(Vol. 1, No. 1 - Winter 1996/1997)

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Reaching kids through the power
of school/community partnerships

AN INTERVIEW WITH LYNN RIPPY
Director of the Louisville Youth Alliance



By John Norton

Respect. Belief. High expectations. Lynn Rippy projects all three as she sits with a group of Louisville's inner-city teenagers, listening to stories about their lives. It's clear she relishes her contact with these young people -- some of whom, even at age 13 or 14, have already been written off as "losers" by mainstream society.

"I'm more challenged by children who are struggling," she says. "When I see kids struggling, I know the one thing they didn't get enough of was committed people who were interested in seeing them succeed. Somebody needed to care more and try harder to understand how to help them."

To Rippy, every adolescent -- however troubled -- has the potential to succeed. "I see kids every day who are turning themselves around because they got the help they needed," she says with a hint of anger in her voice. "How dare we lump them all together and write them off?"

As director of the Louisville Youth Alliance, Rippy has spent the last six years working with Mayor Jerry Abramson to expand and refine the city's well-regarded youth services programs. It's not a one-woman crusade, by any means. "You don't help anybody change by yourself," she says. "It's a community effort."

The Alliance relies on a network of service providers, community leaders, parents and young people to guide its work. "Kids are involved in every step of everything we do," she says. "The kids bring the reality of a youth at risk to the table."

Since 1990, the Alliance and its staff of counselors and street workers have tackled some of the city's most deep-rooted youth problems, including teenage pregnancy, drug use, and teen violence. Early on, the Alliance's collaborative philosophy brought Rippy into regular contact with other social service agencies-and to the doors of the Jefferson County Public Schools system.

As the city's youth and family service providers began to work more closely together around issues like pregnancy prevention and afterschool programs, "we soon realized that we would always be limited unless we became full partners with the school system," Rippy says.

What began five years ago as a tentative conversation between the school district and youth services agencies has slowly developed into a formal partnership -- the Middle School Coalition -- staffed by a JCPS educator, chaired by Rippy, and made up of representatives from the public schools, the courts, government and non-profit social service programs, and the larger community.

The Coalition's mission is straightforward if not always easily accomplished: Increase community engagement with the schools and help young people improve their academic achievement.

Changing Schools asked Lynn Rippy to talk about the work of the Alliance and the Middle School Coalition and why she thinks more collaboration among educators, social agencies, and the youth workers who spend a lot of one-on-one time with young teenagers in the city's toughest neighborhoods is, as she puts it, "absolutely critical to Louisville's future."


Changing Schools: Is it fair to say that a lot of people in the community and in the public schools have already written off many inner-city youth as individuals who can't succeed in school or life?

Rippy: That attitude's certainly out there among many people who haven't taken the time to get to know these kids and understand their potential. Don't get me wrong-- there are many, many caring and concerned people, especially in the schools, who want to help these young people, and do help them every day.

But there's also an attitude that I found in some schools and classrooms when I first started visiting in schools regularly -- an apparent lack of concern for children who were obviously struggling more than anybody else in the building, whether it was because their behavior was out of control or they lacked the skills they needed. When I was teaching Junior Achievement, I actually had a teacher just flat say to me that "this is a class of losers. They can't learn."

CS: Were you surprised?

Rippy: That kind of attitude wasn't news to me, but it's difficult to watch these kids fail year after year after year when you know something about them and know that they have the potential to succeed.

It's hard to challenge some kids to participate in class, much less to participate in life. And most teachers are dealing with 100 or more students every day. I don't think the schools can solve the problem by themselves. The roots of these young peoples' problems are usually outside of the school. That's why it's so important for the schools and the service agencies in the community that work with youth and parents to see each other as partners and resources.

CS: That's the idea behind the Middle School Coalition?

Rippy: That's at the heart of why I got involved. We chose middle school because that's where we saw the most urgent need -- where kids are making choices about sexual activity and study habits and who they'll hang around with that have long-term consequences.

I just felt like that if we could only get more school people -- teachers and counselors -- cooperating daily with the people outside the school who work with the same kids, we could really make a difference for a lot of students who are getting labeled as 'losers.'

If you really can tie those people together, they can connect up with parents who want to be active in their children's lives. And if the parents aren't active -- and most of them probably won't be -- you've still got this inside/outside team working together. Each kid knows you're going to be checking on them; they know you're going to be watching their grades and their behavior. Street workers have these capabilities to support the educators in schools. If these resources are available to schools, why wouldn't they want to take advantage of them?

CS: Are schools taking advantage?

Rippy: Some of them are beginning to. That's why an organization like the Middle School Coalition is so important -- it gives us a forum to work from, a reason to talk together and begin to build some trust. We're doing a lot of things to build partnerships with the schools. Our N.I.C.E. program (see page 16) is helping schools think about what it means to be "user friendly." And we're helping raise matching funds for a major foundation grant to the middle schools.

I think there's a tradition in many school systems of operating somewhat apart from the rest of a city's social and community service programs. But the problem comes when the school system has to interface with the rest of us. Kids are truant, kids need protective services and other services the schools don't provide.

I think there's some real commitment in JCPS now to break down the walls of tradition and establish a strong working relationship with other community agencies. But change is slow in a large system, and it will take time and a lot of leadership to create a "seamless" service system for school-aged kids. I believe the superintendent is committed to that -- he's already made a large difference.

CS: So you're seeing some real progress?

Rippy: Definitely. For example, we've worked our way through an important effort to streamline the way schools and outside agencies coordinate truancy cases. This may seem like a small thing to outsiders, but getting everyone to agree on a common approach to the issue of absenteeism and truancy took a lot of work, and I think it's a very positive sign that we can work together around a common interest -- the welfare of the kids.

CS: What's the most important thing that needs to happen now?

Rippy: We need to keep working to earn the faith and trust of principals. They're so important. With principal support, I believe we can create partnerships that not only help with discipline but can help with student achievement. If we can work together to get "at risk" kids the extra support and motivation they need, I think we'll see KIRIS scores go up at every school.

CS: Why are you so sure troubled teenagers can be turned around?

Rippy: Because we see it happen every day. Last year there were 3,600 kids in the city who developed their own small community service projects, in their school or at their community center or in their church. Many of these kids are the same kids that some folks have given up on.

One of the beliefs is that if you build this sense of responsibility in kids at an early stage, then your neighborhoods won't fall apart, because the people who live in them won't let it happen. They have a stake in their own home territory, whether it's through a mural on the wall, or a neighborhood park that the kids built themselves, or the handicap ramp that they put in.

CS: So these programs are turning some teens around?

Rippy: The city's youth-related statistics are getting better. And it's not because the kids are getting easier to serve, it's that we're doing a better job of figuring out what they need to succeed. Louisville teenagers are getting more information and services, they're getting more options, and they see light at the end of the tunnel.

But I think one of the things that we quickly realized is that they will always be limited if they don't have the educational skills to move ahead. We realized that many kids coming through our programs couldn't read well, couldn't do simple math, couldn't write a resume, couldn't spell the name of their street. That's why the larger youth services community is working to build better partnerships with our middle schools. We want to find as many ways to help as possible.

CS: What else would you like to do?

Rippy: The Middle School Coalition has a strong interest in parent involvement and support. One of our questions has been "how do we help parents hang in there when their kids move from elementary to middle school?"

We realize, of course, that for many kids, parent involvement is an ideal that's not likely to happen. But there's some important research from Stanford University that says the most important thing in turning a young person around socially and academically is for one or two adults to show they really care. It doesn't have to be a parent or a relative -- it can be any adult. If that's true -- and I think it is --then there goes our excuse that "we can't do anything if the parents don't care."

CS: What's the greatest obstacle to success?

Rippy: I don't think the Louisville community as a whole really accepts the idea that we can't survive and prosper unless we make sure the so-called "losers" succeed. Or even accepts the idea that it's possible for them to succeed if we all do our jobs better.

If we really want to move more people off of welfare and into the workforce, then we have to make some dramatic changes in our communities and most importantly in our schools so kids are coming out of high school with the skills they need to get a job and keep it.

The community has to decide that we have a vested interest in every kid succeeding, because their success is directly linked to the community's future prosperity -- maybe even its survival.

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