"Imagine an old, abandoned end unit row house that is tall, slender in build, and neglected in infrastructure," writes Martin J. Blank, President of the Institute for Educational Leadership, in The Huffington Post's education blog. "For many years it's been a crack house, filled with needles — a revolving door of drugs and criminal activity. The back of this house overlooks a local schoolyard, where neighborhood children and youth come to learn and play. The house stands in contrast to a beautiful rebuilt school and is a reminder of the challenges students, educators, families, and the community face daily."
Blank then describes how the house offered an opportunity to be part of the amazing transformation of Lower Price Hill in Cincinnati thanks to the reconstruction of Oyler Community Learning Center.
Titled "What Happens When a Crack House Becomes an Early Childhood Learning Center?" the blog post describes how Oyler leaders helped renovate the house to become a neighborhood pre-school center.
The Robert & Adele Schiff Early Learning Center
opened late last year, expanding a program that Oyler began by housing it inside the school.
Public radio education reporter Amy Scott premiered
her documentary film about the same Lower Price Hill experiment,
Oyler, in May at the school. It's screening Thursday night at the
2015 Cincinnati Film Festival.
Read the full Huffington Post column
here.
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