Community Problem-Solving 101

By John Shea

Launched in Boston a decade ago, the City Year program continues to be one of the best efforts in the nation aimed at providing young people with hands-on opportunities to engage in community-service work--and to grow and learn in the process. Unfortunately, that nonprofit program's ongoing struggle has been trying to find the millions of dollars needed to reach more kids and build a financially sustainable organization in the face of annual operating costs of roughly $20,000 per participating corps member.

Public high schools, on the other hand, are operating off a fairly stable revenue stream (our property taxes and the like) and are serving millions of teenagers at a relatively economical annual cost of around $6,000 or $7,000 per student. What the schools are struggling with is providing all of our children with an engaging and relevant education of high quality.

What follows logically from this--assuming that (1) we believe more of our kids should be working together, learning about their communities, and applying their knowledge and skills to improve the world; (2) we are committed to building higher-quality schools that give students an authentic, engaging context in which to apply and see the relevance of what they are learning; and (3) we recognize the need to be as cost-effective as possible with our finite dollars--is that every one of our high schools (public and otherwise) should have a City Year-like service-corps program based in the school and fully...