Strengthening Schools by Strengthening Families

One of the things Kidwise’s leaders are most concerned about losing is the parent support group,
where staff quietly facilitate discussions among parents, who exchange ideas about challenges they have
rearing their teenagers, including conflicts over dating, respect for adults, curfews and other issues. By
empowering the parents and equipping them with new skills, the program could reach into a child’s
home and change the family dynamic, preventing problems before they show up at school, Kidwise
staffers say.
Renee Hicks, former director of Kidwise who is now vice president of program operations at Safe Space,
says she remembers a case where a mother, fresh out of rehab, was struggling with how to discipline
her teenage daughter. “The friction between the two was very intense,” Hicks says. The mother was
even considering taking out a PINS (person in need of supervision) petition in Family Court. Instead,
Hicks spoke with the two of them and found a common thread: a love for basketball. She encouraged
the mother, then unemployed, to volunteer as a coach on her daughter’s team. Over time, the tension
between them eased and the mother decided not to pursue a PINS petition. The key, Hicks says, is to
recognize that primary relationships, however dysfunctional, can usually be repaired and preserved.
“Long after many of us leave these jobs and go to other places, it’s still going to be parent and child,”
she says. ❖
sourCes and resourCes
See these articles to learn more about the topics in this report. Many have been cited in text.
All are excellent sources of additional information.
Balfanz, Durham and Plank, “Lost Days: Patterns
and Levels of Chronic Absenteeism Among
Baltimore City Public School Students 1999–00
to 2005–06,” Baltimore Education Research
Consortium, Spring 2008
Balfanz, Herzog and MacIver, “Preventing Student
Disengagement and Keeping Students on the
Graduation Path in Urban Middle-Grades Schools:
Early Identification and Effective Interventions,”
Center for the Social Organization of Schools,
Johns Hopkins University.
Chang and Romero, “Present, Engaged and
Accounted For: The Critical Importance of
Addressing Chronic Absence in the Early Grades,”
National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia
University, September 2008.
Mac Iver, Durham et al., “The Challenge of On-
Time Arrival: The Seven-Year Flight Paths of
Baltimore’s Sixth Graders of 1999–2000,” Baltimore
Education Research Consortium, Spring 2008
Neild, Balfanz and Herzog, “An Early Warning
System: By Promptly Reacting to Student Distress
Signals, Schools Can Redirect Potential Dropouts
onto the Path to Graduation,” Educational
Leadership, October 2007. Pages 28–33.
Osher, Poirier et al., “Cleveland Metropolitan
School District Humanware Audit: Findings
and Recommendations,” American Institutes for
Research, September 2008.
Plank, Durham, Farley-Ripple and Norman,
“First Grade and Forward: A Seven-Year
Examination within the Baltimore City Public
School System,” Baltimore Education Research
Consortium, Spring 2008.
Romero and Lee, “A National Portrait of Chronic
Absenteeism in the Early Grades,” National Center
for Children in Poverty, Columbia University,
October 2007.
Rothstein, “Class and Schools: Using Social,
Economic and Educational Reform to Close the
Black-White Achievement Gap,” Economic Policy
Institute and Teachers College Press, 2004.
Sundius and Farneth, “Missing School: The
Epidemic of School Absence,” Open Society
Institute Baltimore, September 2008.
Sundius and Farneth, “On the Path to Success:
Policies and Practices for Getting Every Child
to School Every Day,” Open Society Institute
Baltimore, September 2008.
“Long after
many of us
leave these
jobs and go
to other places,
it’s still going
to be parent
and child.”
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