EQUAL

OPPORTUNITY in kansas city

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

-The freedom to choose: Equity/Fairness

-Narrowing it down, tackling the core obstacles

TROOST

THE WALL

TROOST THE WALL

-Scott Hall | Vice President Strategic Initiatives, KC Chamber of Commerce

-drastic divide along Troost, high correlation between income and race

-we wanted to delve into the core issues of why this happened and something that would guide the city into the right direction of diversity

of income & race

EDUCATION over

-After researching about the main causes of divide, it boiled down to education and the home environment.

-Since the Kansas City Missouri School District was created in 1867, there were separate facilities for blacks and whites.

-By 1940, 88% of minorities had to change their place of residence in KC to live in an integrated neighborhood.

the years

SEGREGATION
suburbanization
inner city disinvestment
school segregation

-Racial segregation in housing and schools have been defining features of the KC Metro area for over a century.

-Today Kansas City continues to be one of the most segregated metropolitan areas in the nation.

Things that reinforce this:

suburbanization

inner city disinvestment

school segregation

WIDENING RACIAL GAPS

The whole workforce must be
well-educated and engaged if
you want this area to succeed.

-On an economic level, Kansas Citys economic future is at risk due to widening racial gaps in income, health and work opportunities.

-Only through improving the citys equity profile can this trend improve.

-Improving the economic lot of the areas racial minorities is essential because the population of minorities is increasing.

-By 2040, 42% of the area is likely to be composed of minorities. In 2010, the white population only grew 5%. "The whole workforce must be well-educated and engaged if you want this area to succeed."

CLOSING THE
ACHIEVEMENT GAP
childhood care
health
housing
economic security
learning opportunities

-Integrating disadvantaged black students into schools where more-privileged students predominate can narrow the black-white achievement gap.

-School integration, both racial and socioeconomic, can complement improvements in students' early childhood care, health, housing, economic security, and informal learning opportunities.

-Segregated schools with primarily poorly performing students can rarely be turned around - the tipping point of no return

CONCENTRATED POVERTY
attendance at high-poverty
schools causes disadvantaged
students performance to decline

-In areas of concentrated poverty, even though the schools were well-developed and had good teacher-principal collaboration, this made no dierence in these neighborhoods.

-All students were residentially mobile, black, and had low-income parents with little education).

-Attendance at high-poverty schools causes disadvantaged students performance to decline

BENEFITS OF
INTEGRATION

poor students in mixed-income

schools do better than poor
students in high-poverty schools

Benefits of integration: the behavioral outcomes

-improved graduation rates, higher rates of employment, higher earnings in adulthood, avoidance of teen childbearing, delinquency, homicide and incarceration. white students outcomes were unaected

-poor students in mixed-income schools do better than poor students in high-poverty schools.

-Low-income students performance rises, all students receive the benefits

THE SOLUTION
socioeconomic integration
in education

-Socioeconomic integration in education is the way to help KC succeed

-It can help shift break up concentrations of poverty and provide more diverse learning environments for all students

-Its a way for low-income students to tap into the academic benefits of high-achieving peers and high-quality teachers.

ACADEMIE LAFAYETTE
a charter school

Academie Lafayette: a starting point in Kansas City

a charter school - full French immersion

same funding as public schools - not private, no tuition

operated by teachers, parents and community groups

anyone can attend a charter school - limited by space

charter schools are able to & held accountable for the achievement

parents in the district got together and formed this charter school together

-started 15 years ago with a 60:40 minority ratio, but now numbers have flipped

-number of students that have free/reduced lunch has not changed, has actually decreased over the years

-number of minorities have not changed much, still primarily white and increasing

DARRON STORY
AL Expansion
Parents Promoting Diversity

INTERVIEWS

MELVIN MERRITT
Penny Mill

MICHAEL ZELLER
board member of AL

INTERVIEWS

Michael Zeller - Board Member of Academie Lafayette

-Currently, many families in the city are actually looking for diverse schools in Kansas City, but there are no good schools in the metropolitan area

-What's crucial about the school is its trust that the school has developed in the community. Parents trust the school, which brings them to enroll their kids.

Melvin Merritt: Penny Mill

make people understand that were human

has a dierent approach - more about encouragement, bringing communities together

purpose is to instill ethnicity

Darron Story - Parents Promoting Diversity

-middle-class black who lives on the east side of Troost

-stays with a sense of mission/responsibility

-Parents Promoting Diversity

-The problem of the population of minorities decreasing at AL

-wanted to bring parents together to address problem

-parents on the east side of Troost are not aware of AL or have a negative perception of it

-they are not as neighborly in the past, people do not talk to each other

-vs. places like Brookside, spreading info about AL word of mouth

-Academie Lafayette Expansion

-AL is well-known in the white community, distrusted in the black community

-Darron works on the Marketing & Communications Department of the high school expansion for AL

-definitely want to the school to be east of Troost

PROBLEM STATEMENT
How can we aid the Communications
Subcommittee in the group Academie
Lafayette Expansion in order to
improve the perception of Academie
Lafayette in Kansas City, especially
on the east of Troost, or raise
awareness, in order to increase the
enrollment of minorities at AL?

PROBLEM STATEMENT

How can we aid the Communications Subcommittee in the group Academie Lafayette Expansion in order to improve the perception of Academie Lafayette in Kansas City, especially on the east of Troost, or raise
awareness, in order to increase the enrollment of minorities at AL?

AUDIENCE
low-income, minority
parents and their children

-Audience: Ultimately, parents and their children in Kansas City (particularly east side of Troost)

-Trying to reach: Potential parents of children who can enroll in Academic Lafayette

-Needs: Integrated education racially and economically. They need a trustworthy way of learning about Academie Lafayette (Darrons point about having a representative who the people can relate to)

-Current level of understanding: People on the east side of Troost either do not know about the charter school, or have a negative perception of Academie Lafayette as a privileged school

-Best way to reach them: Have to hear information from someone they can relate to/was in their own situation.

Organizations that already has access to these people

Parents at Academie Lafayette in Parents Promoting Diversity

IMMERSION
Niles Children Home
Boys & Girls Club
Penny Mill Foundation
Community Meetings

IMMERSION

How do you plan to immerse yourself:

Niles Children Home Center

Boys & Girls Club

sitting in on community meetings (Academie Lafayette Expansion), Penny Mill Foundation

Community Leaders: Darron Story, Melvin Merritt

Where are you volunteering: Boys&Girls Club

STRATEGY
A PR spokesperson
increasing visibility
public community events

STRATEGY

Changing the negative perception of Academie Lafayette with branding and spreading information about the school at community events

Audiences Current Position: If they do know about Academie Lafayette, they have a negative perception of it. But most do not know about the opportunity to enroll.

What will nudge or change this: Increasing the visibility of Academie Lafayette and improving their rap with the east side of Troost

What would change if your project was successful: The percentage of minority and reduced-lunch students to be more integrated into Academie Lafayette

Resources: A PR representative, funding, a platform for communication

Resources available: the existing organization, the school and its funding

GOAL
to increase the enrollment
of free/reduced lunch
students compared to the
previous academic year

GOAL

For the perception of Academie Lafayette to improve, and as a result, increase enrollment of minorities to encourage integration.

We will measure our success by how well we supply the Expansion committee at Academie Lafayette with the tools that can help them

QUESTIONS?