Community Action Project of Tulsa County, Inc.
Project Title: Planning a Kendall-Whittier Promise Neighborhood Community Action Project of Tulsa County (CAP) Conditions in Tulsa, Oklahoma are ideal for preparing to implement a Promise Neighborhood. By blending federal, state, and private funds, the city has been able to support the growth of a robust early childhood infrastructure and has emerged as a national leader in establishing programs for infants and toddlers. Already the focal point of research projects at Georgetown and Harvard, and the first city in the country with two cutting-edge Educare facilities, Tulsa is now a laboratory of innovation for designing education strategies that can combat intergenerational poverty. The Kendall-Whittier Neighborhood (one contiguous urban, non-tribal area) covers 2.5 square miles near downtown Tulsa, inhabited by 14,000 residents, nearly 3,000 of whom are children. Within these blocks exists the framework for what could become a model continuum of cradle-throughcollege-to-career solutions, in which children enter at Educare and exit next door at the University of Tulsa. The neighborhood is anchored by Kendall-Whittier Elementary, an effective community school serving 1,025 children and defying the odds amongst a patchwork of low-performing middle and high schools, poor health outcomes, juvenile crime, substandard housing, and a large concentration of low-income families.
Leading the Promise Neighborhood planning effort in Tulsa is Community Action Project (CAP), one of the largest and most innovative anti-poverty organizations in Oklahoma. CAP's relevant experience includes ongoing place-based neighborhood projects where the agency has built networks of housing, education, medical care, and asset building services as part of a mission to help families achieve self-sufficiency. CAP's theory of change, that early education for very young children combined with interventions to strengthen the economic and physical health of low-income parents will substantially reduce intergenerational poverty, guides implementation of a range of programs designed to foster caring structures, basic security, educational attainment, occupational skills, personal responsibility, and a sense of hope.
Partner organizations described in the memorandum of understanding represent a range of educational institutions with experience serving children from birth to college, and also government and social service agencies including: Crosstown Learning Center, Tulsa Educare, Tulsa Public Schools, University of Oklahoma - School of Community Medicine, Kendall Whittier, Inc., University of Tulsa, City of Tulsa, and the Oklahoma State Department of Education. National partners committed to planning a Promise Neighborhood in Tulsa include: Child Trends (independent research and policy center), and Battelle for Kids (counsel on complex educational improvement challenges). Oklahoma's most prominent philanthropic institution, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, is providing the financial support and political leadership to ensure the Promise Neighborhood endeavor in Tulsa is a success.
Collectively, these partners will tailor measurement systems during the planning year that incorporate locally-defined indicators around the core of required academic, family, and community support indicators so that planning decisions are fully informed by meaningful data unique to Tulsa.