by the state. Likis and other Full Circle proponents pushed to receive an exception, but it was not granted.

Jesse Dixon, who heads the Massachusetts Department of Education’s Office of District and School Turnaround, says that while the state would consider funding initiatives such as Full Circle, the guidelines regulating Race to the Top funding might confine the project’s development.

Under the initiative, cities must commit $100,000 of their Race to the Top money to the zone and must follow a prescriptive approach for the modeling and implementation of the wraparound zone.

Cambridge’s vision for Full Circle does not fall under these guidelines, according to Dixon.

“[Cambridge has] found their own way of doing this work, which isn’t 100 percent aligned with our vision,” Dixon says.

Nevertheless, those involved in the planning of Full Circle say they will continue to work toward establishing this project.

“We’re eager to get Full Circle up and running, develop the partnerships, assess the effectiveness of that, and then decide whether or not to expand,” Likis says.

—Staff writer Kerry M. Flynn can be reached at kflynn@college.harvard.edu.