Over the past 16 years Powerful Learning Centers (formerly Community Schools) has evolved into an exemplary after school program in Seattle’s Rainier Valley neighborhood, which contains some of the highest ratios of low-income, single parent families and non-English speaking individuals in the city.  Powerful Learning Centers has established itself as a leading model both locally and nationally in after-school programming. What sets us apart from most other community programs is our ability to not only reach out to school–aged children but also to provide opportunities for pre-schoolers, teens and adults from school families and the community at large to participate in their neighborhood schools.

Four nights a week, 28 weeks of the school year, at our four Powerful Learning Centers sites our knowledgeable onsite staff works with school leadership to provide coordination of school and community resources as well as facilitating families’ enrichment needs. Twice a week students and families are able to choose from a broad range of classes and topics including computer skills, language programs, English as a Second Language (ESL), Dance, Math and Science programs, Gymnastics, Writing Clubs, Photography, Choir, Drama classes, Homework Centers and many others.

Unlike most other community programs that have fixed fees, Powerful Learning Centers operates under a sliding scale fee structure and markets our curriculum to young students and their families within our four schools and to the surrounding neighborhoods. This promotes a diverse set of participants in our classes and a diverse after-school curriculum including intergenerational and adult classes. The result is a truly family and neighborhood focused program at four public elementary schools.

Powerful Learning Centers effectively draws on the strength of the Powerful Schools model, enriching families in the community by providing our youth with unique educational opportunities. Many of the program’s offerings nurture creativity promote dialogue and spark critical thinking in the students who are served across our four partner schools.

Traditionally after school programs have emphasized a balance of enrichment and academic pursuits. Powerful Learning Centers programs like our “Kung-Fu for the Family”, “Future Athletes of Tomorrow Basketball Camp”, “Just us Girlz” and Urban Dance reinforce positive behavior, positive attitude, confidence and self esteem as well as have added physical and social benefits for the youth in our community.

Research shows that in addition to strong enrichment programs academic assistance is crucial to student success. In response to this, our program partners with school to support a Homework Center and Reading Tutoring program at each of our four schools. These programs provide students with crucial Literacy skills and homework help needed for academic success.  To further academic achievement, our “Explorations in Math”, “Explorations in Chess” work with students in hands-on activities designed to develop problem solving, logical reasoning and the critical thinking skills for continued achievement. 

At a time when creativity has been greatly de-emphasized in the current standard-based learning model art classes such as our “Comics and Cartooning”, “Writers Club”, and “Book Craft”, “Mixed Media Art” have allowed children to explore artistic interest in a variety of creative and imaginative ways. In addition to these classes our students have consistently expressed a desire to explore the people and cultures of our community. Classes like “Urban Dance”, “Quilting for the Family”, “East African Cooking” and “ESL Tutoring” give children a chance to delve into several cultures to explore and better understand the world in which they live.  The Community Schools program has also sponsors summer language camps, which has attracted a diverse student body into a fun activity-based instruction in language and culture in Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and Arabic.

Powerful Learning Centers assesses the effectiveness of its offerings through ongoing student/parent/community surveys conducted in partnership with Evergreen Research Institute, Seattle Public Schools Office of Community Learning, and the City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.  The results to date indicate students engaged in after school academic and enrichment programs have greater success their educational and social endeavors.  Furthermore, our efforts to include parent and community involvement in the schools have resulted in the students’ ability to sustain their success.        

Since Powerful Schools’ inception 16 years ago, our mission has been not only to develop a successful model of school reform, but also to expand and replicate the strategy in other school communities.  Our efforts in family and community involvement, teacher training, program evaluation, arts education and student assessment have received statewide and national awards and recognition.  For example, we have received the following:

·         Washington State’s Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Education

·         Washington Association of School Administrators award for outstanding community and school partnership

          programs

·         Citation by the Mott Foundation as one of the seven exemplary community school programs in the country

·         Blue Ribbon Best Practices by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

·         Community Empowerment Award from the Center for Empowerment

Regarding Powerful Learning Centers -- a single after-school program at a school is helpful, but we have found that the impact on improving student learning and strengthening the entire learning environment (family & neighborhood) is multiplied many times over by being part of an overall coalition of schools working together.  Powerful Schools reaches more students through its four-school Powerful Learning Centers, reaches out to a wider set of community resources and hundreds of individuals to support Powerful Learning Centers because it is a four-school program and speeds up the learning and correcting as we trial and observe new ideas which arise from one school and apply them to others.

Through our commitment over the years to four schools and two neighborhoods in the Rainier Valley, we have honed our model, designed and tested class offerings, which are now mature, and have become essential to those school communities.  The great majority of our school families, 65%, meets the school district’s qualifications for free or reduced lunch, an indicator similar to federal guidelines for poverty level/low income.  The Seattle Public School District’s average is 44%.  Of the 1,700 students who attend these schools, an average of 85% are of color, 53% are from single-parent households, and 16 percent are ESL students.  Over 37% of the total student body has special needs.  The families speak 18 different languages, and up to 35% of the students are highly transient, changing schools each year.

Given the demographics of our core student population, the challenges of meeting our students’ needs are enormous.  Powerful Schools works in schools to fill in the gaps in public funding by raising money for programs and services not covered through the most school budgets.  There are fortunate public schools in Seattle, schools that do have this kind of largesse reliably raised year-after-year by their parent organizations.  Powerful Schools is providing our partner schools with invaluable resources, money, expertise and professionally designed and managed programs fitted to the needs of our teachers and students.  Powerful Schools’ Community Schools program is one such program that is critical to meeting the needs of our schools, our teachers and, more importantly, our students.