Planting Dragons

Don't wait for the future. Build it.

When I first joined the community service projects hosted by Democrats Work, I knew that at the end of each day my small corner of the world was a little bit changed; a few homeless people were fed, a few bags of trash were cleaned from a park, some cans had been recycled, some graffiti painted away. I always came home feeling pretty good, but in the back of my mind was the thought that in a few hours the hungry would be hungry again, the gangs would have tagged the walls, and the trash would already be piling up along the fence lines. I would console myself by believing that even if I wasn't making the world any better, at least through my actions it was getting worse a little slower. Thinking like that kept me going long enough to finally see the real difference being made.

I already knew that the benefit from each tree I helped plant would grow over time. As the tree grew in size and beauty it would scrub carbon from the air and pull toxic metals from the earth. When my car drove beneath its shade, I would not run my air conditioner and my gas would go 20% further. A shadow across a Southern wall would save a home owner hundreds of dollars. I appreciated that the small action of planting a tree could yield large results. What I didn't yet grasp was that an even more basic action - the action of taking a small action - could change everything. I wasn't just planting a tree. I was working together with a team of people to plant a tree, and while what we were doing was giving life to a growing thing, how we were doing it, and why we were doing it, was something equally alive and growing.

Paint a wall if you want to make the world look a little better. Paint the wall of a school if you want to make the future look a little better. But, if you really want transformative change, see what happens when you bring a neighborhood together to paint a school. That is what happened on Saturday in Colorado.

Cole Middle School was designed for failure. For much of Denver's history, the families of black workers were segregated into a narrow patch of North side neighborhoods. Long after the law ceased to permit it the real estate agents still knew where red lines circled the map and showed which houses were reserved for white buyers. After years of determined efforts, those racist times were pushed into the background, but the socio-economic problems remain visible. The Cole neighborhood is still struggling with low incomes, scarce local retail, and under-funded schools.

In an inspirational moment, Mayor Hickenlooper promised a middle school class that if the students persevered the city would pay their State University tuitions. By the time that class would have that chance, the middle school had closed due to failing standardized test scores, the high school had shut its doors due to dropping enrollment, high pregnancy rates and low graduation rates took their toll, and when the final survivors stood up this year and showed they had made it through the gauntlet, and showed that they could pass the entrance exams, ten of the remaining few discovered that what they could not show were the immigration documents to prove that they were ever legally eligible. Many other disappointing chapters of the School’s history were written in that demoralizing style.

Cole Middle School closed its doors after a history made final by 'No Child Left Behind' and Colorado's 'CSAP' tests, but the course had been set years before by poverty, despair, and a community that looked like it was done trying. The city struck a deal with KIPP, a charter school corporation that had been started in Dallas with the early support of Texas Governor George W. Bush and seed funding from the GAP Corporation. Giving credit where it is due, successful KIPP schools are famously good. They go into low income areas and usually change the game. There is a bleaker side to their track record, however. Sometimes when it looks like a school might pull down Kipp’s average they very abruptly leave.

A concerned parent’s group looking at the organization hadn't even rated KIPP as their second choice, but the city liked the contract terms and handed over the money and the keys. After two years, KIPP pulled the plug. The only reason they gave the stranded community was that they had difficulty finding a permanent principal.

Denver Public Schools could have looked outside the community again, but instead they did something harder and smarter. They made a commitment to building the right way. Students, parents, teachers and neighbors were invited to help plan a new school. This time starting fresh with a K-8 elementary, they even let a 'kid-ocracy' vote on the school colors and mascot. Being just as happy as the adults to make a break with the past, the old Cole Eagle was retired and the new school would be the home of the Dragons.

The old building needed paint, and so they went to the neighborhoods and found high school students already wanting to give back to the place that had given them their start. They found young parents who wanted 'their' school to be more than just a place to drop their children for a few hours. They found teachers - and yes even the principal that KIPP could not find - who wanted not only to pick up a paycheck in the new institution, but who wanted to use their hearts, and hands, and paintbrushes, and sanding blocks to give this school a new identity and rebirth.

And they found Democrats Work; volunteers like me that want to do something positive on one afternoon that might bring something positive in the future. People like me who might look up on some days and realize that it was never a painted wall that would give this school a chance. It was never even a painted school that would give this neighborhood a chance. It was one neighborhood, uniting with hope to build the future, which had already planted something amazing.

Guest blogger Aaron Silverstein can be found at asilverstein@democratswork.org