LITTLE ROCK — The University of Arkansas at Little Rock will oversee a coalition of organizations in a “cradle-to-career” effort to assist children in a low-income portion of the city with health, educational and social needs.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced Tuesday that the university is one of 21 organizations in the nation to receive Promise Neighborhood Planning Grants of up to $500,000.
UALR will use its $430,000 grant to plan the Central Little Rock Promise Neighborhood,an area bound by Interstate 630 on the north, Boyle Park on the west, Fourche Creek Bottoms on the south, and Martin Luther King Drive on the east.
Participating organizations will work with the Little Rock School District to target an estimated 10,000 children living in seven census tracts in the area, said Julie Hall, director of UALR’s University District Educational Network.
“The idea is that if you really want to turn around a community and make sure that kids can succeed, you need to start early, even be-fore they are born, and follow up with kids until after college,” Hall said.
UALR will be the lead agency in the effort, partnering with the city of Little Rock, Little Rock School District, the Central Arkansas Library System, Arkansas Children’s Hospital and New Futures for Youth.
Grant recipients announced Tuesday will work to replicate the model created by the Harlem Children’s Zone, a nonprofit organization that follows children to adulthood by offering classes for their parents, dropout-prevention exercises and health programs.
President Barack Obama has praised the program for its success at addressing generational poverty and low academic achievement in low-income neighborhoods.
“We need to take an all hands-on-deck approach to lifting our families and our communities out of poverty,” Obama said when he announced plans for federal planning grants in April.
Little Rock’s programs will focus on children who attend Bale, Franklin and Stephens elementary schools; Forest Heights Middle School; and Hall High School, the group’s application said.
The grant will give the group one year to plan the Central Little Rock Promise Neighborhood, with the plan to include public-private partnerships and funding.
Some programs receiving planning grants may receive additional federal funds to complete their plans.
Obama has requested $210 million in his fiscal 2011 budget, consisting of $200 million to support implementation of the neighborhoods and $10 million in planning grants for new communities, according to a release from the U.S. Department of Education.
Little Rock School District Superintendent Linda Watson said the district was eager to match its high-need students with programs that can improve their academic achievement.
Schools targeted by the project have faced sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind Act for repeatedly failing to meet standardized testing benchmarks.
Academic problems are often rooted in other areas of life, Watson said. Students who perform poorly in the classroom may have untreated dental problems or need glasses that their parents can’t afford.
“It addresses the whole child. That’s what it’s all about,” Watson said.
“A lot of these things, we had pieces of it right here in Little Rock already,” she said. “We just need to pull all of our services together and tighten them up for the children.”
Hall said the group will work to adjust and expand existing programs to “tighten the pipeline” of safety nets for low-income children in the targeted neighborhoods, increasing their likelihood of going to and completing college.
Projects will include preschool programs for children younger than 3, the cutoff age for most state-funded programs.
The Little Rock program’s initiatives will be set up to address 60 indicators of well being centered on academics, health, safety, stable communities, family support and classroom technology.
“We also plan to do a lot of listening and building with the community because this is really a community project at its heart,” Hall said.
The group does not expect to replicate the scope, scale and funding of the Harlem Children’s Zone, Hall said. Much of the work will be making existing programs more successful by encouraging cooperation, she said.
“We want to find a way where we can use this framework to keep everyone focused on the same goals,” Hall said. “We’ll have a greater impact all together.”
Other grant winners are in cities like Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. A complete list is available at www2. ed.gov/programs/promiseneighborhoods/index. html.
More than 300 groups in 48 states applied, Duncan said in a news release.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 09/22/2010