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Jonathan Fickies

On Staten Island, community is tightly woven, hard-won and strongly protected. The “island” is a borough of families that go back generations, and the people who live on the island rely on each other, not on the faraway “city.”

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Jonathan Fickies

At Curtis HS on the island’s north shore, community is on prominent display. Many of the staff are graduates or send their children to the school. Thanksgiving and Christmas are given over to food and clothing drives, with dozens of baskets discreetly directed to the school’s neediest families. Teachers and coaches take students under their individual wings, monitoring their academics, sports and well-being.

So it made perfect sense that Curtis was selected as one of the UFT’s six pilot Community Learning Schools starting in the 2012–13 school year. The school opened its long-awaited Student Health Center this past Dec. 2 in partnership with the Children’s Aid Society, and at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the principal called it a “no-brainer.” The phrase was also used by a community partner and a local councilwoman.

“The whole concept of a community school is embraced by all staff and administrators here,” says Marie Rodriguez, the school’s resource coordinator and a Curtis graduate who sent her own kids to the school. “It’s really an idea that makes sense to people. There’s a lot of buy-in.”

Absorbing changes

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Jonathan Fickies

But Curtis is also undergoing growth and change, which makes the community model a challenge. The second-largest ethnic group after Hispanics is Albanians. There are medical refugees from Iraq and other war-ravaged nations. There is a Muslim Students Association. The principal herself is from Liberia. Rents are rising, and there are turf issues in the surrounding neighborhoods.

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Jonathan Fickies

The new health center, which includes pristine examination rooms, a dental room and a mental health suite, is open to all of Curtis’ 2,400 students, regardless of health insurance or immigration status. Indicative of the pent-up demand, an outreach effort spearheaded by Rodriguez and her student “health ambassadors” had already netted 500 parent permission forms by the opening day.

With support from the Children’s Aid Society, the clinic offers complete physicals for school, sports (which are hugely popular at Curtis) and working papers; immunizations; acute care; reproductive health; health education; and individual, group and family counseling. There are free vision screenings and eyeglasses, dental exams, fluoride treatments and fillings.

Dressed in rose-pink scrubs, nurse Shereber Morris, also a Curtis graduate, says students are just realizing what this means. “The kids said, ‘Oh, Miss, what you gonna do, give us ice packs?’ But now we can order Motrin and they get it in 15 minutes.” There is a doctor and a nurse practitioner on site.

A four-legged stool

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Jonathan Fickies

“Health care is a linchpin of the Community Learning School vision,” says the principal, Dr. Aurelia Curtis, but there are three other legs that are “not as visible but no less important: academic intervention services, parent involvement and youth development.”

In addition to funding the full-time resource coordinator, the UFT has helped support Forward PASS, an after-school program run by Curtis athletic coaches and teachers who provide tutoring, counseling, arts activities and college guidance as “success coaches.”

Junior varsity football coach and special education teacher Joe Baratta, while helping a player graph equations, explains that college was always a goal for the teams, but with Forward PASS “we formalized it and added community service, study hall and tracking data for students.”

For parents, Curtis offers job-readiness training in nursing and medical billing. A recent workshop helped families navigate the federal Affordable Care Act. In the fall, Curtis hosted the Mexican Consulate on Wheels to help 600 parents with immigration questions. In December, the school held a multicultural night with a potluck of dishes from the many cultures of the school’s families. “The cafeteria was packed despite the snow,” says Rodriguez.

Bustle and flow

Curtis has a lot going on, much of it at the same time. Walking the halls can feel like a stroll through the innards of a computer, with students crisscrossing like hundreds of electronic signals as they move between class, health center, college office, sports practice, band rehearsal, arts club, the newspaper, the library and the science labs.

Principal Curtis plans to install a schoolwide database to track that each student is getting all the services that he or she needs to make the student and the community whole. “Schools are going to have to invest in this level of knowledge about their students,” says the principal.

Teachers at Curtis say the Community Learning School has helped organize and give purpose to the bustle in the school. “Curtis always had a community-based outlook,” says John Pillarella, a social studies teacher and the chapter leader. “But the Community Learning Schools have really helped us sharpen our focus and pool our resources to serve the students and the community.”