MACON CHILDREN’S PROMISE NEIGHBORHOOD
“A community ready to come together to do whatever it takes to ensure educational opportunities and academic success for at-risk students from Macon’s most distressed neighborhoods.”
Members of the Macon Children’s Promise Neighborhood design team took a retreat on January 7 to celebrate the planning grant award and to continue planning. During the retreat they took a guided tour of the Promise Neighborhood target area on Macon’s own Sweet Melissa.
What is a Promise Neighborhood?
A Promise Neighborhood is a neighborhood with a coordinated and comprehensive focus on the education of its children. 
How is a Promise Neighborhood chosen?
A Promise Neighborhood is chosen because too few of its children graduate from high school prepared for a career or further education. Macon Children’s Promise Neighborhood is the neighborhoods zoned into Ingram-Pye and Hartley Elementary Schools. These children go on to attend Ballard-Hudson Middle School and Southwest High School. 
These two school zones cover most of the Tindall Heights and Unionville areas of Central South Macon.
Why was Southwest High School chosen as a focus?
In 2011, only 36% of Southwest High School students graduated with a regular diploma. In other words, almost two-thirds of the students who began as 9th graders at Southwest in 2007 either dropped out or did not graduate on time or left with a special ed diploma or a certificate of attendance. That means in 2011 that 338 young adults from Central South neighborhoods did not receive an education adequate for them to earn a decent living and support their families. This will stunt their futures and drag the neighborhood down.
What are the goals of Macon Children’s Promise Neighborhood?
Within five years of implementation, by the Spring of 2018, our goal is that 75% of Southwest students will graduate with regular education diplomas and that 75% of those graduating students will continue on to college or job training. We want to double this year’s graduation rate in five years. Within ten years, our aim is a 90% graduation rate with 90% of those students continuing to advance their education after graduation.
Why will it take so long to have an impact?
The chances for academic success don’t just start in high school. If children do not learn to read by third grade, their chances of eventual high school graduation are very poor. If children are not ready to learn in kindergarten, they will have a tough time catching up with vocabulary, numbers, and social skills. If a pregnant mother or an infant does not receive good medical care and adequate nutrition, the baby’s mental and physical development can be damaged. Changing the educational climate in a Promise Neighborhood begins in the cradle. The full impact of a comprehensive and coordinated focus on education in Macon Children’s Promise Neighborhood will not be seen for two decades, when the babies born in Tindall Heights and Unionville in 2012 graduate from college in 2034. Real change in these neighborhoods requires a long-range vision and commitment.
How will Macon Children’s Promise Neighborhood accomplish its goals?
It will communicate with parents in the neighborhood and invite them to join in the effort as partners. It will identify the infants, children, and youth in these neighborhoods who are most at-risk of academic failure and offer support services and educational enrichment for them and their families at every step of the way from cradle-through college-to career. It will align these services and opportunities with the school system’s strategic plan to transform the education that these children will receive at Ingram-Pye, Hartley, Ballard-Hudson, and Southwest. It will share data among partner organizations about child and family needs, coordinate community services to meet these needs, and track key indicators of progress toward the goals of healthy development and academic success.
Who are the partners in Macon Children’s Promise Neighborhood?
Mercer University, Central Georgia Technical College, the Bibb County School System, and the Macon Housing Authority are lead partners, but over 30 additional community organizations are collaborating in the initiative, including United Way of Central Georgia, the Peyton Anderson Foundation, the Community Foundation of Central Georgia, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Macon Mayor Robert Reichert and Bibb County Commission Chair Sam Hart, Sr. have been strong champions for the initiative.
How is Macon Children’s Promise Neighborhood funded?
Each organization in the collaborative brings its own resources to the effort. In addition, Macon Children’s Promise Neighborhood has received a one-year, $500,000 Planning Grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop a five-year strategic plan for the initiative, based on a comprehensive community assessment of the neighborhood and its needs and assets. That strategic plan will be used to seek additional funding to scale up the initiative to reach at least 65% of all the children in the neighborhood. Macon Children’s Promise Neighborhood also plans to apply next fall for a Promise Neighborhood Implementation Grant, which could provide up to $6 million a year for five years to drive the effort forward. Mercer University is the fiscal agent for the Planning Grant.
What about the rest of the city and its children?
As funding becomes available and as the initiative proves itself capable of producing transformative educational change in distressed neighborhoods, Macon Children’s Promise Neighborhood will expand to include other neighborhoods in Macon. But the effort has to start somewhere, and it has to concentrate enough resources in one area to produce real change. Spreading our community’s resources too thinly and scattering them too widely will never work to produce the change we need. This initiative is committed to focused, comprehensive, and coordinated use of our educational and community resources. We will be able to grow those resources for other neighborhoods, when we can prove to ourselves and the world that our strategy works.
How can I get involved?
The planning work for this next year will be carried out by the Partners Advisory Council. The Council has twelve working committees to gather data and propose solutions to problems—and to convene other organizations that share these common concerns. We would welcome your participation on a working committee. These committees include: Early Childhood; K12 School-Age Children; Post-Secondary and Career; Arts and Humanities; Parent Engagement; Neighborhood Empowerment; Communication, Connectivity & Transportation; Health & Safety; Evaluation & Assessment; Resource Development; Board Development; and Finance. The Partners Advisory Council is chaired by Sam Hart, Sr.
Who do I contact for additional information or to get involved?
Contact either Peter Brown (478-301-5372; brown_pc@mercer.edu) or Mary Alice Morgan (478-301-5422; morgan_ma@mercer.edu). They serve, on Mercer University’s behalf, as co-directors for the Promise Neighborhood Planning Grant. Additional information about Promise Neighborhoods can be found at the U.S. Department of Education website http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/obama-administration-announces-2011-promise-neighborhoods-grant-winners
