Roosevelt Middle School: Bridging Cultures, Creating Community

A small blue and green globe is passed from hand to hand as parents, staff, and community partners introduce themselves and share about a cultural tradition or characteristic that they’re proud of – and that they want other members of their school community to understand and appreciate, too. David shares that he values the humility of Japanese people. Sandra is proud of the role food and family play in her Salvadoran culture. Esther speaks about the community orientation of Koreans and their respect for elders. The activity is part of a Restorative Justice circle and sets the tone for Roosevelt Middle School’s Spring retreat. Each introduction reinforces the connection among participants and deepens their appreciation for the gifts and traditions of their diverse school community.

Located in the Oakland’s San Antonio District, Roosevelt reflects the multi-cultural and multi-lingual richness of its surrounding neighborhood. Walking through classrooms or visiting the cafeteria at lunch, visitors may hear as many as a dozen different languages being spoken, as nearly one-third of its students – and even more parents and guardians – are learning to speak English. Many students are newcomers to the U.S., including refugees fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries of Guatemala, Nepal, and Burma.

For newcomers and more established families alike, Roosevelt’s full-service community school provides the tightly integrated services and supports that are vital to students’ success. An on-site health center offers easy access to medical care. The after-school program is a seamless extension to the school day, providing a safe and affordable place for students to receive academic support, enjoy a hot meal, and explore enrichment activities. Over the years, students and their families have received a range of services through Roosevelt’s web of partnerships, including counseling, tax preparation support, and food and housing assistance.

It’s that tight integration of services and supports, together with its team approach to addressing challenges, that earned Roosevelt Middle School the 2014 Community School Award from Oakland Unified School District, says Andrea Bustamante, the district’s director of community school partnerships. “We want our neighbors to see Roosevelt as an asset and as a center for the community,” says Principal Cliff Hong. “Roosevelt should be their school,” he adds. “A place where they are welcomed and supported.”

Healthy Students, Better Learners

With a history stretching back nearly 15 years, the Roosevelt Student Health Center is one of the most well established and tightly integrated school-based clinics in the district. The Center, located in the basement of the school, is managed by La Clinica de la Raza, a leader in the city and throughout the country in providing community-based health services. At Roosevelt, the health center is not simply located in the school. It is part of the school. Members of the health center staff participate in school committees and leadership structures to facilitate communication between the clinic and the broader school community and to bring a health perspective to school-wide concerns or challenges.

Because of this team approach, Clinic Supervisor Mizan Alkebulan-Abakah and her staff have been able to work closely with school leadership to integrate health services into the school culture and the school day, with minimal disruption to classroom learning. For example, every morning, classroom teachers receive a list of students who have appointments in the Health Center. The introduction of this simple, yet high-impact system enables teachers to more easily coordinate class projects and testing, and reduces the need for disruptive phone calls to classrooms.

“We want to empower students with positive health-seeking behavior,” says Alkebulan-Abakah. That means, in part, making it safe and easy for the teenagers to acknowledge their health needs and then to seek out the services necessary to address them. Just as middle school students are developing the academic habits that will stay with them in high school and beyond, Alkebulan-Abakah says they are also developing the health habits that will carry them into adulthood.

The Health Center provides both basic health services, such as immunizations and regular check-ups, as well as support for the ever-changing needs of adolescents, ranging from minor first aid to crisis intervention. All Roosevelt students are eligible to receive services, regardless of immigration status or ability to pay. Clinic staff helps parents complete paperwork for Medi-Cal, and the cost of visits and services are adjusted based on family income. Just about every student on campus walks through the doors of the Health Center at least once each year and many would not have access to routine medical services without the school-based option.

The Health Center has also expanded its services to respond to the needs of the community, adding dental and behavioral health services, for example. Counseling interns from John F. Kennedy University provide additional support, as do counselors from Asian Community Mental Health Services and Alameda County Behavioral Health Providers.

You Can’t Learn If You’re Not In School

Understanding the link between good health and good attendance, Alkebulan-Abakah and her staff have also played a critical role in successfully addressing one of Roosevelt’s most costly challenges: chronic absences, defined as missing 10 percent or more of the school year – about 18 days of school. Principal Hong first learned about the adverse impact of chronic absence on students’ academic success at a school district meeting in 2010. Armed with this new information, he took a closer look at Roosevelt’s attendance data and discovered that 15 percent of his students missed the equivalent of one month or more of school each year.

“I quickly realized that the Number One academic intervention we could implement would be to make sure our students were getting to school,” says Hong. Under his leadership, staff began with an in-depth look at overall absence rates and trends, then sought to understand the causes of each student’s absences and develop a personalized strategy to improve attendance.

Their efforts have paid off. Roosevelt has cuts its chronic absence rate in in half, from a high point of over 15 percent in 2010-11. And, as Hong predicted, the added time in school translated into a boost in student achievement – Roosevelt’s Academic Performance Index (API) increased 30 points in the first year that the school implemented its chronic absence strategy, the highest growth of any middle school in the district.

A key factor in Roosevelt’s success was the development of an Attendance Team, a crosscutting group that includes the attendance clerk, the school nurse, the community school coordinator, and other key staff. The team is responsible for monitoring students who are chronically absent – or who are at risk of becoming so – and then creating a plan to address the cause of their poor attendance.

In addition to personalized plans for each student, the school also employs strategies to address patterns they observe among groups of students, including efforts to increase students’ sense of safety at school – another critical factor in attendance. For example, the school, with support from Alkebulan-Abakah, introduced race and gender-specific healing circles, where girls could have a safe space to interact and share their thoughts. The first circle, for African American girls, was so successful that the school later added gender-specific circles for Asian and Latino girls, as well as African American and Latino boys.