Kenney heading to Cincinnati to study schools
Mayor-elect Jim Kenney is hitting the road to learn more about one of the key tenets of his education platform: expanding community schools.
Mayor-elect Jim Kenney is hitting the road to learn more about one of the key tenets of his education platform: expanding community schools.
Kenney, City Council President Darrell L. Clarke, and others will travel to Cincinnati on Friday to explore that city's acclaimed community schools model, which concentrates social and health services inside school buildings.
Clustering community partners and city services inside schools is a way to boost student achievement and engage families, proponents say. Cincinnati has done so at very little cost to its school system, with the bulk of costs paid for by nonprofit partners who either bill Medicaid for services or dip into their own coffers.
Kenney has pledged 25 community schools in Philadelphia by the end of his first term.
Also making the trip will be Otis Hackney, current principal of South Philadelphia High and Kenney's newly-named Chief Education Officer. Hackney was part of a team that also traveled to Cincinnati in September; what he has assembled at "Southern" during his five-year tenure is the closest thing Philadelphia currently has to a community school.
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