“Weaving a seamless and tailored web of services for children and families inside and outside of school has been the central tenet of an experiment underway in Salem and five other communities over the past two years.
The cities—Somerville and Newton, Mass.; Louisville, Ky.; Providence, R.I.; and Oakland, Calif.—set off in 2016 on an experimental endeavor with the Education Redesign Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education to rethink how they support children and families, in some cases from birth through college. (Newton dropped out of the program before the pilot ended earlier this year.)
The program, now in its second phase, encourages city and district teams to craft customized education plans for students, focus on students’ health and social-emotional well-being, and create a governance structure—a “children’s cabinet”—comprised of officials from K-12, government, philanthropy, higher education, business, and nonprofits to work on a kind of social compact for children.”