Charleston Promise Neighborhood

Part of our objective with this blog is to inform the public about what the Charleston Promise Neighborhood is trying to achieve.  We have chosen Sanders-Clyde, Mary Ford,  James-Simons, and Chicora elementary schools as the initial focal points for our efforts, but our long term vision is to improve the entire 5.6 square mile Promise Neighborhood.  This includes providing supports for not only elementary school children, but those from birth through high school. Our commitment is also to make the schools better for all children residing in the Neighborhood, not just those of a specific demographic, ethnicity or income level. Continue reading →

The Charleston Promise Neighborhood has released its Annual Commitments for 2011.  This document outlines the organization’s goals and objectives for the upcoming calendar year, and we are sharing these with our donors, supporters and the public so that we can be held accountable to what we say we are going to do.  We’ve set the bar very high for ourselves!  Please view or download a PDF of our commitments here.

Among our first objectives is creating and implementing our school “resource infusion” plans, which we wrote about in detail last week.  The baseline reports on James Simons, Sanders-Clyde, Mary Ford and Chicora are due to be completed on March 31 (detailing the programs and services currently available at these schools) and the resource infusion plans will be completed by April 30, 2011.  We will post these plans for the community’s benefit, and we will be detailing the additional services and supports we hope to bring to each school starting in August, 2011. Continue reading →

USC's Mascot, Cocky, visits James Simons Elementary

As Dwayne mentioned in his earlier post that summarized our last six months, the CPN Program Team is hard at work on our elementary school “resource infusion” strategy to provide additional supports to the four CPN Elementary Schools (Sanders-Clyde, James Simons, Mary Ford, and Chicora) that are designed to impact six key areas:

• Strengthening principal leadership
• Improving teaching quality
• Increasing parental involvement
• Ensuring that each school has high quality in-school supports like counseling, tutoring, healthcare, and behavioral supports
• Providing every child with opportunities for safe and outcomes-focused expanded learning opportunities and,
• Stabilizing sustainable funding for necessary programs and services

What’s the goal? By 2016, all four CPN elementary schools will be among the best in Charleston County, and will be models for other schools in the County who desire to dramatically and rapidly improve the educational achievements of the children they serve. Continue reading →