Recently, the idea of “school-based hubs” has been gaining momentum as a potential solution to the problem of improving upward mobility. These hubs are created when schools partner with doctors’ offices and various other community organizations to offer their clients (students and parents) a wide variety of integrated services. The efficacy of these programs, however, is still in question, as the idea progresses through its infancy; only a small number of them actually exist.
This report offers insight into the successes and challenges of a D.C. school-based hub, the Briya/Mary’s Center. It came together a few years ago, when Briya Public Charter School partnered with Mary’s Center, an “integrative medical center.” Mary’s Center’s mission is to provide families with medical, educational, and social services to improve their overall well-being.
Briya Public Charter School is no stranger to integrated services. In addition to an education, the school provides its students (up to five years old) and their relatives a family literacy program, parenting classes, and two adult credentialing programs. These programs allow Briya parents to become registered medical assistants or early child care professionals, thus setting them up for future success. Briya also encourages parents to be active participants in their children’s education. This entails asking them to spend at least two and a half hours per day in their children’s school (either during school hours or in the evening) participating in various aspects of the four-part program, which includes adult education, early childhood education, parenting, and parent-and-child together time. These are all meant to complement and reinforce one another and lead to an integrated education system for the whole family.
On the other side of the partnership, Mary’s Center offers medical care for the whole family (including pediatric and senior), disease prevention, nutrition counseling, mental health care, and dental care. On top of that, the hub is affiliated with other organizations in the community, including a public elementary school, a summer job program for teens, and a mental health clinic.
At first glance, the Briya/Mary’s Center partnership sounds great. But there are also aspects of this program that should give people pause. For example, Briya had far lower attendance rates than other charter schools in the area, in part because parents who are unable to spend time at the school each day keep their children home, lest they feel embarrassed. More importantly, all school-based hubs suffer from a lack of data collection and analysis, with few longitudinal and empirical studies examining whether the positive results they think will occur ever actually manifest themselves. Briya/Mary’s Center and its brethren ought to pair their admirable aspirations with research that, if positive, will solidify their place in the community and encourage others to follow suit.
SOURCE: Stuart M. Butler, “Using schools and clinics as hubs to create healthy communities: The example of Briya/Mary’s Center,” Brookings (July 2015).