How to Walk to School: Blueprint for a Neighborhood Renaissance
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How to Walk to School is the story of motivated parents galvanizing and then organizing an entire community to take a leap of faith, transforming a challenged urban school into one of Chicago's best, virtually overnight. The fate of public education is not beyond our control. In How to Walk to School, Susan Kurland, an entrepreneurial principal, and Jacqueline Edelberg, a neighborhood mom, provide a blueprint for reclaiming the great public schools our children deserve. Publishers Weekly Parents living in the Chicago district served by the notoriously run-down Nettelhorst School-not necessarily failing, but with an unshakeable reputation for it-faced a too-typical dilemma: try to get their children into ultra-competitive magnet schools? Find a way to pay for private school tuition? Move to the better-served suburbs? Instead, a small group of motivated parents, including author Edelberg, decided to take a whole new approach-work with principal Kurland to turn Nettelhorst into the school they wanted. Sooner than anyone expected, they had turned the flagging institution around; chronicled here, their process for revitalizing the local school provides an inspirational blueprint for any parents determined to make the most of public education. Edelberg and Kurland offer a lot of inspirational ideas in this memoir of their work but, aside from acknowledging the distinct advantage of a parent population with extra time and finances, they provide little perspective for those working for the same goals but with fewer resources. Still, this volume is an admirable achievement that will doubtless be looked to as a model for school districts in need. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Acknowledgments Foreword by Arne Duncan Introduction\ Chapter 1: Dream a Future: Identify Opportunities Chapter 2: Chemistry: Capitalize on Desire Chapter 3: Support Systems: Contract Services Chapter 4: Academics: Raise the Bar Chapter 5: Sell the Dream: Rebrand and Reposition Chapter 6: Fundraising: Look Beyond a Climate of Care Chapter 7: The Nettelhorst Blueprint\ Afterword by Rahm Emanuel Appendix A: Toolkit: How to Set-up a 501(c)(3)\ Appendix B: How to Learn More\ About the Authors A Call to Action Notes
\ The Dallas Morning NewsIn their subsequent book about the experience, How to Walk to School, Edelberg and Kurland describe how a group of mothers, working with a supportive principal, took a leap of faith that changing the school's environment would, in turn, transform its quality of education\ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyParents living in the Chicago district served by the notoriously run-down Nettelhorst School-not necessarily failing, but with an unshakeable reputation for it-faced a too-typical dilemma: try to get their children into ultra-competitive magnet schools? Find a way to pay for private school tuition? Move to the better-served suburbs? Instead, a small group of motivated parents, including author Edelberg, decided to take a whole new approach-work with principal Kurland to turn Nettelhorst into the school they wanted. Sooner than anyone expected, they had turned the flagging institution around; chronicled here, their process for revitalizing the local school provides an inspirational blueprint for any parents determined to make the most of public education. Edelberg and Kurland offer a lot of inspirational ideas in this memoir of their work but, aside from acknowledging the distinct advantage of a parent population with extra time and finances, they provide little perspective for those working for the same goals but with fewer resources. Still, this volume is an admirable achievement that will doubtless be looked to as a model for school districts in need. \ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.\ \ \ Library JournalThis is a fascinating account of the collaboration between a public school principal, Kurland, the parents of young children considering her elementary school, and the community that transformed a failing public school into an outstanding and revitalized one. In the face of disastrous, widespread public school system failures across America, parent dissatisfaction, and teacher despair, the Chicago-based Nettlehorst School's success story is a beacon. Edelberg, one of the Nettlehorst parents, and Kurland offer educators hope that change can happen in any public school, given the right mix of parent-teacher patience, willpower, community involvement, pluck, creativity, collaboration, and ability to overcome adversity. They provide a blueprint that schools can use for revitalization projects, detailing, for instance, how to procure donations from area businesses and to ask questions that will get answers about difficult educational problems such as coping with dysfunctional and unsatisfactory teaching. VERDICT This book is essential reading for all elementary school parents and teachers, especially those who have lost their faith in the American public school system and are looking for ways to improve it. Here are solutions and inspiration.—Gloria Creed-Dikeogu, Ottawa Univ Lib.\ \
