Sufjan Stevens – Christmas In the Room

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For all of the criticism unleashed upon the 2010 film Waiting For Superman, the filmmakers did manage to get a few things right, one of which was highlighting The Harlem Children’s Zone. While HCZ can be considered a school-system in the same vein as many charter schools across the country, what distinguishes them from their counterparts is that they have had an honest conversation about all of the factors that are influential towards towards students’ success, rather than simply the school-factors.

In a day and age where so often the two “sides” of the education reform debate simply lash out at each other in caricaturish villany. HCZ, while being far from a panacea, actually seeks to bridge this gap by saying first, that yes, family factors do play a HUGE role in student outcomes, but also that that is no excuse to do nothing. While HCZ does have schools, it also provides Baby-Parenting workshops, Toddler parenting classes, pre-kindergarten, as centralized access to local and community health services and initiatives.

So Santa, my next item on my list is this. Will you please community with local policy makers and school developers, that while the HCZ model surely shouldn’t be copied, the same ideas of connecting parent education, school systems, and health services absolutely should be part of the conversation here in Los Angeles, and then perhaps on a wider scale.

Until we’re able to finally provide a unified system that works with and for families, then we’ll be spending an inordinate amount of time, energy, and effort seeking to define where these false partitions should be drawn and which levels of blame responsibility should be chalked up to whom.

Is it family issues, or health issues, or schools that influence kids? The answer, according to HCZ, and hopefully according to LA, is a resounding “yes”.