Center for Urban and Multicultural Education to Study Community School Initiative

The Mary Rigg Community Center, in partnership with the George Washington Community School (GWCS) and the IU School of Education at IUPUI, has received a five year Full Service Community Schools grant totaling $2.48 million from the U.S. Department of Education, one of only 10 such grants awarded nationally and the only one in the Midwest.

This first time Congressional allotment of funding for full-service community schools is intended to strengthen collaborative efforts between George Washington and its near Westside community, and to develop this model with two other IPS high schools.

In addition, the grant will fund an evaluation of the school-community collaboration, which will be conducted by the Center for Urban and Multicultural Education, led by Monica Medina, a faculty member in the IU School of Education at IUPUI. Medina will work with several graduate students and a community evaluation advisory group to assess the Circle City Learning Community initiative.

The five-year study of the school/community collaboration will document the initiative's efforts and identify a road-map for other school communities to successfully engage in this work.

"We will look at the initiative from a qualitative and quantitative perspective, sharing information with the advisory group and exploring issues to be examined. One result of the evaluation will be to enhance what we are doing."

The model at GWCS is unique, says Medina, who has been involved with GWCS since the school was reopened eight years ago.

Other full service community school initiatives may be supported by either a foundation, or a social service agency or a university, she said. "The beauty of this program is that we have all of that and then some."

Three community centers, Marry Rigg, Hawthorne Community and Christamore House, are involved with GWCS, along with 17 academic departments at IUPUI, she noted. Together, some 52 programs are offered at or through GWCS to meet the academic, social, economic, and health needs of students.

"The overall idea is to keep kids in school, have them graduate, and move them into some sort of higher continuing education," she said.

Having such a firm foundation as GWCS does makes it more interesting to see how the players work with each other and who is involved, Medina said. The evaluation will look at how well the partners in the initiative are working together and how successfully the objectives of the initiative are being met, she added.

"We will be looking at how programming within the school impacts what is happening in the community centers," Medina continued. "The assumption is we are helping families who participate in the community centers."

"We want to see what's working, who is benefiting, where gaps in services may occur and how possible funding cuts in areas such as mental health services might be addressed," she said.

GWCS is one of the School of Education partner schools where it places a cohort of 30 secondary education students each semester for field experiences.