Welcome to our April e-newsletter. Be sure to check out the Fact of the Monthabout student mobility and churning in Providence. We have updated our earlier analyses to include data through fall 2005 and the results highlight the high degree of student turnover in Providence schools. Also, review our partner profile with a feature about Making Connections Providence and Robyn Frye, the new site coordinator. As always, share your feedback with us and the newsletter with others.

Thanks,
Pat McGuigan, Executive Director
pmcguigan@provplan.org

Making connections throughout the community 
Children do well when their families do well, and families do well when they live in strong neighborhoods – places that help connect them to jobs, informal networks of support, and social services they can count on. That’s the simple premise behind Making Connections, a 10-year initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation that got under way in 2001. Making Connections Providence, a partner of The Providence Plan, is one of 10 Making Connections sites in the country.

Making Connections Providence (MCP), housed at Casey Family Services on Eddy Street, operates in three target neighborhoods in Providence – the South Side, the West End and Elmwood. All Making Connections sites across the country address three focus areas – children healthy and prepared to succeed in school; family economic success; and resident engagement and leadership – but approaches to these issues can differ greatly from city to city.

“One thing Making Connections knew from the start,” explains Robyn Frye, MCP’s local site coordinator, “is that it didn’t want to be a program that came in and told the community what it needed. It was always the intent of this initiative that the needs would be defined by the residents themselves and that we would work together to meet those needs.” [more on making connections...]

First-year evaluation data indicate increases in program quality and school readiness at four preschools in pilot program
Preliminary first-year evaluation results of Ready to Learn Providence’s Early Reading First (ERF) program indicate substantial increases in the overall quality of classrooms to support early language and literacy development as measured by the Early Language and Literacy Classroom Observation. In addition, teachers reported they had become more aware of research-based strategies for teaching reading and literacy, were integrating these strategies and activities into their curriculum and classrooms, and were providing more individualized attention to children.

Preliminary first-year analyses also indicate significant differences in children’s scores as measured by the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS-PreK). On the print and word awareness subtest, scores increased by an average of 20 percentage points over a six-month implementation period. [more on evaluation...]

IBEW and YouthBuild work together to light up new paths in the inner city
“When you show these students how to do something and they realize they can do it themselves, they get unbelievably excited,” says James Jackson, director of training for IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) Local 99. “It makes us feel great because we’re not just giving them a job; we’re offering them a career, a whole lifestyle actually.”

IBEW Local 99 has long been an active partner of YouthBuild Providence, a program of The Providence Plan. At no cost, Local 99 provides electrical work and training at the houses YouthBuild students build for low-income families. Students also get instruction at the local’s training facility in Cranston.

Participating in YouthBuild helps Local 99 identify promising candidates from the inner city for its five-year apprenticeship program, explains Mr. Jackson. Several YouthBuild graduates have, in fact, completed that program and are now journey-level electricians. [more on YouthBuild...]

A redesigned mapper portal puts you just a click away from a warehouse of data
The Providence Plan’s new Statewide Mapper for Economic Development joins ProvPlan’s other mapping applications on a redesigned mapper portal. Here you’ll find the Classic Neighborhood Mapper, which lets you create highly detailed maps of specific properties, streets and neighborhoods in Providence. An exciting new feature of the “Classic,” which was recently redesigned to make it more user-friendly, is the ability to e-mail a URL for any map you create so that it’s easy to share the information with a client or colleague.

You’ll find both specialty and project-specific mappers on the redesigned portal. [more on Mapper Portal...]

Making Connections, cont.
Also fundamental to the Making Connections philosophy is that all investments in programs for social change be based on reliable data. ProvPlan, with its capacity to collect and interpret data on jobs, education and assets (both at the citywide and neighborhood levels), was identified early on as a natural partner.

Among the many activities sponsored by MCP is its Leadership Institute, which since 2003 has trained more than 100 residents in neighborhood issues, public policy, the use and interpretation of data, community organizing, and planning for change. Graduates of this institute have gone on to win grants, participate in civic organizations, and serve as advocates for specific issues or causes. “Ultimately, the success of the Making Connections initiative depends on these community leaders and spokespeople,” Ms Frye notes. “They’re the ones who will carry on the work long after the Making Connections initiative ends.”

In the coming year, MCP is offering separate institutes for adults and youths. The youth institute will be named after Luis Pagan, a college student who worked as an intern on the Making Connection initiative at the ProvPlan offices until his death in January.

MCP also plays an instrumental role in the New Roots Providence initiative, a $1 million program administered by ProvPlan that provides small community and faith-based organizations with technical assistance so they can better serve those in need. MCP and organizations in its target neighborhoods identified this need several years ago and encouraged ProvPlan to submit a proposal for a Compassion Capital Fund Demonstration grant. MCP and the Casey Foundation also agreed to contribute $125,000 to the initiative, fulfilling a requirement for a local match.

Ready to Learn Providence, another ProvPlan program, works closely with MCP in its family engagement efforts, which are designed to broaden and deepen the involvement of families in the education of their children. “Residents in our neighborhoods originally listed education as a key issue,” Ms Frye says, explaining MCP’s early interest in partnering with R2LP. In addition to its work with R2LP, MCP sponsors programs that target children and their families in the early elementary years and which build on the early literacy skills that are so central to R2LP’s work.

While juggling the dozens of MCP programs already in progress, Ms Frye, who has been with the initiative for just six months, has set some ambitious goals for the coming year. Among those that top the list are efforts to engage at least 600 people in some level of community leadership; provide at least 100 residents with job training and placement; and strengthen MCP’s partnerships with organizations addressing the needs of those recently released from prison. [top]

Evaluation, cont.
The primary goal of ERF is to promote early language and literacy development through intensive, scientifically-based professional development and with ongoing assistance to improve classroom environments and instruction. The three-year project is funded with a $2.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, which was awarded to R2LP (a program of The Providence Plan) in 2004. R2LP teamed up with four centers in Providence – all with different needs and challenges – to create centers of educational excellence. Each site houses three classrooms participating in the program.

The Education Alliance at Brown University, contracted to evaluate the ERF program, conducted the secondary analysis of the data collected since the program entered its first full academic year in September 2005.

R2LP seeks to prove that with a sound curriculum, strong teaching skills and a rich classroom environment, children can thrive in a diverse array of settings. The ERF funding provides for hundreds of books and related materials, full-time mentors at each site, monthly training sessions, and other support staff. Because evaluation plays such a key role in the ERF program, center teachers have attended workshops to learn about assessment and how to use and interpret the data. [top]

YouthBuild, cont.
Apprentices, who typically make about 50 percent of a journeyman’s rate, spend a minimum of 180 hours in the classroom in addition to on-the-job training with a contractor. Those classroom hours can be applied toward an associate’s degree at the Community College of Rhode Island.

YouthBuild is just one of several community programs that Local 99 supports. With Rebuild Providence – a program that serves low-income, often elderly, homeowners – electricians from Local 99 pitch in with everything from the renovation of a kitchen to the installation of smoke alarms. “It’s a way of giving back to the community,” Mr. Jackson says.

YouthBuild, now in its ninth year, is currently building a house on Ida Street in the Silver Lake neighborhood. As in the past, IBEW electricians have worked with the students on every step of the electrical construction – from print reading and material estimation to rough wiring and finish work. The house, built in partnership with Habitat for Humanity, Greater Providence Inc., is expected to be ready for occupancy in July.

Thanks to the IBEW, notes YouthBuild Director Andrew Cortes, “the house is wired for free and our students are learning skills that can lead to highly sustainable careers.” [top]

Mapper Portal, cont.
The Providence Urban Land Reform Mapper highlights underutilized and abandoned property. The Providence Preservation Commercial and Industrial Building Inventory lets you access data on the city’s older commercial property, such as the many mills found throughout Providence. The Metro Bay Special Area Management Plan (SAMP) Mapper features data related to coastal management planning in Cranston, East Providence, Pawtucket and Providence.

A sixth mapper – one that both students and adults have been enjoying – is the Narragansett Bay Coyote Study. Here you can track the location and movement of seven different coyotes in southern Rhode Island.

ProvPlan’s mapper applications are updated regularly, with new data layers added as they become available.

There will a Providence Neighborhood Mapper training on Monday, May 8th from 9:00 to 11:30 am at the Computer Lab of the downtown branch of the Providence Public Library. The training is open to the general public, but prior registration is required. Please contact Jim Lucht for more information.

Try out any of the interactive mapping applications using the links below:

	"Classic" Providence Neighborhood Mapper
	Providence Urban Land Reform - enhances upon Neighborhood Mapper with several administrative datasets and an abandonment early warning component - requires password
	Providence Preservation (PPS) Commercial and Industrial Buildings Inventory
	Statewide Economic Development Corporation Mapper (EDCMAP) - now open to the public
	Metro Bay Special Area Management Plan (SAMP)
	Narragansett Bay Coyote Study