Before arriving at Capitol Heights Elementary School in 2009, Principal Herman Whaley knew it would take more than teachers to boost the school's test scores.
Whaley brought to Capitol Heights Elementary the concept of a community think tank — a network of businesses, churches and nonprofits that donate goods and tutor children — that an area school board member now wants to replicate in more central Prince George’s County schools after the think tank’s volunteerism resulted in some of the county's biggest gains on the Maryland School Assessment in 2011. Whaley said it’s a think tank and not a partnership, because the idea was to get local organizations around a table and think outside the box on how to fit his school's needs.
School Board member Carolyn Boston (Dist. 6) invited civic associations and principals from schools such as Landover’s William Paca Elementary and Capitol Heights’ Carmody Hills Elementary schools to Capitol Heights Elementary on Jan. 12 to ask questions of the think tank and see how their model possibly could be duplicated.
Boston said she is impressed with the many partnerships between the school and the surrounding community, and their ability to problem-solve.
“How the kids are excelling in Capitol Heights is tremendous,” Boston said. “Their scores [on the MSA] are up in the 90s. You can see that it’s benefiting the kids 100 percent.”
There are 21 groups in the think tank, but a core of 17 to 18 groups meet quarterly or monthly to set service goals for tutoring, book and school supply donations and food baskets during the holidays, Whaley said.
Since implementing the think tank at Capitol Heights Elementary in the 2009-10 school year, the percentage of students who scored proficient or better on the MSA jumped from 77 percent to 90.1 percent in reading in 2011 and from 66 percent to 89.5 percent in math in 2011, Whaley said.
Whaley brought the think tank to Capitol Heights Elementary from Capitol Heights’ John Eager Howard Elementary School, where he was principal until the school closed in 2009 because of school system consolidation. John Eager Howard students’ Maryland School Assessment reading proficiency scores grew from 60 to 78 percent at the end of the 2008-09 school year, the same school year the think tank began.
“We were able to align the core values in the community and mobilize the resources,” Whaley said. “We had all the leaders who service the community meet, and they were able to hold students accountable for certain behaviors and we had the same expectations as the churches,” Whaley said.
One of the results of the multiple partnerships is weekly tutoring offered through Greater Beulah Baptist Church in Capitol Heights and Kingdom Citizens Youth Empowerment Inc., a Capitol Heights-based nonprofit that teaches children leadership and career readiness skills.
Delores Jones of Greater Beulah and Christella Spry of KCYE Inc. run the sessions from 3:30 to 5 p.m. every Wednesday, when they review math and reading skills such as fractions and identify genres that students performed poorly on in the Formative Assessment System Test.
The FAST is a standardized test given to Prince George’s County public school students that indicates how students will do on the Maryland School Assessment, given to students in third through eighth grades statewide in March.
Parent Juanita Harris, whose daughters, Kristian Harris, 7, and Kaniyah Harris, 9, attend Capitol Heights Elementary, said her children are reading to her at home and share letters they wrote during the tutoring sessions.
Harris said the tutoring exposes the children to a different routine other than a repeat of just going to school and going home, and she praised the think tank for its dedication to the students.
“I really think it’s a good idea, and if they wanted to implement it at other schools, I’d say go for it,” Harris said.
Spry said it’s an opportunity to help teachers reinforce classroom lessons when they’re not in school, and Jones, a Largo resident who grew up in nearby Seat Pleasant, said it touches her heart to give back to her “stomping grounds.”
She said she has seen students’ attitudes improve because they’re getting positive feedback.
“They feel like they’re loved,” Jones said. “They're appreciating the help they’ve gotten from the community.”
Sixth-grader Paige Michals, 11, of Capitol Heights said she likes the new slide and the jungle gym on the playground, which was installed in September by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, another member of the think tank.
"I like how they're helping the school, how they donate things for the kids like playgrounds, tutoring," Michals said of the think tank.
nmcgill@gazette.net
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