How the Poughkeepsie City School District and the surrounding city have come together to support student achievement was highlighted last week at the U.S. Department of Education’s annual Promise Neighborhoods and Full-Service Community Schools National Network Conference.
Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet Executive Director Jill Gomez spoke at the two-day event’s opening plenary, and Community Schools Executive Director Natasha Brown and Interim Administrator Jessica Ortiz took part in workshops and operated a table at which they discussed the department’s work.
The gathering acts as a convention of leaders taking part in, or eager to learn about, school-community partnerships to benefit students and fill gaps districts may not otherwise be able to provide. Through the Children’s Cabinet and Community Schools, Poughkeepsie is ahead of many school communities in terms of establishing the structure through which this can occur. The conference was held Dec. 10-11 in Arlington, Virginia.
Gomez took part in a panel called “Aligning People, Data and Money: A Community Vision for Youth Success,” alongside Children’s Funding Project Founder and CEO Elizabeth Gaines, StriveTogether Vice President of Policy and Partnerships Josh Davis, and moderated by Tauheedah Jackson, Harvard Graduate School of Education Deputy Director of EdRedesign and Director of its Institute for Success Planning. The Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet has collaborated with and learned from all three organizations as it works toward its North Star goal of connecting 5,000 Poughkeepsie youth with cradle-to-career services by 2033.
The group discussed Poughkeepsie as a real-life example to show attendees how it's possible to coordinate, track and support a cradle-to-career approach to set a path that leads to socioeconomic mobility.
Gomez said she explained Poughkeepsie has worked with the Children’s Funding Project’s strategic financing model to support the Cabinet's goal of supporting local students toward ending intergenerational poverty.
“I spoke about how we had completed a fiscal map and cost modeling with our out-of-school-time providers,” she said. “In 2022, we didn’t know how many out-of-school opportunities existed or how much money Poughkeepsie was collectively putting into out-of-school time, but through work with local afterschool partners and the Children’s Funding Project, we now better understand what is being spent and what is needed.”
Gomez also shared how the work with StriveTogether had shaped the Cabinet’s public data dashboard, which tracks student success and household incomes within Poughkeepsie.
“The dashboard corresponds to the benchmarks on the pathway to social mobility,” she said, “and makes the connection between the work of the cabinet, the district, the city, and all direct service providers and long-term student success.”
Gomez said she believes “there’s an increased energy around financing for additional out-of-school time and funding children’s programming,” both locally and importantly, through increased federal funding. She cited examples that included Poughkeepsie’s partnership with AmeriCorps through its high-dosage tutoring program, Ampact; and the Full Service Community Schools Grant the district received 13 months ago.
The Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet has been busy of late. Gomez said the Cabinet is working with Poughkeepsie’s out-of-school-time providers to look at subsidies to help support scaling the number of opportunities offered to students; and examining if there could be ways to maximize the efficiencies of funding for those programs through an initiative it calls Promise City. The Cabinet also has a role in a working group composed of representatives from such areas as Harlem, Buffalo and Rochester, to launch a New York backbone policy coalition.
Gomez said it was “inspiring” to see so many leaders convene in the Washington, D.C. area to share best practices. Part of her presentation pointed out how the Children’s Cabinet built its approach through combining strategies and focuses of different organizations.
She believes many who attended appreciated seeing how Poughkeepsie has applied the concepts discussed within the community, noting the Children’s Cabinet’s cradle-to-career community dashboard “truly resonated with folks.”
Cabinet Board Chair Rob Watson thanked the Department of Education for inviting the cabinet and its partners to be featured.
“There is a growing national movement committed to investing in underserved communities to disrupt the cycle of intergenerational poverty and improve the lives of young people and families from cradle to career,” he said. “Poughkeepsie is on the rise. We need to seize this moment to continue breaking down silos and come together across institutions to address the many challenges in the community and the classroom that prevent young people from reaching their full potential.”
Community Schools operated a table at which attendees could talk with them about how the department was launched and aids the schools. They brought examples of the school-specific newsletters as an illustration of how the liaisons connect the schools with the families outside of it.
Brown also took part in an invitation-only gathering called “Whole Child of Community Practice” put on by The Kresge Foundation, a Michigan-based organization that invests in cities to aid, among other areas, education. Representatives from both the current and incoming U.S. Presidential administrations were present.
She said other school leaders were eager for advice on how to “activate” the local government and the community to establish the supports in place here. Brown also noted many were impressed with the notion of Community Schools’ six-week summer camp.
