White House “Urban Czar” Tours Perspectives

By Maureen Kelleher on Thursday, November 5, 2009

Address: 8131 S May St., Chicago, IL 60620

Perspectives-Calumet Middle School on Oct. 30 hosted a visit from Adolfo Carrión, Jr., director of the White House Office on Urban Affairs, who said he hoped to replicate initiatives like the school's Elev8 program.

In Chicago to address a conference of LISC/Chicago’s New Communities Program, Carrion toured the school, met with a sixth-grade class and visited the school-based health center that’s the centerpiece of LISC’s Elev8 program in five middle schools.

Adolfo Carrion tours Perspectives-Calumet Middle School with (from left) Principal Tamara Davis and Elev8 Director Tenisha Jones.

Eric Young Smith

“He was very impressed with the health center,” said Tenisha Jones, Elev8 director for Perspectives and the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation (GADC). “I heard him say, ‘We need more of this.’ ”

The visit presented an opportunity to showcase the Elev8 model to a high-level representative of the Obama administration. President Obama created the Office on Urban Affairs last February, with the mission to develop a national strategy to help cities and their surrounding suburbs increase jobs, housing and quality of life.

Carrión, a city planner, grew up in New York City’s Bronx borough and served two terms as borough president before Obama tapped him to lead the new office. As a New Yorker, Carrión is very familiar with the Harlem Children’s Zone, a comprehensive effort to help children and families within a defined geographic area.

The Zone began in 1997 serving a 24-block section of Harlem. By 2007 its network of services, including parenting workshops, charter schools and programs to manage asthma and obesity, were serving 7,400 children and more than 4,100 adults over nearly 100 blocks.

Carrion visits the health center at Perspectives, about which he said: "We need to do more of this."

Eric Young Smith

When Chicago Elev8 partners compared their work to the Harlem effort, “He understood that,” said Carlos Nelson, executive director of GADC.

Representatives from Chicago Elev8 will attend a national conference in New York November 9-10 to learn more about the Harlem Children’s Zone and the Obama administration’s effort to replicate their success through a national Promise Neighborhoods Initiative.

Back in Chicago, Carrión also connected with the young man who took his photo for the Perspectives yearbook, sharing that he too had worked on the yearbook when he was in school.

“It was a really, really good time,” said Principal Tamara Davis. “Not just seeing the school, but visiting the South Side of Chicago and seeing really good and positive things regarding academics and living a healthy lifestyle.”