Pittsburgh test of the community schools idea

from "Attempting a turnaround: A program to help students shine," summarized as "Recognizing that what happens outside schools affects what goes on inside them, the city school system has created its first "full service" educational program in Homewood," in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

For inspiration, district officials are studying the Harlem Children's Zone, which provides employment, recreation and other services to children and adults within a 100-block area of Central Harlem in New York.

The Lighthouse Project operates from 3 to 7:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Attendance fluctuates; about 30 students were present Wednesday.

Community schools are modeled after the 19th-century settlement houses that provided education, health care and other services to immigrants in New York and Chicago. The philosopher John Dewey advanced the concept in a 1902 address titled "The School as Social Center," and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation funded some of the nation's earliest community schools in Flint, Mich., during the 1930s.

Interest has waxed and waned, with the Coalition for Community Schools in Washington, D.C., trying to build numbers and secure federal funding for the schools. The movement got a boost April 1, when the America's Promise Alliance, also in Washington, released a report on the urban drop-out crisis and called for a marshaling of community resources to reverse the trend.