The Link Between Strong Neighborhood Schools and Attracting Families to Cities

Today I received the following email from a friend:

"I know someone who is moving here this summer and looking for where to live. Has school age children and so being at a good school is important. Can you guys give advice on good areas of town to look?

Not surprisingly, for a family with school-age children moving to a new city, a good school equates to a good neighborhood. As a recent article in Atlantic Cities states: "When given the chance, parents want their children to attend a high-performing school ... that's close to home." This spring, the Dallas Morning News conducted a survey of the best neighborhoods in the Dallas region for families with children. The newspaper found that top-ranked neighborhoods had a high concentration of exemplary-rated schools. Having access to a high performing school in the neighborhood was families' highest priority in ranking a neighborhood after safety.

In Austin lately there has been a policy disconnect between providing good schools and providing good neighborhoods that attract families with children to the city. Last month, Austin voters rejected two out of four Austin Independent School District bond measures, which would have provided $400 million in funding for school facility upgrades and additions, including improvements to the district's arts and athletic facilities. Many of these facility upgrades were the exact type of improvements needed to help attract families to the district.

The bond vote came after our local daily paper went on a rampage against the bonds. One hang up of the Statesman was that the bond package proposed new schools while several of the district's schools remain under-enrolled. The issue of AISD's under-enrolled schools first received heightened attention in 2011 after an AISD task force made preliminary recommendations calling for the closure of nine schools. Following fierce public criticism, the proposal was rejected by the AISD board. There has been little public discussion since then about how to address the district's under-enrolled schools.

Instead of focusing on shutting down schools, the district and city should be working together to transform our under-enrolled schools into neighborhood assets that become a magnet for families with children, thus filling the open seats while also drawing families into the city. A focus on shutting down schools (which appears to still be the Austin Chamber's priority) is shortsighted and fails to consider the key role that strong neighborhood schools play in attracting families with children to a city. As city leaders like Iowa City's mayor know, "without strong investment in neighborhood schools, attracting families and reinvestment to the core of our community becomes difficult.” In a similar vein, the University of North Carolina's Urban Institute found that "a neighborhood that lacks good public school options – or even is just perceived as lacking them – can have trouble attracting the more educated, middle-income families who can bring stability and rising incomes to once-downtrodden areas." And a study for HUD found, "creating an excellent public elementary school can be a powerful marketing tool to attract families to the neighborhood or to persuade those already living in the neighborhood to stay."

I am sitting on a workgroup set up by the joint subcommittee of City of Austin, Travis County, and AISD that is now exploring these issues locally. I am intrigued by what other cities have done to tie together investments in neighborhood schools with attracting new families with children into their schools and neighborhoods. Some examples I have found so far both here and across the country:

• The Goldseker Foundation in Baltimore funded neighborhood-school partnership grants in that city, with the goal of creating desirable neighborhoods through high-quality schools, increasing enrollment and academic quality in the schools, and attracting families with children into the city.
• In St. Louis, Missouri, families migrated back into three neighborhoods to live within the attendance boundaries of a high performing Montessori-based charter school, leading city leaders to see good schools as an opportunity to reverse decades of population loss in the city.
• After Austin Independent School District placed a dual language program at Becker Elementary School in 2010, the school's enrollment increased from 55% to 71% capacity. 
• In Philadelphia, a new neighborhood-based public elementary school was created near the University of Pennsylvania through a partnership with the university, school district, and teacher's union. The creation of the school was part of a larger community development plan aimed at stabilizing the area and attracting new families to the neighborhood. The highly coveted school, which utilizes an innovative, technology-rich curriculum, now has a waiting list.