Something exciting is happening in Jersey City, New Jersey. As schools adopt the community schools model, teachers are teaching, enjoying it, and not jumping ship. Pay attention!
Joshua Rosario wrote in the Jersey Journal:
We swear on Dumbledore’s Elder wand, no spells were cast to keep teachers from walking out the door of this Jersey City school.
At a time when schools nationwide are struggling to keep and recruit educators, the preK-through-8 Mahatma Gandhi School has retained its staff by using a community-based model that allows them to focus solely on teaching; as well as a Harry Potter-type friendly competition in which students and teachers are split into four teams to accumulate points throughout the year.
Teachers Michelle Duarte and Lindsay Boland said before the school, located at 143 Romaine Ave., transitioned to the community-based model, teachers had to be attendance officers, guidance counselors, therapists, nurses and even act as another parent for students.
“It just comes down to you can teach, you can interact with students and not worry about all the extra stuff that used to get thrown at you in the past,” Duarte, a teacher for 23 years at the school said.
At least 55% of teachers, many of whom take on multiple roles beyond educating their students, are considering leaving the profession earlier than they planned, according to a survey by the National Education Association, one of the largest teacher unions in the country.
“I am not saying that I don’t think about work when I get home … but when I get home I can shut my computer down and not have to type up lesson plans,” said Boland, who has taught at three schools. “I had one of my students tell me he missed school for a week because he had no shoes.”
Superintendent Norma Fernandez and Mahatma Gandhi Principal Peter Mattaliano credit the community-based school model for a 95% retention rate. The community-based model allows the school to give its 1,000 students, of which 62% are considered economically disadvantaged, and their families access to more services than traditional schools can provide.
Out of the 85 teachers at the school, also known as School 23, only five teachers had filed for retirement this past year, Mattaliano said.
While many teachers would pay out of their own pocket to provide a student with shoes, teachers at Mahatma Gandhi can reach out to the school’s community coordinator. The children and their families are not only connected to needed financial help, but the school provides a food pantry, clothing shop and even a full medical clinic that includes visits from a pediatrician and dentist.
“They didn’t even know what a dentist was or owned a toothbrush, which was really alarming and depressing,” said Boland, who teaches first grade. “A lot of times kids tell you there is no food at home, so a few times a week we take some of our students down there and go food shopping.”
School 23 is one of five community-based schools in the district, along with schools 15, 34, 22, 29 (which opens in September) and Snyder High School.
Open the link and read on.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The most important attribute for a school is its connection to community. If the connection between a school and its families is limited to time in the classroom, then that school is unable to serve the students. Wrap-around services are critical for schools serving underprivileged families. Jersey City provides evidence that community schools should be the approach to providing opportunity for students and their families.
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I’d be wary of the “Community Schools Movement” as it’s just the deformers doing a Re-Brand of their poor education policy of the past 20 years. They will still want data (more testing and surveys) as proof that their deeds are “working” and they will still keep scripted Common Bore curriculum. It will just be less mean and cruel for students and teachers. My spidey senses went off when the teacher says she doesn’t need to type up lesson plans for the next day (Common bore curriculum does that for you!) and that friendly competition (education/learning should not be a competetive sport!) is used to accumulate points (for what?…..more food at the food bank? plastic trinkets? books?).
If this is truly a home grown idea in Jersey City, I would go along with that, but everything is pointing to ed deform doing a slick rebrand. Twitter = X
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““For the teachers, we just try to get out of the way and let them teach. We don’t put extra things on their plate to bog them down.”
Retaining teachers isn’t rocket science. Teachers will stay where they are treated fairly and compensated decently. They will also stay where they feel they are heard, valued and understand they are an important member of the district’s instructional team. In other words, districts that want to retain teacher need to abandon the false narrative of so-called reform which a totally top down, market-based approach that belittles, denigrates and impedes teachers’ efforts to teach effectively.
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BTW, Paterson, NJ, has been offering in district medical services to students for many years. When I lived in New Jersey, my dentist’s hygienist worked in the Paterson City schools during the week. She served students and also taught dental hygiene in certain schools. I can remember her saying that sometimes when she looked in the mouth’s of some ten year old children, it made her want to cry.
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“There is no food at home”
The kid doesn’t own a toothbrush.
The kid doesn’t have shoes.
This in the wealthiest and most productive country in the history of the planet.
But hey, your legislators are on top of the whole extraterrestrial spaceships thing and the Hunter’s laptop thing.
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Protecting kids from all those porno-commie antiamerican books takes a lot of time, too. And food, health and clothing don’t count for much if the kids’ souls are lost.
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m = Mark; I hit the wrong key
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What idiotic crap. These morons you admire are banning The Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird and Shakespeare. Because, yes, these contain sex in them. Somehow millions of kids read these in the past and didn’t grow up to be axe-murdering Communist pedophiles or, worse, Democrats. LMAO.
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I do not think it possible for sane people to cohabit the same country with people who think the nonsense that you do, m. We need to establish two different countries. The United States of America and The Risen Invankalandia Confederacy or whatever it is you want to call your Fundamentalist Fascist state.
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your anti-American, Putinist, Fundamentalist Fascist state
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The kids won’t accomplish much in school if they are hungry, sick, and I’ll-clothed. As Kurt Weill wrote in Three Penny Opera, “First feed the face, and then teach right and wrong.”
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The Three-Penny Opera!!!! What a GREAT show!!! xoxoxoxoxo!!!!!
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Didn’t Maslow have something to say about this too?
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yes!!!!
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Sorry I didn’t make my sarcasm clear; I intended it to parallel yours: “But hey, your legislators are on top of the whole extraterrestrial spaceships thing and the Hunter’s laptop thing.”
My quip about kids’ souls being lost also was intended to deride a standard right wing babbling point.
Ya, Die Dreigroschenoper ist machtig. We read it in German class.
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About time someone in the U.S. started doing something right even if it is only one school out of about 98,000.
Reagan’s Trickle-Down Economics (that Republicans still worship like a religion) to make the rich wealthier and the rest of us poorer applies to lifespan and health.
“Men in the top 1% of the income distribution had an expected age of death of 87.3 years, 14.6 years (95% CI, 14.4–14.8 years) higher than those in the bottom 1%. Women in the bottom 1% of the income distribution at the age of 40 years had an expected age of death of 78.8 years.”
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