Tyrone Wilmer is sitting at a table surrounded by his wife and five children. This cold, icy February night couldn't keep him away from the Rochester Children's Zone meeting at School 6 in northeast Rochester. He and more than 150 others have come out for the final Children's Zone strategy-team meeting.
Wilmer, a big man who looks every bit the family protector, is optimistic about the Rochester Children's Zone. He has attended all of the strategy meetings over the last six months, and like many others in the room, he has volunteered hundreds of hours after work and weekends to make the Children's Zone become a reality.
"It is important that we help these children grow into healthy, productive citizens in spite of all of the negative factors staring them in the face every day," he says. "Probably the worst thing is their outlook, that there is no way out of this. When they arrive in school, they are just children, but they know that it is different from being in a suburban school."
Wilmer's family expanded last April with the adoption of their fifth child, a teenager who showed up at their front door in tears after his mother threw him out. Wilmer and his wife gained custody of the boy, but, they say, he is just one of dozens in similar situations in their northeast city neighborhood. The Wilmers can't rescue them all, and the Rochester Children's Zone, says Tyrone Wilmer, may be the answer to his prayers.
"To understand their plight is to know their life," he says. "But to really help their plight is to change their life."
The Rochester Children's Zone is the wrap-around, self-empowerment concept city school Superintendent Manuel Rivera envisioned nearly two years ago for the troubled 14621 area in the northeast section of the city. The model is Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone in New York City. Rivera, like Canada, realized that the poverty of many city students was overwhelming the district's efforts.
In one of his early presentations to School Board members, Rivera said that it's unrealistic to expect children to come to school prepared to learn when they are tired and ill and come from troubled, poorly educated families. If there were any hope of seeing those students graduate, he said, it would take a holistic approach that addresses the causes of poverty --- supporting the families and the community, as well as the children.
To Rivera, the 14621 neighborhood typified the city's challenges. It includes seven schools with 4,250 students, about 13 percent of the district's population. And it has some of the worst socio-economic statistics in the region:
While Rivera has been the front man for the Children's Zone, the district's chief planning officer, Jana Carlisle, has been in the back room, putting the wheels on the wagon. The concept of the Children's Zone can seem seductively simple, but drafting a plan that can be implemented has been a mammoth undertaking. The public may have wondered whether plans for the Children's Zone, after all the hype, had faded away.
But on March 7, Children's Zone leaders will present their report: more than 30 pages, with 180 specific goals. They include every conceivable initiative that could help the neighborhood move from poverty to stability: adult education, job training, job creation, safety, parental support, health, child development and child care, education, and after-school youth support.
Getting to this week has taken a long time. But Carlisle has been firm in her belief that neighborhood residents had to be involved in the planning. Some have called it buy-in, but she says it's much more.
"It could not be a top-down model," she says. "It has to be a plan that takes into account their personal experiences and needs. Who knows better what works and what doesn't?"
At last week's final strategy-team meeting, it was evident that the process has created an army of foot soldiers who own the Children's Zone, believe in its principle and spirit, and are ready to defend it if necessary.
Anita Jones, founder of a self-help community organization called "The Say Yes to Yourself Initiative," has headed a team focusing on adult education and job training.
"We're not saying the Welfare to Work Program is a bad thing," she says. "We're just saying if the program could be changed just a little bit to offer support to parents who are working one, two, and sometimes three jobs with things like child care, it would be a much more successful program. We can help people change their lives, which will of course change the lives of their children."
At last week's meeting, she was reminding other team members to contact their state and local politicians.
"Call or write them and ask them what are they doing to support the Rochester Children's Zone," she said.
Neighborhood resident Aida Veras, whose team focused on early childhood development, says her group will look at agencies that can provide parental nurturing skills.
"We're not talking about recreating anything," she says. "Some of these services already exist, but they need to be refined for the needs of this community."
"We're not trying to just throw more services up in the air and hope something works," says City Councilmember Adam McFadden. We are targeting specific resources against specific needs."
Since its June 2006 kickoff, the Rochester Children's Zone has evolved into a non-profit organization separate from the city school district, where it originated. It now has a board of directors with three members: McFadden, former School Board member Rob Brown, and Dirk Hightower, executive director of the Children's Institute. Eventually, there'll be up to nine board members, some of them neighborhood residents.
There's a fundamental difference between the Harlem Children's Zone and Rochester's. Harlem's is a non-profit that raises money from private donors and grants and then provides most of its own services. The Rochester Children's Zone would not provide any of the services directly. It would be more of a clearinghouse that coordinates other service providers --- an education, health, and safety armada composed of city and county governments and regional non-profit agencies, all pooling their resources.
"You could say ours will be more of a spoke and wheel, with multiple organizations implementing," says Carlisle.
The Rochester Children's Zone, she says, will have an executive director whose primary job is fundraising. The Rochester school district has invested nearly $1 million in the planning stage. But the implementation of the Children's Zone will depend on outside services and funding. And it won't be cheap. As extensive and detailed as the strategic plan is, it doesn't even hint at the projected costs --- something Carlisle says won't come until later in the year.
Governor Spitzer has promised $4 million for the project. But, says Carlisle, "the fact is that it will only act as seed money to get the organization started. It's not sufficient for ongoing services delivery."
And, she adds: "It is important for everyone to understand that this is not a one-year project. It's not a test run, either. This is at least a 10 to 15, maybe even a 20-year program."
Numerous parts of the community will have to work together: city and county governments, employers, health-care providers, service agencies, school officials, and residents.
Exactly how all of that will take place is unclear. Some of the specific recommendations seem achievable. To reduce violence and drug sales, for instance, the strategy teams want more street lighting and surveillance cameras. They want a blue-light emergency system installed, similar to those used on college campuses.
Other goals are more daunting. The teams want to eliminate health disparities between racial and cultural groups, reducing asthma, diabetes, hypertension, and HIV/AIDS. They want living-wage jobs created.
Carlisle brushes aside concerns about some of the lofty aspirations. The ambitious Children's Zone program has always had some harsh critics, she says. Some have described it as missionary in nature, which Carlisle rejects.
"I really think if you talk to the people involved, the people who live in this community and have been coming to all of these meetings, they would disagree with that statement," she says. "They don't see this as something ‘we' are doing. This is something they are doing."
She also doesn't think the program will suffer without its most visible advocate, Superintendent Manny Rivera, who is joining the Spitzer administration April 30.
"Manny has always said that this is not a school district project that he personally wanted to run," she says. "I really think it has enough momentum now where that will not be an issue. And besides, he will be in Albany in a favorable position to support the program. It's not as if he's abandoning it."
Last week, as the strategy-team meeting got underway and some people were still filling their plates with Unkl Moe's barbecue chicken, School 6 principal George Larkins took the microphone.
"When we first got together months ago," he said, "I was told the Rochester Children's Zone would never get started. It was like a lot of other programs in this city, and it would just die on the vine. Well, folks, we are about to change all of that. I think we have fruit on this vine."
That sentiment, which drew loud cheers from everyone in the room, is shared by Children's Zone board member Rob Brown.
"This has been one of the most remarkable processes I have ever seen in this city," says Brown, who is a former Rochester School Board president. "This has been true community involvement, true participation."
"This is not another one of those blue-ribbon panels that really doesn't know anything about the community they are supposed to be trying to serve," says Brown. "These folks are very sophisticated in their understanding of what is wrong with this neighborhood."
And, he adds: "The interesting thing to me has been seeing that this type of participation has marginalized the so-called community leaders --- people who come to these kinds of events and say they represent the community, but then really don't. What we have are the residents who live and work here and really want this neighborhood to change. And I think they're going to do it."
There will have to come a time soon, says Brown, when the long list of priorities outlined in the plan gets whittled down to what can be implemented, based on how much money is available.
"Sooner or later we will have to cross that hurdle of fundraising," he says. But, he insists, "Rochester is a small enough city where this is manageable."
Brown says he is more concerned about who will be the district's next superintendent. That person's leadership and support will be critically important, he says.
Some of the strategy-team leaders are also concerned about political leadership.
"In the past, government leadership for this area, though they may have meant well, lost touch with what the American Dream means," says Glenn Alexander, pastor of Holy City International Church of God and Christ. "They may have supported jobs and home ownership for other areas," he says, but the inner city stagnated. "We have a stake in this community," he says. "Just because we live here doesn't mean that we don't want the same thing for our children as folks living in those suburbs.
And neighborhood resident Aida Veras says she is worried about who will become the executive director for the Children's Zone.
"The right leadership is very important," Veras says. "The Children's Zone can't be in the hands of one agency, because they will only be concerned with preserving their own agency."
But for now, Carlisle is clearly their leader. At last week's session, she hovered from table to table, working with each team on the messages they'll need as they try to help raise public awareness and, more important, money.
"We're going to have three to four speaking engagements over the next six to eight weeks," she said. "Anyone who wants to be involved with that, we need to get together soon. And there's also our ongoing community outreach. Remember that you need to go door to door and share what you know. Explain it to your neighbors who haven't been able to come to the planning meetings. Have some popcorn at the kitchen table and explain it to them."
She thanked the group for their work, but then said that it's not over yet.
"This plan looks dense," she said. "I've already seen some people's eyes pop out, but I don't want to lose you now. You've stayed with this, and now we have to move into the next phase. Hopefully, we will have the $4 million in the budget to get started. But that isn't going to be enough to undo 30 to 50 years of wrong social policy. So we have to keep focused and keep moving forward."
"We're with you," called out one woman. "We're not going anywhere."
The full Rochester Children's Zone Community Plan is available on the Children's Zone website.