To Build a Healthier City, Atlanta Is Opening Its Schoolyards to Everyone

It’s known as the “City in a Forest,” thanks to 100-year-old oaks, maples and magnolias that create a tree canopy covering nearly half the city. 
But what may come as a surprise is that many of Atlanta’s residents don’t have easy access to a public park. One-third of Atlanta’s population lives more than a 10-minute walk from a green space, and the city ranks 42nd for park access based on an evaluation of America’s 100 largest cities by the Trust For Public Land. 
Meanwhile, the city’s largest landowner keeps its doors closed after hours, on weekends and during the summer. Why? Because it’s Atlanta’s public school system. 
Atlanta’s embarking on a journey to open up its schoolyard gates. It’s the latest city in the United States to participate in this growing movement to renovate schoolyards and create public parks.
In support of the initiative, the city of Atlanta, Atlanta Public Schools and organizations like Park Pride, Trust for Public Land and the Urban Land Institute are working together to open up schoolyards and increase green space for the city. 
“We like to think that parks are the heart of communities, but those neighborhood schools are similarly that center of the community,” Michael Halicki, the executive director of Park Pride, an Atlanta nonprofit that works with communities to improve parks, told NationSwell. “It really has been an example of how bringing different partners together we can do things that, in isolation, would never be possible.”
The partnership is launching a pilot program where three schools will renovate their schoolyards and open them up to the public. Over the next three years, a total of 10 schools will open up a community green space.
The schools were chosen based on a variety of factors. But the main consideration was to assess which schools were within a 10-minute walk of residents who were farther than a 10-minute walk from a park. Based on that, about 20 schools were identified that fit this criterion, and 10 immediately responded with interest. From those, three were picked for the pilot, the names of which will be announced later this month.
“Our main responsibility is making sure all of the schools are high quality, but we see ourselves as a key player in the city ecosystem,” Rachel Sprecher, executive director of partnerships and development at Atlanta Public Schools, told NationSwell.

If every schoolyard was opened, 80% of Atlantans would be within walking distance of a park.

Research has shown that access to parks improves both physical and mental health. Researchers at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health found that spending two hours each week outdoors is tied to better health outcomes. Another study led by William Sullivan found that exposure to green space is associated with reducing aggressive behavior.  
“Parks are places to build community and these schoolyards could also be places where people come together,” Halicki said.
Park Pride and the Trust for Public Land calculated that if every schoolyard was opened, 80% of Atlantans would be within walking distance of a park. With the first three pilot schools, 2,000 more Atlantans would have access to green space. 
Each school will receive between $100,000 and $150,000 in schoolyard upgrades. The Trust for Public Land and Park Pride will bring in landscape architects to help design the space. Upgrades may entail everything from a new playground to accessibility paths to a hammock grove or pavilions. 
Conversations are being held with the schools and community to pinpoint the needs and desires for each space. They will also work together to figure out details like maintenance and security, Sprecher said.
This fall, those three schools and neighborhoods will engage in conversation. Final plans will be decided, and construction will take place throughout summer 2020. The following fall, the new schoolyards will open — and stay open.
“We can serve both purposes of helping kids learn while they’re in school but then helping strengthen communities when kids are no longer in school. And that’s really the synergy of this space,” George Dusenbury, the Georgia state director at the Trust for Public Land, told NationSwell.
Renovating schoolyards will save money, Halicki said. The program allows the city to avoid purchasing new land for parks. Instead, Atlanta can put those funds toward renovations or other projects independent of the schoolyard initiative.
“In this day and age, where there’s not enough money to do all the things we want to do in our cities,” Halicki said, “this is a way that we’re getting more out of the resources we’ve got.”
All agreed that the goal of the pilot is to understand how to make this adaptable for other schools inside and outside of metro Atlanta. 
“As with other initiatives that have started off as a pilot, we definitely look to scale and even provide support with our resources,” Sprecher said. 
Atlanta Public Schools was built to serve between 100,000 and 150,000 students. But the district currently has about 50,000 students enrolled. That means out of its 150 properties, 39 facilities are closed and 19 are vacant land sites. So while the school embarks on an 18-month master planning facilities project, Sprecher said the school system might consider transitioning and opening some of those lots for green space.
“We understand the assets we have,” she said. “And we want to be really thoughtful about what we do with the vacant property.” 
So as the city grows and changes, schoolyards serving as public parks may become a common sight. With it, more Atlantans will have access to that beautiful canopy the city is so well known for. 
“We have complex, intractable problems in cities all across the U.S.,” said Halicki. “The way that we come up with innovative solutions is not by working in our silo but by really working across our silos.”
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In Atlanta, Affordable Housing Boosts School Performance, Tenant Health

Among the rolling hills and dense pine canopies east of Atlanta’s I-285 bypass, down the street from a halal meat market, two Buddhist temples and Good Times Country Cookin’, sits the Willow Branch Apartment Homes. The complex is tucked behind a flapping “Welcome” flag, which is emblematic of Clarkston, a small but famously global suburb that has been coined “Ellis Island South” and “the most diverse square mile in America.”
Built in 1971, Willow Branch looks like any other aging metro-Atlanta apartment building and dozens around Clarkston, save for its unique mansard roofs. But after school one warm afternoon in February, what used to be the pool house transforms into another thing that sets Willow Branch apart: a banner-bedecked classroom where a circle of refugee children, representing more than 30 ethnicities, sit squirming and giggling. The kids, all of whom are residents, play a clapping game, each contributing another word to a growing sentence they pass around the room like a hot potato: “Valentine’s. Day. Is. About. Moms. And. Dogs.” The last word sparks hysterical laughter.
“A lot of them, their parents don’t speak English and can’t help with their [school] work,” says Allie Reeser, the program director of the nonprofit Star-C, which runs the afterschool program at Willow Branch. “Socially, it’s a great place for kids to go.” Nearby, 8-year-old Elizabeth Mawi, who emigrated with eight siblings from Burma, concurs in a mousey voice: “It’s good, because we can share, and we help people.”
Held for four hours each weekday afternoon, the Star-C afterschool program is one part of a dynamic model — piloted here at the 186-unit Willow Branch, where the residents’ average income of $18,750 is well below the U.S. poverty line — that’s showing how affordable housing can boost performance in local schools, increase resident health and even quell crime.

For young Willow Branch residents, many of whom are not native English speakers, afterschool enrichment programs are an essential tool to succeed in school.

Alongside its fundraising arm, 3Star Communities, Star-C was founded by Marjy Stagmeier, 55, a successful manager of commercial and residential real estate around Atlanta. Her model, supporters say, is basically a three-way win for residents and investors in blighted apartment complexes in that it boosts social and environmental aspects for tenants and generates greater profits for landlords. Stagmeier’s research has uncovered no other program in the U.S. that combines wraparound services of housing, education, and medical care in the same way, though Yesler Terrace Apartments (operated by the Seattle Housing Authority) and Eden Housing (a California nonprofit housing developer and property manager) have similar components.
“If I had 10 more Marjy-run properties in Clarkston, there’s no doubt that our crime rate would drop even more, test scores would go up even more, and our community health and connections … would increase,” says Clarkston Mayor Ted Terry. “She’s creating a long-term, sustainable paradigm in multifamily housing that will pay dividends to our community for years to come.”
And Willow Branch’s successes, Stagmeier says, could be only the beginning in metro Atlanta — where recent studies show a deficit of more than 80,000 affordable housing units — and beyond. 

ENTREPRENEURIAL GENES

Philanthropy wasn’t always in Stagmeier’s heart — entrepreneurship was.
She grew up just two miles from Willow Branch in Stone Mountain, the middle of three daughters whose parents were serial entrepreneurs investing in everything from pig farms to electrical- and mechanical-supply companies (all three girls would eventually own businesses). After studying accounting at Georgia State University and passing the state’s CPA exam, she worked in banking and real estate for a decade, socking away her money and publishing a revered book in 1994, “Real Estate Asset Management: Executive Strategies in Profit Making.” Managing a portfolio of $500 million by the mid-1990s, she teamed with a German investor and started her own company to buy and manage workforce housing, including Willow Branch in 1996.  
Complexes with early versions of the afterschool program and stable rents stayed roughly 95 percent occupied, eliminating costly turnover and transiency, which drags down student performance. (What’s more, parents who knew where their children were after the final school bell could work longer hours, earning more rent money). A blighted apartment community in the northwestern suburb of Marietta provided Stagmeier’s “a-ha!” moment, she says, as she began to see how a single complex can drastically impact the schools it feeds.

Entrepreneur Marjy Stagmeier developed a unique model that combines housing, education and healthcare to revitalize struggling communities.

By 2014, Stagmeier had sold her other properties to focus on honing the Star-C model at Willow Branch. In order for the program to work, she says, the purchasing price of any new complex has to be less than $40,000 per unit, which allows rents to stay affordable and thus turnover low. (At Willow Branch, tenants pay an average of $615 a month.) She channels $3,000 monthly into the Star-C program, which employs three full-time people, with fundraising covering the rest of costs. Word has spread, and volunteers from throughout the region, primarily church groups and students, log nearly 8,000 hours at the complex each year.
Now, Star-C’s academic results are a particular source of pride, for both Stagmeier and the parents of the 300 kids under age 10 who call Willow Branch home.
As recently as 2013, neighboring Indian Creek Elementary School was the second worst-performing school in Georgia. Following a partnership with Star-C, the elementary has been named a “Platinum Performer” — the highest classification awarded by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement — three years running. Nearly 90 percent of students passed the Georgia Milestones assessment test last year and have average GPAs of 3.25.
“That’s impressive,” says Stagmeier, “considering English is new to most of these kids.”
In addition to the free education component, Star-C has partnered with a nearby health clinic to offer residents dentistry, primary care and OB-GYN services at $50 to $70 per visit. If residents are still unable to pay, the nonprofit will cover their visits out of its fundraising proceeds.
Another healthy facet of life at Willow Branch: a community gardening program, which costs residents just $20 a year (this covers the cost of deer-netting). In 40 tidy gardens that consume about an acre, Hispanic tenants grow peppers, Asian residents cultivate roselle hibiscus, and religiously significant marigolds are popular with just about everyone. Along with the recently erected fences that keep out the neighborhood’s gang members, the gardening initiative gives residents reason to be outside and has all but eliminated crime, Stagmeier says.
Statistics that paint an accurate picture of crime in the immediate area are tough to come by, as residents often don’t call police because of language barriers and mistrust. But hundreds of people — including what Stagmeier describes as “harsh gangs,” which twice attacked a security officer, periodically flashed guns on the property, and stole from residents — formerly cut through Willow Branch to access a commercial district. “That’s all gone away since we put up the fence and started the gardens,” says Stagmeier. “Grandma in her garden won’t put up with that type of behavior.”
Savings on food, healthcare and rent have had cumulative, positive effects. Of the 39 families who moved out of Willow Branch last year, 16 were able to buy their first homes.
“That’s going from poverty to mobility,” Stagmeier says. “That’s what we do here.”
Marjy Stagmeier (left, in purple) with a group of Willow Branch residents.

FUTURE OUTLOOK

As of this writing, Stagmeier was under contract with her second property for the Star-C model, a 244-unit community called Summerdale Commons just south of downtown Atlanta. It’s among the city’s top 10 worst complexes for crime, and it’s next door to another low-performing elementary school, she says.
Through the course of 170 meetings with everyone from homeless people to Atlanta’s mayor, Stagmeier has grown determined to work within Atlanta city limits, where government is supportive of her efforts and an inclusionary zoning ordinance was adopted in January to boost workforce housing. It’s also where Stagmeier lives in tony Ansley Park with her husband, John.
“We’re buying the roughest properties that have the highest crime that the neighbors are sick of,” she says. “Luckily, we’ve got the city behind us.”
Beyond Summerdale Commons, Stagmeier is eyeing three or four other properties. She’s also starting to recruit younger partners, in hopes of breathing more life into the nonprofits and, eventually, bringing her successes to a national level.
“I think her model will catch on the more that elected officials and compassionate investor groups learn about it,” says Terry, the Clarkston mayor.
Back at Willow Branch, a group of teens from the philanthropy club at Atlanta’s Benjamin Franklin Academy arrives one afternoon. They’ve collected four boxes of books representing a variety of cultures.
The high schoolers are eager to read to the kids. But first, Stagmeier has a question. “Do you know what’s going on here?”
Blank faces.  
“Do you want me to tell you what’s going on here?” she asks. “What the goal is?”  
Nods.
She launches into a primer, pointing to the community garden and the filled-in pool, which now serves as a mini soccer arena. And she mentions the part about families buying their own homes, essentially graduating toward their American dream.         
“That’s incredible,” says sophomore Zach Arais. “I had no idea about the level of this project. I mean, it’s really impressive.”
A previous version of this story incorrectly said Yesler Apartments in Seattle is operated by Catholic Community Services, not the Seattle Housing Authority. We regret the error.

In Atlanta, This Group Fights Hunger With Tech and Found Fruit

Off the Atlanta BeltLine, about 20 feet from the Freedom Parkway bridge, as teenagers skateboarded, joggers pushed strollers and couples walked hand-in-hand, Logan Pool looks up.
“Do you think this tree can hold my weight?” he asks Katherine Kennedy, executive director of Concrete Jungle, the nonprofit that organized the day’s fruit pick.
Kennedy chuckles. “I’ll let you make that call,” she says.
The branches above him hang heavy with reddening plums the size of golfballs. Farther up the hill, six volunteers pull plums from other trees, filling quart-sized containers with the sticky-sweet fruit.
Concrete Jungle aims to address two connected issues. On the one hand, thousands of fruit trees grow unattended — their ripened fruits drop and rot, contributing to the 40 percent of agricultural products in the U.S. that go to waste, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. And alongside that food waste, people are going hungry. In Atlanta 19 percent of adults and 28 percent of kids are food insecure — a phrase that, in practical terms, means skipping one meal a day based on necessity. Although food pantries and soup kitchens alleviate some of that need, it’s often with donated pantry staples and processed foods, rather than fresh, vitamin- and mineral-rich ones.
Since 2009, the organization has mapped 4,700 neglected trees to create Atlanta’s only fruit-tree map. It’s allowed the small group — which has just one employee and 10 board members — and their volunteers to maximize the harvest and minimize wasted fruit. To date, more than 33,000 pounds of produce have been donated to those in need.
For most of the 10 hunger-relief organizations that partner with Concrete Jungle, this is the only fresh produce they can provide to the families they serve. Subsequently, in places where Concrete Jungle drops off contributions, the fresh produce is used immediately, whether it’s set out for people to grab or set aside for volunteers to prepare as part of a meal.
“Concrete Jungle was the first and remains the most consistent donor of fresh-picked and farm-grown fruits and vegetables for our community,” Chad Hyatt, pastor at Atlanta’s Mercy Community Church, says. “Getting food donations isn’t hard; getting healthy, nutritious, fresh food is.”

Growing Roots

Concrete Jungle started with two friends and some apples. Craig Durkin and Aubrey Daniels had a cider press but, as broke students at the Georgia Institute of Technology, they didn’t have the money for the abundance of fruit required to use it. So they scouted out apple trees in the area and started picking. Before long, they realized the scope of the fruit available in Atlanta — a metro area with so much lush green space it’s widely known as “the city in the forest.”
Sometimes referred to as “gleaning,” this age-old practice gathers whatever crops remain on a farmer’s land after it was harvested. And Concrete Jungle isn’t alone in gleaning food donations. “Urban fruit foraging” organizations — a more modern term for the practice — have popped up in cities such as Seattle; Louisville, Ky.; Philadelphia; Boulder, Colo.; and Los Angeles.
For volunteers, these organizations provide a novel experience that harkens back to childhood tree-climbing or family trips to orchards. “They can now see Atlanta in a new light,” Kennedy says. “They can see fruit trees all over the place.”
That was one of the main draws for Erin Croom, who came out to the plum pick with her two sons, five-year-old Thomas and four-year-old Henry.
“I love showing them that there is magic in ordinary and familiar spaces,” says Croom. “They are so proud to gain new knowledge — like being able to identify new trees — and do something that helps others.”
Back by the parkway bridge, Pool has successfully climbed the plum tree and is diligently harvesting from halfway up its branches, although a few plums have ended up in his mouth.
“I’m only eating the bruised ones!” he calls down, laughing.

A Better Bounty

Beyond a growing volunteer base, Concrete Jungle has technology on its side. Because it’s difficult to keep an eye on the thousands of trees the group has mapped all across Atlanta, they’ve partnered with the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Public Design Workshop to better monitor their potential crops.
First, to reduce the amount of time spent driving to a picking site, the team deployed drones to take photos and videos of the trees. (The drone is currently grounded due to FAA regulations and licensing requirements.) Now they’re creating sensors that will be directly placed in trees to monitor fruit growth. Cameras take weekly pictures of tree branches, and a bend sensor measures a branch’s angle (as fruit grows bigger and heavier, it weighs the branch down). And an electronic nose, still very much in the development phase, aims to “smell” gases as they’re released from growing fruit. Once the gases reach a certain level, the fruit is ready to pick.
Last year Concrete Jungle donated 16,000 pounds of produce, a harvest record they’re hoping to double this year.
On this afternoon, eight volunteers collect 98 pounds of plums, some of which end up at Mercy Community Church, hand-delivered, like most donations, by Kennedy.
A group of predominantly homeless men is gathered for breakfast and prayer. Pastor Hyatt loads some of the plums into a bowl and passes it around. “Concrete Jungle is an example of fundamental justice,” he says, “of seeing a resource and a need and doing the right thing by rolling up your sleeves and dirtying your hands to get the resource to those who need it.”
Correction: This article originally referred to Atlanta’s BeltLine as the Beltway. NationSwell regrets the error.
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5 Good Governing Mayors

Focused on the issues most important to their constituents, mayors have to ensure public resources get used wisely and in a way that achieves results while respecting the law and democratic values.
As mayors from across the nation gather for The United States Conference of Mayors’ Annual Meeting this weekend, here are five that are practicing good governance in small and mid-sized cities.

Mayor Mick Cornett supported a one cent sales tax to fund projects that enhance the quality of life for Oklahoma City residents, such as the construction of RIVERSPORT Rapids.

Mick Cornett, Oklahoma City

Once dubbed one of the five most innovative mayors in the country by Newsweek, Cornett has been credited with helping his city shed a collective 1 million pounds through an ambitious health campaign. He’s also invested nearly $2 billion to improve schools and infrastructure and boosted civic engagement by including residents on various subcommittees. Cornett, who’s been mayor since 2004, is now the longest-serving leader among the 50 biggest cities in the U.S. and is hoping to take his changemaking ways statewide by running for governor.

Mayor Svante Myrick takes a selfie with the Child Development Council after his proclamation of Child Development Council Day in Ithaca, N.Y

Svante Myrick, Ithaca, N.Y.

First elected at age 24, Myrick – now 30 – is known for hanging an LED sign in his office that displays text messages from constituents. But more importantly, he’s tackled the heroin epidemic by proposing a detox center, methadone clinic and supervised safe injection site. “It’s a great example of good governance because although it’s experimental, there are early signs of success where it’s been done (like Vancouver, B.C.),” says Alex Torpey, former mayor of South Orange, N.J., and visiting professor of governance and technology at Seton Hall University. The idea may seem counterintuitive, but Torpey says Myrick’s team “brought in all possible stakeholders, did appropriate research and made a really brave decision to try something to help attack this problem.”

Local Louisville high school seniors discuss their post-graduation plans with Mayor Greg Fischer.

Greg Fischer, Louisville, Ky.

This Bluegrass State inventor turned businessman turned politician was elected mayor in 2010. Last year, he was voted the country’s “most innovative” mayor in a Politico survey and credited with driving the creation of a new economic development agency and an innovation office. One of his administration’s top goals includes making the city more compassionate, as well as improving education and creating “good-paying” jobs. “Throughout this tenure, the city of Louisville has moved from an old industrial town without a lot of industry to a modern creative class magnet in the Midwest,” says William Hatcher, associate professor of political science at Augusta University.

Mayor David Bieter congratulates new enlistees in the United States Navy at Boise City Hall.

David Bieter, Boise, Idaho

This fourth-term mayor – the longest in Boise’s history – has expanded access to childhood education programs and affordable housing while taking a bold stance to protect immigrants and refugees. His city does better than many others at ensuring the safety of residents and providing them access to hospital beds and certain health outcomes, helping Boise rank at the top of the America’s best-run cities study.

In Washington D.C., Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed participates in a panel discussion on the economy and job opportunities for Americans.

Kasim Reed, Atlanta

Under his leadership, the local government of this bigger city has strengthened its economy and developed urban amenities “in a manner that is effective, efficient and fair,” notes Hatcher. The second-term mayor established a bike share program to help with traffic congestion and pushed for new transit infrastructure. Recently, Reed pledged to uphold the Paris climate accord and joined the Global Parliament of Mayors, which is tackling local issues resulting from worldwide problems. “Mayors need to be at the forefront of global challenges like immigration, social mobility, climate change and resiliency,” Reed has said.
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After a Devastating Scandal, Can Reformers Clean Up Atlanta’s Schools?

On April 2, 2013, wearing a pearl necklace and earrings, Atlanta’s former school superintendent Beverly Hall tilted her head for a mug shot. After a state investigation into cheating on standardized tests, a grand jury had indicted the one-time “National Superintendent of the Year,” along with 34 principals, teachers and testing coordinators, for posting illegitimate gains in struggling schools. In total, 185 educators were implicated in the scandal.
A jury eventually delivered 11 convictions on racketeering charges; Hall herself died of breast cancer before standing trial. But the sight of the district’s top employee marching into the Fulton County jail had a more immediate effect: Four young Teach for America (TFA) alumni all made bids to run in the school board race, just seven months away. The former TFA corps members included an incumbent — Courtney English, 31, a Morehouse alum who’d taught seventh-grade social studies in the same Northwest Atlanta classroom where he’d once taken the class — and three newcomers: Matt Westmoreland, 29, a high school history teacher whose father served as a county judge; Jason Esteves, 33, a lawyer from Texas running to be the board’s only Latino representative; and Eshe’ Collins, 36, also a lawyer with a passion for early childhood education.
Opponents warned of “a shadow conspiracy aimed at turning [Atlanta Public Schools] into an all-charter system,” as the city’s alt-weekly described it. Yet the fresh faces promised to fix a system that had lost its constituents’ trust. Despite only having served one term, English’s vision for comprehensive services, vocal calls for transparency during the cheating scandal and backing from TFA’s political arm won him Atlanta voters’ approval. He credits a mission of “keep[ing] it about the kids” for racking up his 23-point margin of victory. Esteves and Collins both triumphed in runoffs. (Westmoreland went unchallenged.) When the board, stacked with six new members, sat for their first meeting, a crowd of 200 admirers erupted in a standing ovation. English was unanimously selected leader — making him, at 28 years old, the youngest chairman in the district’s history. “It was a brand-new day in APS,” English recalls.
Far from the national spotlight, these four school board officials define Teach for America’s long-term strategy. The stated goal of the nonprofit, which placed 3,400 recent college grads in struggling public schools this year alone, is not to recruit career educators. (Indeed, you won’t find the word “teaching” anywhere in TFA’s mission statement.) Rather, the organization seeks to groom “future leaders” who will head a nationwide “movement for educational equity and excellence.” That coalition takes shape when former corps members, like English and Westmoreland, step away from the chalkboard and run for elected office.
The board’s decisions in Atlanta — where the newly elected seized a rare “opportunity to press the restart button on a school system,” as Esteves puts it — afford the clearest view of TFA’s mission in practice. In the South’s biggest city, the organization proved its former teachers could win elections and reshape an entire district. In 2015, the first full school year after the new board’s arrival, graduation rates shot up by 12 points. Meanwhile, charter enrollments since 2013 also increased by one-third. Whether those reforms have been effective or not will be judged by the voters in 2017.
A MOVEMENT FOR FAIRNESS
Critics regularly lob attacks against Teach for America for turnover among its ranks of new teachers. But these opponents misunderstand the purpose of the 27-year-old organization. “All you have to do is teach in today’s schools to realize we will never solve this problem [of educational inequality] from within the classrooms alone. … We actually think some of these folks have to leave,” Wendy Kopp, TFA’s founder, told Bloomberg Businessweek in 2012. “We have a whole strategy around not only providing folks with the foundational experience during their two years with us, but also then accelerating their leadership in ways that is strategic for the broader education reform movement.” If TFA members are in law firms, hedge funds and hospitals, Westmoreland explains, their classroom experience will inform their decisions, the “things they might invest time and money in,” widening the coalition of those who care about schools beyond the people directly involved, like teachers and parents.
This long-term goal is instilled in corps members from the very first week of TFA’s summer training institute. “Before you start teaching, they’re already talking about your work as alumni,” says T. Jameson Brewer, a former corps member who’s since co-authored a book critical of TFA. Brewer recalled the executive director of the Atlanta branch saying he wanted TFA alums in leadership positions at all levels, from a high percentage of new principal hires and every seat on the local school board, all the way up to a sitting Supreme Court justice. (The director asked Brewer, who’d previously managed a gubernatorial campaign, to throw his name in to the school board race. He declined.)
Brewer questions whether the experience gained with TFA qualifies a person for those roles. “The idea is that you give these folks some manufactured expertise, that being a teacher in the trenches for two years somehow makes them an expert in policy or leadership,” he says. “For most people, I think that should be very troubling.”
Despite any qualms voters might have, TFA has proved very effective at propelling a number of its teachers into leadership positions. Leveraging assets worth $440 million and a 46,000-member alumni network, TFA alums currently occupy the offices of the state superintendent in Louisiana and North Carolina, the state education board in Nevada, the school board president’s chair in Los Angeles and seats on the board in Chicago, San Jose and Stockton, Calif.
Most of that work can be traced back to TFA’s sister organization, Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE), a nonpartisan leadership-development program for former corps members founded in 2007. The nonprofit group, which is keen to note it does not endorse any specific policy prescriptions, organizes some 30,000 alums to translate their TFA experience into laws and regulations, whether it’s mobilizing voters through grassroots campaigns, attending summer fellowships, mentoring younger members or sharing policy ideas at conferences. A select few actually run themselves, and they’re supported by LEE’s donors and consultants. Nationwide, there’s now over a hundred LEE members in elected office, organizing roles and policy-making positions.

“Today, there are many children in our country not receiving the education they deserve, and for a long time a movement has been building to address this problem in a systemic way,” says Michael Buman, LEE’s executive director. “This movement is diverse in many ways; it includes students, parents, teachers, advocates, and many, many others. LEE develops the leadership of Teach for America corps members and alumni to be a part of this movement.”

In the run up to the 2013 election in Atlanta, the organization gave the equivalent of $4,300 in services to the school-board campaigns. Simultaneously, money flowed in from Arthur Rock, a venture capitalist and partner in a charter-school management company; Rebecca Ledley, whose husband Charles, a hedge-fund manager, started Democrats for Education Reform; and Joel Klein, the former head of New York City schools.

A TURNAROUND PLAN

LEE’s public support, however small the contribution, drew fierce criticism. Diane Ravitch, an education historian at New York University, wrote in a blog post, “At some point, TFA will be recognized as a crucial cog in the rightwing effort to destroy public education and dismantle the teaching profession,” a contention she stood by when NationSwell checked in with her recently, deriding TFA as “the workforce for charters.”

The four TFA alumni, for their part, adamantly maintained they would not bow to anyone who pulled out their checkbook. (“We’re not going to jump in there and hand over control of the school system to some for-profit charter monster,” Westmoreland told the AJC during the 2013 campaign, adding, “If they come at me with an idea that I don’t think is in the best interest of everyone in the city, I’m going to say no.”) And they took umbrage at the idea that their TFA experience automatically connects them with a pro-charter agenda. “Most people underestimate the difference of opinions in the alumni base,” Esteves says, pointing to fellow corps members who oppose school reform. “TFA does not impact whether I go one way or the other. What it does is give me that perspective that everything I do impacts kids.”

True to their word, English and Westmoreland can hardly be accused of straight up selling out the district to private managers. While the total share of Atlanta students in charters has risen, it’s largely because those approved by previous boards continue to add grades each year, Westmoreland explains. Under their watch, the total number of charter schools has actually decreased by two. The board declined to renew the contract for Intown Charter due to struggling academic performance, and it refused to bail out Atlanta Latin Academy Charter, which went belly-up after half a million went missing in a suspected theft.
But on the flip side, they’ve made it easier for future charters to set up shop in the city. In their first major decision, they hired Dr. Meria Carstarphen, who’d previously led schools in Texas, as superintendent. The turnaround plan she proposed this year included giving control of the city’s five worst schools to charter operators. She’d tried the idea once before in Austin, where she pushed for an in-district charter to take over an elementary school. Yet a single year into the plan, the charter’s contract was promptly cancelled, after parents staged a revolt and booted the experiment’s supporters from the school board.
Westmoreland says he signed on to Carstarphen’s idea after talking with fellow corps members at an LEE conference in Washington, D.C. — a gathering where TFA alums who’ve crossed over into politics share “war stories,” as English puts it. In January 2014, Westmoreland chatted with representatives from Nashville, who’d created a hybrid model of a neighborhood school managed by an outside operator in 2011. The primary criticism against charters is that they appear to achieve higher results by taking the most motivated students out of district schools, then kicking out underperfomers. (English calls it “creaming the top and skimming the bottom.”) Nashville, by forcing the charter to accept every student within a fixed attendance zone, seemed to have stumbled on a new model that prevents an operator from cooking its numbers.
Despite an outcry over the swiftness with which Carstarphen enacted her plan — “The community feels like it’s being sold out,” one parent remarked — the proposal, backed by Westmoreland, won unanimous approval from the board. Its passage marked the first time a charter was hired to run a neighborhood school in Georgia. So far, Westmoreland reports, the school’s seen better attendance and fewer disciplinary issues under its new management.

Atlanta school board member Courtney English speaks at the Governing for Impact summit in Washington, D.C., in 2015.

Would English like to see more charters open in the district? He won’t say. “Parents want good schools, period. If you’re a parent, you’re not thinking about the politics of education reform. You’re asking, ‘How can I help my third-grader get the best education possible?’ And I think when we speak to that, the other stuff becomes noise,” he says. “I’m not for more of one thing or the other. It is how you get more good schools faster” of any kind, he adds.
A CALLING TO HIGHER OFFICE
Next year, Atlanta’s Teach for America network will set its sights on a higher office, as both Westmoreland and English plan to run for Atlanta’s city council. In November, Westmoreland, who currently oversees programming to prevent summer learning loss at a nonprofit, will compete for an open seat, while English, now chief education officer of an ed-tech company, will duel with an incumbent councilman. Both will try to capitalize on a number of accomplishments during their school board tenure.
Westmoreland, as chair of the budget committee, is particularly proud of redirecting money away from administrators in the central office, hitting a high of 66 cents on every dollar being devoted to classroom use. He also won goodwill by providing teachers long overdue raises that had been frozen after the economic downturn in 2008.
English can also point to some big budget wins. This spring, voters approved a penny sales tax, which is expected to bring in $464 million to fund school construction. He also settled a longstanding dispute with Atlanta’s BeltLine over $162 million the school system was owed for its share of property tax diverted to funding the 22-mile loop. Another boast for English: a jump in graduation rates. When he joined the board in 2009, just over half of students graduated; in the seven years since, that number has jumped to 71 percent. (Part of this improvement resulted from doing away with exit exams as a graduation requirement; statewide, the rate increased 6 percent after the change.)
With those accomplishments under their belts, it’s a little surprising that English and Westmoreland still talk up their TFA experience, when the issue has proven polarizing. In highlighting their service, the debate becomes a referendum on Wendy Kopp’s idea; the men’s political capital rises and falls as the organization’s does. Their explanation? That TFA profoundly affected their worldview, and both now feel the obligation to give credit where it’s due.
English says TFA gave him an “opportunity to give back to the city that had given so much to me.” Westmoreland agrees. “I wouldn’t be on the school board and I wouldn’t have become a teacher if it weren’t for Teach for America. That organization and the experience I had at Carver [a public high school] and on the board really instilled in me how important this concept of equity is,” he says. “My takeaway is that if Teach for America’s idea was how to put passionate folks in the classroom, LEE’s was what we do with them if they choose to leave it. Either way, it’s how to make sure that whatever they do, they’re always thinking of equity.”

How Do You Get Millennials Focused on the Issues Facing Americans Today?

Kasey Saeturn, a 20-year-old journalist, got the idea for her most recent reporting project while attempting to grab take-out in Oakland’s Chinatown. That summer afternoon, she and other reporters left the Youth Radio headquarters to find cheap eats. Most returned empty-handed, unable to find anything affordable in the gentrified neighborhood. The situation prompted Saeturn, a first-generation Mien-American whose family came from Laos, to think about urban renewal, wondering: Was a lack of affordable cuisine unique to the Easy Bay or did kids across the country choose between an empty stomach and an empty wallet?
To answer her question, Saeturn built a map and used Facebook and Twitter to collect responses from across the country to fill it. Last month, her story (which was produced by Youth Radio) appeared before a national audience on NPR’s website. “I wouldn’t have even found out if I liked [storytelling] if I didn’t join Youth Radio. I never saw myself as a journalist,” Saeturn, a college student with a second job at a ramen shop, says.
With kids manning the mics, Youth Radio, a public radio station, launched from Berkeley, Calif., in the 1990s. As shootings ravaged low-income neighborhoods, its founder, Ellin O’Leary, hoped to end the prevailing news narrative that all teens were violent gangbangers or victims by giving minority, low-income youths the opportunity to explain their lives for themselves. That mission continues today at bureaus in L.A., Atlanta and Washington, D.C., as Millennials — burdened with college debt and unemployment — create stories about living in a hashtag-centric world. Keeping up with the times, Youth Radio now also streams its content online and in 2009, started its Innovation Lab, a digital storytelling platform, where young people design interactive mobile apps that give a fresh take on the news in a format that’s relevant to their peers.
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“There’s multiple ways to tell a story,” says Asha Richardson, a Youth Radio alum who now manages the Innovation Lab. Richardson, the station’s former tech journalist, wanted her reporting to go beyond the reels and was intrigued how technology — video, music, graphic design, coding — and new platforms that appealed to her peers enhanced reach and storytelling impact. Students in the program (80 percent come from low-income homes) receive real-world tech skills, learning not only how to use a recording device, set levels and mix their audio, but also how to design and code, says Lissa Soep, a senior producer who cooked up the Innovation Lab with Richardson.
APPLY: Youth Radio is an NBCUniversal 21st Century Solutions grant winner. Apply to the 2016 program here.
Youth Radio’s apps transform the century-old two-minute radio story and make it better by allowing a reader to spend as much time with a story as she desires (the same way a listener could binge on Serial). A series of interviews about gentrification in five Oakland neighborhoods, for example, allows a visitor to turn about the city through an online map, visiting schools and playgrounds, a Disneyesque theme park, grand old hotels and new high-rise condos. Richardson’s Bucket Hustle app combines trivia questions about California’s drought with an arcade-style game of collecting falling water drops in a bucket. And another online interactive, Double Charged, lets a viewer follow three people through the juvenile justice system and watch as thousands of dollars in fees pile up throughout the process.
Youth Radio’s multi-platform approach extends young people’s voices far beyond their Twitter feeds and Tumblr accounts. So far, its stories have reached more than 28 million users and the digital tools created in its Innovation Lab have an active user base of more than 3 million people worldwide.
That ability to reach a diverse audience changed the way Saeturn thinks about her own life and how much she’s willing to share on the radio. When she sits down to brainstorm, she asks herself, “What’s going on in my life that other people can relate to?” Knowing her words will be shared justifies “putting all the thought and feeling and heart” into each story, hoping her experience helps another young person listening on the web.
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More than any hackathon or a media studies class, Youth Radio allows young people to express themselves and connect with listeners. By telling stories, Saeturn feels like she’s finally found her voice. Not in the sense that it gave her thoughts and opinions she didn’t hold before, but that it gives her a platform to stand on.
“A lot of adults, they don’t really care for what children have to say. To them, it’s whatever we say goes. They forget that the youth is our next generation. They forget that we have the same thoughts and opinions as you do. We have worries as well,” Saeturn says. “That’s the biggest thing: we’ve been silent for so long, forced to believe that nobody cares.” With Youth Radio as their outlet, they’re finding people that are willing to listen. Online, they’re able to reach more of them than ever before.
Youth Radio is a recipient of last year’s 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media, and technology for good. Apply here for a chance to be one of the 2016 winners!

Can This Ambitious Plan Both Preserve History and Revitalize a City?

Infrastructure determines how we live, says Ryan Gravel, an Atlanta planner. But he’s not just talking about the tedious methods for relieving road congestion or figuring out how to efficiently transmit water, gas and electricity to every home. No, Gravel’s got something more personal in mind. Infrastructure, to him, determines how people interact and bond, children grow up, residents spend their time and communities preserve their heritage. “Infrastructure is the foundation of social life and economy and culture,” he tells NationSwell. That may sound grandiose, but thinking big hasn’t stopped Gravel before. He’s the visionary behind the mother of all urban redevelopment projects: a 22-mile metamorphosis known as the BeltLine, linking Atlanta’s unused railroad tracks and abandoned industrial zones in a gigantic loop of public transit, green parks, walking and biking trails and neighborhood revitalization.
“If we build highways and off-ramps, then guess what? We end up with a way of life that’s dominated by cars. If we build walkable communities with transit, we get something that’s entirely different,” Gravel says. “The BeltLine is catalyzing a new way of life, a new kind of infrastructure. It’s supporting something other than what Atlanta is known for, which is car dependency, and it’s working.”

City planners hope that long-term infrastructure projects, including the BeltLine, will alleviate the traffic that clogs Atlanta highways.

By picturing what kind of city he wanted to live in, Gravel first envisioned the BeltLine in 1999 as part of his master’s thesis. Cathy Woolard, former city council member and gay rights advocate who’s readying to replace Mayor Kasim Reed (who’s in the midst of serving his second term) in 2017, provided invaluable early assistance and got the massive 25-year project up and running by 2005. Gravel personally helped oversee its rollout with a full-time role at city hall. Yet working in government bureaucracy quickly tested his nerves. He loved meeting all the different stakeholders interested in the BeltLine — from local restaurant owners to fellow urban planning wonks — but, as he told Ozy, “The politics of it got too much.” Gravel quit after five months. (He notes he continued to be involved in the BeltLine’s development through volunteer work, advocacy and private-sector work.)
Ryan Gravel first envisioned the BeltLine in 1999 as part of his master’s thesis.

A decade later, the BeltLine has generated $2.5 billion in economic development, and Gravel wrote a book about infrastructure, out last month. Recently, Gravel announced he’s rejoining the planning process from within the mayoral administration, by serving as manager of the Atlanta City Design project, a new design studio that will sketch out long-term plans for Atlanta’s growth after at least six months of public meetings at Ponce City Market. Writing in an email, he made clear that the job isn’t a long-term position: “My role … is as a consultant. And by this time next year, I’m guessing it will be over/near over.” But on the phone, he communicates enthusiasm for the project’s ambitious goal. Essentially, Gravel wants to find out what makes Atlanta tick and preserve those elements through a projected boom in population.
In January, Mayor Reed welcomed Gravel back to city hall. ”His vision to transform old railroad corridors into a 22-mile transit greenway has spurred economic development across the city, improved the quality of life for residents and led to a total transformation for Atlanta,” Reed said. Part of that renewal has been an in-migration to Atlanta’s downtown. Regarded as the capital of the South, the urban center of Atlanta dwarfs in size compared to the city’s suburbs. Fewer than one in 10 people live downtown out of the 5.7 million that claim the metro area home. Stretching out 50 miles in every direction, the outer ring of the nine-county area was once the hotspot for new growth. Now, people are pouring back into downtown. ”There’s a limit to the sprawl,” Matt Hauer, head of the University of Georgia’s Applied Demography Program, tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We’re seeing much more urban revitalization and growth in the central metro counties.”
With so much in flux, Gravel’s assessment of what defines Atlanta will be all the more important. “The purpose of City Design is to identify the things that are special about Atlanta, then embed those things in the decisions about how the city grows in the future,” Gravel says. In other words, he believes that Atlanta’s history and environment should inform every planning decision. The BeltLine, in repurposing old railroads, for instance, would get high marks for its nod to Atlanta’s beginnings and its reclaiming of industrial land. The neighborhood containing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthplace and burial site in the Historic Fourth Ward have been connected to the BeltLine via a trail and a 17-acre park, but there’s plenty of other sites from the Civil Rights Movement to safeguard and integrate.
“We have been so car-centric that you didn’t experience the city in an intimate way,” Reed explains to The New York Times. “We are changing Atlanta into a city that you can enjoy by walking and riding a bike.”
There’s not much precedent for this type of metropolitan-wide planning in North American cities. Workers within individual departments may come up with an idea for housing stock or parks and recreation, but they’re almost never joined together in one unified vision. (Gravel points to only one prior example in the United States that he can find: Chicago’s Burnham Plan in 1909.) That’s because the hardest part is getting everyone to sign off on one big plan.
By taking hundreds of thousands of people’s opinions all being taken into account, the BeltLine has run up against some major political hurdles (typical for massive government undertakings). Not surprisingly, the biggest tiffs involved money. When the stock market took a nosedive in 2008, it looked as if the BeltLine wouldn’t get built. Under then-mayor Shirley Franklin, the city set up a new process, known as tax-allocation districts in 2005, to borrow school tax revenues to fund the initial construction (to be returned upon the project’s completion), but it didn’t go into effect until a state constitutional amendment was approved in 2009.  Construction resumed, but when the city missed its payments on the $162 million owed by 2030, Reed received a sharp rebuke from Atlanta’s school superintendent, including threats of a lawsuit. “Bikes or books?” one graduate student at George State University asked. “What does Atlanta support more?
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.

This February, three years after that budget fight turned nasty, Reed brokered a deal that offered less money, but with a guarantee the schools would be paid first. He argued that funding the BeltLine would foster a more robust tax base — a $30 billion increase is hoped for by 2030 — filling both the city and the school’s coffers. The deal “will allow the Atlanta BeltLine to recover from the worst recession in 80 years. And then, when the Beltline is strong and able again, it can make payments at a higher level,” he promised. The school board unanimously agreed.
Across the rest of the city, however, individuals still questions if they will be able to cash in on the investment. Neighbors bordering the city’s new lifeline worry that gentrification will drive up rents to sky-high prices. There’s plenty of evidence in other cities to support their point. For instance, in Southern California’s Elysian Valley, proximity to the Los Angeles River redevelopment — a concrete blight that’s now a natural asset — drove up the median price per square foot 28.3 percent in one year.
Gravel hopes people see that the answer is not to leave the city as it is, without improvements, in the hopes of warding off gentrification. That’s not to say, there won’t be unintended consequences, he admits. But if anything, this is where planning is all the more important, preparing ways to keep housing affordable while sprucing up a neighborhood’s character.
Gravel looks around him for all the signs that the BeltLine’s already improving Atlanta. “It’s not just people commuting or exercising, they’re going out on dates, going to the grocery. That to me is a huge measure of success. To me, it’s changing the way that people live their lives,” he says. With more long-term planning still to come, we can expect to see a new model for urban growth born in the south in the decades ahead.
Correction: A previous version of this article referred to Atlanta City Design as a “committee.” It is a design studio. The article also said that Ryan Gravel was nervous about his new position, which was incorrect. It also stated that Mayor Reed set up the tax-allocation districts. That work was done under Mayor Shirley Franklin. NationSwell apologies for these errors.

The Two-Pronged Approach That’s Finding Success in Breaking the Poverty Cycle

How do you end poverty? While there’s a wide array of options and theses, one solution stands out from the crowd: education. And not just kids, either. At the Dunbar Learning Complex in Atlanta, Ga., parents are students, too, thanks to its two-generation approach, which is a theory that combines high-quality, early childhood education and career help for parents to build better families and lives.
Comprised of a preschool and public elementary school, Dunbar accepts students into its pre-K program if their parents sign up with The Center for Working Families, a career development center, to improve their job skills. The pre-K is part of the Educare Network, which is a national network of full-day early education schools. The school also has an on-site art studio and infant classrooms, which accept students starting at six weeks of age, reports National Journal.
While parents can drop their kids off  from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., administrators stress that Dunbar isn’t a daycare; students are there to learn — no matter the age — and every classroom has a curriculum.
So far, Dunbar has provided results. In 2010, only six percent of students entering kindergarten were reading at or above grade level, but after Dunbar’s first year, that number increased to 55 percent. Furthermore, those student scoring below the 30th percentile on the Peabody Picture Vocab Test dropped by 33 percentage points, while those above the 50th percentile increased by 12 percent.
Beyond educating children, Dunbar provides adult services, including assistance with finding special teachers for students, choosing healthcare, inspecting homes for health risks and educating parents through monthly meetings concerning child development, literacy and health. It’s also helped 1,800 parents find jobs and access to services that provide assistance with tax refunds, credits, childcare subsidies and other benefits.
MORE: The Three Things That Innovative Thinkers Do As Children

The 10 Most Inspiring Books of 2014

In a year where our country witnessed a widening gap between rich and poor, a toxic chemical leak, long delays for veterans at hospitals and clinics, botched lethal injectionsracially-charged protestsrecord low voter turnout and stunning Congressional dysfunction, we at NationSwell turned to these ten books for stories of hope. Confronted by complex issues, these authors never flinched. Instead, they brought us creative solutions and unwavering heroics. Read on for our top ten books of 2014 (alphabetized by author):

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Are there any inspiring books we missed? Let us know in the comments below.

Minorities Should Want To Be Police Officers

One of the first facts people noticed after a white police officer killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., was that only three of the 53 cops on the local force were black. That’s nowhere near the city’s racial composition, where two-thirds of residents are African-American.
Though the number of minority cops has grown over the past two decades, this lack of diversity is the norm in hundreds of departments across the country, while the key to recruiting and retaining minority officers remains elusive for most departments. As demands for reform echo across the country, we examined the latest research and contacted experts to find the best methods for hiring police forces that better reflect the neighborhoods they serve.
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DON’T MISS: This Is What Community Oriented Policing Looks Like
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