Currently, no quantitiative metric gauges connectivity between a Philadelphia public neighborhood school and its catchment area, the community[ies] in which it sits and ostensibly serves. School/community connectivity is important for a variety of reasons, including a school’s potential to be an educational, social, and recreational community center. Further, connectivity is important in that taxpayers with children are essentially customers (potential or actual) of their local school; these taxpayers/customers are justified in their expectation that the local school will actively seek out their “business” (e.g., sending their children to the school) and work to keep it over the long-term.
One measure of school/community connectivity is to track the percentage of eligible students attending a catchment area’s school. Initial measurements could serve as a baseline against which to gauge future progress/regress. Percentage metrics could be developed for the entire catchment area as well as sub-catchment areas. A more refined sub-catchment measurement would reveal how well a school’s student attraction/retention efforts are working in smaller subsets of a community/catchment area. If the percentage of eligible students from the catchment or sub-catchment area decreases over a period of time, strategies should be developed and implemented to reverse the trend. Relatedly, if sub-catchment areas are lower to being with, strategies to address particular attraction/retention issues could be developed. Creating this metric would be possible using GIS mapping and demographic data.
Note: The responsibility to establish and maintain connectivity (and maintain/increase student attraction/retention percentages) is shared among the School District, the local school’s leadership team, and the broader community. However, the School District – as the entity charged with administering the school system – must be responsible for creating the paradigm and supporting policies to establish school/community connectivity and student attraction from the catchment area as an important component of its mission.
One measure of school/community connectivity is to track the percentage of eligible students attending a catchment area’s school. Initial measurements could serve as a baseline against which to gauge future progress/regress. Percentage metrics could be developed for the entire catchment area as well as sub-catchment areas. A more refined sub-catchment measurement would reveal how well a school’s student attraction/retention efforts are working in smaller subsets of a community/catchment area. If the percentage of eligible students from the catchment or sub-catchment area decreases over a period of time, strategies should be developed and implemented to reverse the trend. Relatedly, if sub-catchment areas are lower to being with, strategies to address particular attraction/retention issues could be developed. Creating this metric would be possible using GIS mapping and demographic data.
Note: The responsibility to establish and maintain connectivity (and maintain/increase student attraction/retention percentages) is shared among the School District, the local school’s leadership team, and the broader community. However, the School District – as the entity charged with administering the school system – must be responsible for creating the paradigm and supporting policies to establish school/community connectivity and student attraction from the catchment area as an important component of its mission.
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