The Wilder Foundation, along with support from the Saint Paul Public Schools, the City of Saint Paul, and the Saint Paul Public Schools Foundation, wins the federal Promise Neighborhood planning grant to create "a community where all children succeed in school and life."

The Background

Over the past four years, the City of Saint Paul has made education a top priority by creating early childhood, afterschool, and college and career initiatives to ensure all children succeed in school and in life. In addition, the City has led an effort to create a citywide system of “Learning Campuses” – geographic zones in which learning opportunities are coordinated to increase equity and access.  Recently, the City, Ramsey County, Saint Paul Public Schools, the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation and the Saint Paul Public Schools Foundation have joined in a focused effort to deepen collaboration and improve service delivery for children and families. 

 The vision of “a community where all children succeed in school and in life” was further embraced as these entities and several community organizations and residents began sharpening the focus for initial work on the community area surrounding Jackson Preparatory Magnet and Maxfield Magnet Elementary Schools.  Students in these schools, and children and families in this community area, face serious challenges that negatively impact their odds at success in school, at home, and in their communities. 

To support this vision for our community, we must work to change the odds for these children and their families, giving them the best opportunity to attain success; we know we must provide them with:

• Rigorous, high quality, integrated in and out of school learning time,
• Emotional and behavioral supports for students and families, and
• A safe, vibrant neighborhood.

The Opportunity

The U.S. Department of Education has dedicated funding to create projects to transform entire neighborhoods through a pipeline of “cradle to career” solutions that will significantly improve academic and developmental results for children. This Promise Neighborhood initiative has award one-year planning grants to 21 communities in the nation, averaging about $450,000 each. Saint Paul has been selected by President Obama as one of the Promise Neighborhood recipients.

Based on Wilder’s successful experience developing and implementing Achievement Plus over the past 13 years, and in response to a request from St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, the Wilder Foundation is leading the effort to build a Promise Neighborhood in Saint Paul.  In coordination with the City, Saint Paul Public Schools, the Saint Paul Public Schools Foundation, Ramsey County, area District Planning Councils, and several community service providers, Wilder will engage the community in this planning effort on behalf of our children and our future.  

Core Features - the following are considered critical elements of a successful Promise Neighborhood: 

• The capacity to collect, analyze, and use data to evaluate success;
• Service integration - so children don’t miss academic and developmental milestones due to gaps;
• Community engagement and clear accountability for results by a leader and a lead organization;
• A "place-based" approach, which leverages investments by focusing resources in targeted places, drawing on the compounding effect of well-coordinated actions.

Expected Results - the planning grant year will result in an implementation plan to:

• Increase neighborhood-based capacity to build a college-going culture;
• Build a continuum of academic programs and family and community supports, from the cradle through college to career, with strong schools at the center;
• Integrate programs and break down agency "silos" so that solutions are implemented effectively and efficiently across agencies;
• Work with local governments to build the infrastructure of policies, practices, systems, and resources needed to sustain and "scale up" solutions beyond the initial neighborhood.

The Plan

In coordination with the City’s Learning Campus efforts, the initial Promise Neighborhood area will target nine census tract areas surrounding Jackson and Maxfield Elementary schools within “Learning Campus #3”.  Our implementation plan will define goals and timelines to scale up the project in phases - first to all of Learning Campus #3, next to the surrounding Learning Campus areas, and ultimately to transform the entire City of Saint Paul.  We anticipate building a valuable knowledge base to help other communities replicate Saint Paul’s approach to neighborhood transformation.