Education Task Force Minimize

GOAL:  Ensure that City school children receive a quality education

 

SYRACUSE 20/20 feels strongly that schools need to play a central role in neighborhood and community reinvestment strategies.  If our city and region are to be strong, we must have schools that are high performing.  Unfortunately, this is not currently the case in many of the schools in the city of Syracuse.  If we are going to be a competitive community, we must strategically redeploy our resources to more effectively partner with schools in order to achieve better outcomes for all students. 

 

SYRACUSE 20/20 supports an expansion of community schools as a holistic, measurable approach to investing in distressed parts of our community.  Syracuse’s recently approved Westside Community School Strategy (LINK) is a model for full community mobilization toward school and neighborhood revitalization.  The goal of the Westside Strategy is to improve academic performance of students and schools on the City’s west side by addressing academic and non-academic barriers to learning.  The intention is to more effectively marry the education and human services/health system, toward the goal of addressing whatever barriers are impeding a child’s academic success. 

 

Through the Westside Strategy, all key community stakeholders are at the table working to together, including the city, county, community-based organizations, social service providers, local foundations, the United Way, universities, colleges and business. The County and its vast array of community programs and services are critical to the success of this project.  Furthermore, the County has taken the lead on securing State funding support from the Office of Children and Family Services as a significant leverage for local funding support for the project.

 

In addition to the Westside Community School Strategy, the Education Task Force is actively engaged with the following education issues:

  • Adequate funding for the Syracuse City School District from State and local sources
  • Increased accountability for education related outcomes
  • Advocacy at federal, state and local levels on education policy issues

 

Furthermore, SYRACUSE 20/20 is a collaborating partner with the Partners for Better Education, a partnership between local higher educational institutions and the Syracuse City School District.

 
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