It’s a term used in the state education code, referring to the responsibility schools, and other education institutions, have to act in place of their students’ parents, especially in ways that ensure their civil liberties are upheld. It’s the law, and it applies to all students. Not just the students who show up on time, do their work, act nice and stay out of trouble. But also the students who show up with tattoos on their necks, metal piercings in their faces, reeking of tobacco or are walking around with their boxers exposed.  It means treating every child and youth the way you’d hope your child would be treated, every day, all day.

Well, this is not always easy to do, and some students make themselves pretty hard to love. It was this context that I used to discuss the planning and implementation of full service community schools at a VIP reception hosted by Jill Wynns, president of the California School Boards Association (CSBA), just before the holidays.

Touting the results of improved attendance, homework completion, reduced classroom incidents, less violence, and better overall school morale, I challenged the crowd to consider that any naysayer who dismisses community schools results such as these as a “distraction,” unless they also improve reading and math scores, is someone who needs to get out of education and get a new career.

I was a little tense delivering that line to a room full of 50 dignitaries, superintendents, school board members and principals. When I said it, you could have heard a pin drop. And then San Francisco Unified School District superintendent Richard Carranza exclaimed, “That’s right!” He started to clap, and suddenly the whole crowd was applauding. Applauding the truth— that we are talking about creating the necessary conditions for learning for every child, not just the “good, smart, no problem” kids.

So how does this connect with philanthropy? The nation has received a big wake-up call with the failings of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation in closing the achievement gap for the highest poverty, lowest performing students. Researchers are calling upon schools to consider all the benefits they’ve sacrificed by reducing or eliminating subjects like art, drama, music, speech and debate, and other subjects which contribute to creativity, character development, tenacity and grit, determination and innovation, but do not necessarily improve reading and math scores.

Students who love the arts and become curious about history, students who love music and learn fractions by reading music scales and beats, students who apply philosophy and logic to a debate and learn to reason as a result, these students are all learners too. They just come in through another door.

They can become the inventors of the future, as much as any literary or mathematical genius might ever be. And we will never really know who those geniuses are unless we give them every opportunity to learn.

What troubles me is, when did it become OK to only allow high performing students in middle class neighborhoods the opportunity to be creative? When did reading and math scores begin to determine  which students “deserve” the more creative subjects?

When those stifled opportunities are the same pathways that would ignite authentic learning, then we have in effect sentenced our most deprived children to struggle, be bored, act out, get in trouble, get suspended, get expelled, and one day, even go to jail.

Taken together, these observations all point to the need for greater Pre-K to college pathways, greater supports and opportunities, and greater multicultural understanding of the students arriving on the doorsteps of our schools. On January 7th the Education Program at The San Francisco Foundation received hundreds of applications in the areas of Early Childhood, Equity, and Full Service Community Schools in our annual competitive cycle. We look for rising star organizations who are embracing the term en loco parentis with open arms, assessing the strengths and needs of all students, and turning their schools and school communities into thriving oases for all children and youth to thrive. We are very excited to see what our communities have been up to this fall.

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
~John Dewey

Earlier that week I had walked along DUMBO’s waterfront under the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge Overpass, and was delighted to see 6th graders gathered to plant hundreds of native plants for the riverfront restoration  project below the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Friday, I visited the adorable 80 year old Cuban-American aunt and uncle of one of my best friends (an Oakland teacher), and conversed with them in my rusty Spanish. I walked past the Park Slope Armory on 15th street, into Prospect Park, and over to the Brooklyn Main Public Library. Everywhere folks on the street were swapping stories of survival from past storms, floods and evacuations, but never did I imagine those very pathways I walked would be inundated by 5-8 ft of water, or in the case of the armory, would become a safe haven for evacuees in two short days.

On the plane that night I was outlining my first blog about all the amazing equity and social justice themes emerging from the GFE conference: the concept of quality education as a civil rights issue, the importance of getting technology into the hands of all learners. But somehow the storm, this megastorm Sandy, served to instantiate the message of the fierce urgency of now.

I was aghast at pictures of the DUMBO area under water, the riverfront restoration, all the children’s plantings gone. I received email chains from Brooklyn locals asking for those of us able and in the area to please bring protein bars, hand sanitizers, blankets–anything to help the now freezing victims of the storm–to the local pharmacy (where I had just shopped!) to stuff neighborhood care bags. The resiliency of the Brooklyn neighborhood outreach was (is) so extraordinary! And suddenly, like millions across the nation, I felt guilty for being home in a safe dry comfortable environment. What could I do, two thousand miles away? Give as much as I could afford to the local relief efforts, sure, but what else?

Back at work a week later, I can’t stop thinking about the before and after pictures, and what I can learn and do now. Just as the storm victims couldn’t wait for food clothing shelter and medicine, our nations children (a growing majority both children of color and in poverty) cannot wait any longer for the optimum conditions for learning to emerge. With nearly 30% of our children now living in poverty, their parents under employed, poorly housed, under insured, and at times, underprepared to coach them to succeed in school, our public and private systems must all band together to create a floor of equity, below which no child will fall into the flood. A floor of equity that insures that both academic and non academic conditions for learning are met in every school community.

That’s why this year’s education grantmaking will again be devoted to early childhood programs, education equity programs, and our signature area of full service community school partnerships. That’s why we have a Disaster Preparedness program at the Foundation. That’s why we have an Immigrant Integration program, a Community Development Program, an Arts and Culture program, a Community Health Program, an Environment Program, and a Koshland Neighborhood Program, and why we all work collaboratively, side-by-side, for greater impact together.

Whether Brooklyn or the Bay Area, it still takes a village of public and private partners to re-create community, and to ensure the necessary conditions for learning. Join us as we seek to grow our collective efforts for all children, for our future.