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Can new family resource center reshape struggling Hernando County school?

 
BRONTE WITTPENN   |   Times Youth services librarian Justin King introduces Wonder Workshop's Dash and Dot robots to a group of elementary students at Moton Elementary School in Brooksville on Oct. 2. The program is designed to introduce science, math and coding through interactive technology brought to the school through the youth services library in Hernando County.
BRONTE WITTPENN | Times Youth services librarian Justin King introduces Wonder Workshop's Dash and Dot robots to a group of elementary students at Moton Elementary School in Brooksville on Oct. 2. The program is designed to introduce science, math and coding through interactive technology brought to the school through the youth services library in Hernando County.
Published Oct. 19, 2018

BROOKSVILLE — The whiteboard in the GED classroom held the problem — a string of signs, factors and variables in black dry-erase marker. Melissa Brown, 34, stood at the board in front of her teacher and two classmates and tried to solve for "x."

The classroom was neat and open and teal-accented. Three mornings a week, it serves as a classroom for students much older than those populating the rooms around them in Moton Elementary School, as they work to earn a GED diploma. At other times, it's other things: an ad-hoc dentist's office, or a kid-friendly robotics lab.

Moton opened this family resource center in the spring with funding from a state Schools of Hope grant and started a few programs. As the 2018-19 school year kicks into full gear, the center is offering more programs.

If the center can help improve Moton students' lives, it would be a boost to a school trying to claw its way up after years as one of the county's poorest performers. Center director Melissa Arledge said it'll take a long time to gauge the project's success: like the time it takes for today's kindergartners to graduate from high school. But the many disadvantages that plague Moton students — more than 84 percent of whom meet the criteria for free or reduced-price lunch — mean there are a lot of ways the center could help.

"Mom's in jail. Dad's in jail," Arledge said, listing the situations students find themselves in. "They're being raised by their grandparents. The electricity got shut off last night. They didn't know how they were getting groceries this week."

Success for students means helping family members, too. Brown, for one, wants to go to nursing school to be a role model for her sons, who are in pre-kindergarten and first grade at Moton.

Her classmate, 18-year-old Michael Keen, joked that his mom gave him the choice between getting his GED or getting a job, but his motivations were personal, too. He wants to go to college for video game design. And he wants to get there before his 7-year-old brother, who also studies at Moton, figures out he dropped out of high school in the first place.

"I tried not to let him know about the dropping-out situation," Keen said. "I won't be able to hide it from him for long."

Brown solved the algebra problem on the board and returned to her seat. The instructor, Sandy James, acknowledged her success.

"If you go through all the steps," she said, "you're more likely to get the right answer."

* * *

In 2017, Florida legislators passed a school-choice mega-bill that included establishing the Schools of Hope program. Since then, much of the discussion around Schools of Hope has centered on its most controversial elements, which allow outside operators to open charter schools near poorly performing public schools.

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But pushback against the bill also led lawmakers to allocate grant money to improve struggling district schools.The resulting statute outlined how schools could get up to $2,000 per student for "wrap-around services" that emphasized community partnerships, increased parent involvement and established rigorous academic and behavioral standards. It suggested implementing after-school programs, nutritional education and parental counseling.

The statute limited the funding to 25 schools across the state, and in January, Moton got $1.2 million for its family resource center.

In March, the Hernando County School District hired Arledge to oversee the center, and its offerings started the next month. Every student got a dental screening. Five people, family members of students, started the GED course, and one graduated.

This school year, the center started offering arts-and-crafts classes and workshops on how to apply for Medicaid and food stamps. The school passed out backpacks full of food, and stacked school supplies and polo shirts on tables in the room next door. Arledge wants to start finance classes before the income tax season, and she's heard requests for a support group for grandparents raising their grandchildren.

But all of this, Arledge has learned, requires patience.

Moton's struggles over the past few years — D grades from the state in 2016 and 2017, the school superintendent's abrupt firing of the entire teaching staff last spring — have alienated parents. Arledge said the new staff's enthusiasm is starting to win some of them back, but gaining the trust of kids can be even harder.

"Especially the ones that are older, they don't want to open up," she said. "No matter what attitude they give you, and no matter how they act out, you can't get frustrated. Because if you get frustrated, they don't trust you."

Then there's the matter of getting people to show up.

Arledge hoped that the morning GED class would attract parents who could stick around after dropping off their kids. But the small turnout made her reconsider that approach, and class times may change in the future.

The state grant money will fund the center through the end of the school year, but then Arledge will have to look for other resources. She's researching so-called community schools throughout Florida to figure out how they've sustained themselves.

"You want people to stay, and for them to be here and a part of the community. You want them to go off to college and come back for the community," she said. "I want this to work. I just want the program to keep going."

* * *

On a Tuesday night this month, Bhamini Clarke and her 5-year-old daughter, Trinity, a kindergartner, showed up early to the family resource center. Trinity had brought home a flier the week before, advertising the night's "maker-space" event, that allowed kids to play with a pair of robots named "Dash" and "Dot" and, in the process, learn basic computer coding.

Trinity had torn through coding-for-kids games online, and Clarke figured her daughter could make some like-minded friends.

But as they lingered by the door, no more families showed up. Finally, 15 minutes after the event was supposed to start, two-dozen students from Moton's Science, Technology, Engineering and Math program filed in with their teachers. Clarke led Trinity to sit in the half-circle of older kids.

Librarian Justin King showed the kids how to use the iPad app connected to the robots. They'd drag and drop colored blocks in different orders on the screen. Machines would zoom around or light up.

As the kids split into groups of five, sprawled across the room and crowded over iPads, the room's energy took on that of a sleepover. A girl set aside her baby doll and leaned toward a screen. Cheers went up when robots zipped across the carpet. The kids hollered at each other over mechanical howls.

"Can someone get me number four?"

"...and that's purple!"

"Move that one forward!"

Arledge moved around the room, getting answers for a group that needed help, only to return and find they'd figured it out themselves.

"It kind of feels like our efforts are paying off," she said.

Across the room, Clarke crouched down, a hand on her daughter's back. Trinity's eyes were wide and intent, locked on colored blocks lining up on the iPad. But Clarke was dismayed with the dearth of other families.

"Do you see any other parents here?" she whispered. "This is the problem."

Arledge also wished more parents had come. She hoped the event's success would spread by word-of-mouth, but she also wants to figure out why it didn't attract more families.

Still, when she surveyed the room, she saw 25 kids excited about learning hours after school had ended. She smiled.

"It's baby steps," she said.

Contact Jack Evans at jevans@tampabay.com. Follow @JackHEvans.