Erie County Neighborhood School sees development and challenges

When Erie County Neighborhood School first launched three years in the past, the upstart Pennsylvania establishment had two places of work for its six workers and rented out school rooms on the third ground of an previous Catholic highschool. Pandemic-driven provide chain delays meant desks and chairs won’t arrive in time for the beginning of lessons, so the president despatched an worker to a close-by Sam’s Membership to purchase folding tables.

It was a rocky begin.

Now campus leaders say the brand new group school, nicknamed EC3, is flourishing. Scholar head depend reached 715 college students this fall—up from 456 final 12 months and 231 when it first opened in fall 2021. The commencement fee for its first full-time cohort was modest, 33 p.c. However its course success fee—the share of scholars who cross—rose from 64 p.c its first semester to 81 p.c in fall 2023. EC3 additionally now has about three dozen workers members.

To go from “pure chaos” to that a lot development is “fairly stinking cool,” mentioned Christopher Grey, president of EC3. He described enrollment as “by the roof.”

That’s partly as a result of tuition has been free by $1.75 million in federal COVID-19 aid funds, allotted by the county authorities, he mentioned. However the school is in a robust sufficient monetary place to proceed that tuition largess, due to a present of greater than $3 million from an area philanthropy, the Susan B. Hagen Fund. Grey’s hope is that that may cowl tuition no less than till the faculty is accredited and college students can obtain federal monetary help; EC3 is at present looking for accreditation by the Center States Fee on Larger Training and expects to develop into an official candidate subsequent month.

The delivery and continued development of EC3 is a rarity. Nationally, new group faculties aren’t particularly frequent; most are many years previous. The primary group school within the U.S. was established within the early twentieth century, and the establishments expanded throughout the Nice Despair and proliferated throughout the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s.

John Fink, senior analysis affiliate and program lead on the Neighborhood School Analysis Middle at Columbia College’s Lecturers School, mentioned he’s solely heard of a few new establishments in recent times, together with Madera Neighborhood School in California, based in 2020.

He believes that’s partly as a result of group faculties are already prolific. When state lawmakers initially invested in them, they sought to place the establishments in “each group,” so “you’d be hard-pressed to discover a group, particularly a large inhabitants like Erie, with out one,” he mentioned. “Simply by design, they’re in every single place.”

However for Erie, a former manufacturing hub with no less than 270,000 residents on the shores of the Nice Lake that bears its title, that wasn’t the case.

A Bumpy Street

Grey described the faculty as a “pipe dream for a bunch of upper ed disrupters” lastly coming to fruition.

Erie County suffers no lack of upper ed establishments; it has no less than seven of them, together with nonprofit and for-profit faculties. However it had no public, two-year school centered on locals. Residents of the high-poverty, rust belt county pushed for a group school for over a decade, in the end founding an advocacy group referred to as Empower Erie.

Plans for the faculty had been initially mired in political turmoil. The group received pushback from leaders and supporters of Northern Pennsylvania Regional School, headquartered in Warren County, which the state based in 2017 to supply two-year levels and workforce growth packages all through its northern area. Proponents of a brand new establishment argued that the prevailing school served too many counties—now 10, together with Erie—and operated on a unique mannequin, through which it leased out completely different areas for college students to both attend lessons in individual or sit in a room collectively and watch instructors just about.

Opponents, nevertheless, believed {that a} new school would duplicate choices that already existed. In 2019, Joseph Scarnati, then president professional tempore of the state Senate and a cofounder of the regional school, despatched a letter calling on the state board to reject the would-be school’s software; religion leaders within the county then issued a response defending the establishment.

Now that the faculty has existed for a couple of years, these tensions have dissipated and a few of the school’s preliminary critics have develop into its companions, Grey mentioned. For instance, he commonly communicates with the present leaders of Northern Pennsylvania Regional School and goals to supply packages in niches they’re not already filling. County government Brenton Davis, as soon as a fierce opponent of EC3, has since develop into considered one of its “largest supporters,” Grey mentioned, and helped it safe funding.

It took time for group members, particularly within the county’s extra rural areas, to appreciate “we’re not only a small model of the personal liberal arts faculties,” Grey mentioned. “Now that they see we’re instructing welding … we’re instructing well being care … they see the worth of it.”

The school confronted different obstacles getting off the bottom, together with workers turnover in its early years. Begin-ups contain “lots of uncertainty,” Grey mentioned, and that may be onerous on workers. Insurance policies and procedures different faculties have fine-tuned for many years had been being created on the fly; EC3’s first complete worker handbook is scheduled to come back out this week.

At a newly made school, “it’s a must to discover consolation within the discomfort,” and that’s a giant ask, he mentioned. “In the event you can’t take care of that, you’re going to hate it right here.”

Proper now, EC3 can be within the midst of a authorized battle with a former worker who alleges she was fired in March 2023 in retaliation for reporting sexual harassment and racial discrimination by directors whereas working on the school, The Erie Occasions-Information reported. The plaintiff, Marieka Jones, beforehand employed within the finance division, filed a lawsuit in August claiming Grey would “repeatedly and deliberately contact his genital space over his pants” whereas they had been alone in her workplace, however he ceased assembly along with her privately when she reported the habits to her supervisor and the pinnacle of human sources. Jones, who’s Black, additionally alleges a dean mentioned she was being “aggressive” when she requested why the faculty wasn’t celebrating Black Historical past Month. She is looking for financial damages and her job reinstated.

Grey mentioned he couldn’t touch upon the lawsuit and referred Inside Larger Ed to an announcement from the faculty, which referred to as the claims “baseless.”

“Since our inception and opening, EC3 has labored extremely onerous to create a welcoming office for all,” the assertion learn. “EC3 strongly refutes these baseless allegations and believes this go well with is with out advantage. Because of the litigation, we can not remark additional presently.”

A ‘Clear Slate’

Regardless of of the lawsuit and different challenges, EC3 now boasts full school rooms and monetary well being. To get there, it has adopted some uncommon practices, together with a lean monetary mannequin.

The school rents area in 5 areas and has no real interest in proudly owning property, Grey mentioned.

“As we develop, we are going to in all probability by no means construct a Taj Mahal. I believe we should be the place college students are,” he mentioned. And “the truth is, there isn’t a funding stream for it.”

The school can be constructed on partnerships. It supplies scholar companies—similar to psychological well being care, meals and housing assist, and profession companies—by partnering with native organizations, quite than foot the invoice itself. For instance, the faculty supplies an workplace to an area nonprofit that works with displaced employees, which in flip helps college students join with jobs.

“I’m not losing my time doing all that crap,” Grey mentioned. “We’re not psychological well being counselors. We’re not meals pantries. After I discover a scholar has a necessity, I can accomplice.” He mentioned the faculty’s “key core deliverable” is schooling and the wraparound companies that go together with it, together with a scholar success coach for each course and a hypervigilant early alert system to intervene when college students present indicators of struggling. Except funding for greater ed considerably ramps up, he added, different establishments may additionally discover themselves trying to outsource non-educational companies.

Some EC3 packages are additionally being created by partnerships. The school provides a surgical technician program by partnering with the College of Pittsburgh Medical Middle Faculty of Surgical Know-how to fill native shortages.

“I don’t imagine the mannequin of previous faculties is ever going to work once more,” Grey mentioned.

Fink, of the Neighborhood School Analysis Middle, mentioned he imagines that creating a brand new group school isn’t any straightforward feat and might include excessive start-up prices for area, tools and staffing. However he additionally acknowledges that establishments like Erie and Madera have a “cool alternative” to implement evidence-based practices that had been much less recognized when lots of their peer establishments had been based. If he had been beginning a group school from scratch, he’d concentrate on “backwards designing” packages to align with well-paying jobs within the area or facilitate clean switch, he mentioned. He’d additionally create “on-ramps” to the establishment early on: robust partnerships with excessive colleges and employers to attach with each traditional-age college students and grownup employees who may need to be taught new expertise to advance of their careers.

“I’m positive many group school leaders on the market would like to—whilst a thought train—simply take into consideration if we might completely begin with a clear slate … based mostly on every little thing that we’ve realized thus far, if we might simply completely reinvent ourselves, what would that appear to be?”