Money for minds:

Some of Omaha's richest support initiative to help poor kids succeed

Every year in the Omaha area, hundreds of kids - mostly the poorest - drop out of school into lives of dead-end jobs, financial struggle and worse.

But what if all those kids had had a preschool program that kept them from entering kindergarten months behind their classmates?

What if they'd had the guidance of mentors and tutors and access to after-school activities?

What if someone had intervened when they skipped classes or got into drugs or gangs?

What if those kids had known that if they made it through school, a scholarship would be waiting - transforming a college education from a lost cause to a guarantee?

How many could have been saved?

Under a far-reaching new education initiative, Omahans in the future may not have to ask such questions.

A group of people known for accomplishing major projects in Omaha has launched what national experts say is the most sweeping effort any community has ever tried to help children growing up in poverty achieve school success.

The vision of Building Bright Futures: to knock down, one by one, every barrier that stands in the way of all kids making the grade, with an ultimate promise that all poor children in Douglas and Sarpy Counties who earn diplomas will have the money they need for college or technical school.

That last piece of the plan alone has been estimated to cost $15 million to $20 million annually. The entire initiative is far pricier.

But given the people involved, the money may not be the drive's biggest obstacle.

The founders of Building Bright Futures, led by Richard Holland and Michael Yanney, include some of Omaha's wealthiest citizens. They have made it clear they're willing to reach into their own deep pockets - and actively work to tap other sources - to make it happen.

"We know it's a big number," said John Cavanaugh, the former Omaha congressman who is chief administrator for the initiative. "But we also think it's very much achievable."

Likely to be more challenging will be harnessing the resources of the various players already providing services to youths, earning the confidence of parents and students, and getting the two counties' 11 school districts to work together.

The initiative proposes a potentially controversial data system for tracking students. It also will monitor service providers and may require them to meet certain standards. Those things are to be expected with the promise of additional funding, Cavanaugh said.

The initiative is not taking on a simple issue. The achievement gap - between minority and white, rich and poor - long has bedeviled educators.

"It's an enormous challenge, but also an enormously worthwhile initiative," said Michael Casserly of the Council of Great City Schools, an organization of the nation's large, urban school districts. "It sounds like it involves all the community's kids at a scale I don't think any other major community anywhere has come close to trying."

If the achievement gap is to be closed, Casserly and other education experts say, it will take such a comprehensive effort. They said Omaha's experiment will have the eyes of people all over the country.

The timing appears right. The public rollout of Building Bright Futures comes in the wake of a World-Herald report last week that the Omaha area has one of the nation's highest poverty rates for blacks, including the highest child poverty rate.

"This couldn't be more timely," said State Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha. "It couldn't be more important."

The promise of Building Bright Futures can't come soon enough for Maddie Fennell of Franklin Elementary in north Omaha, Nebraska's teacher of the year.

She sees the struggles of kids she loves every day, including a sixth-grader who watched as a friend was shot to death. She said she thinks, "Who are we going to lose while we're waiting?"

Following a model previously successful in the redevelopment of Omaha's riverfront and other city initiatives, Building Bright Futures last fall commissioned SRI International, a research and development firm, to conduct a study of the challenges faced by Omaha youths.

SRI's report catalogs the barriers to school achievement, inventories existing resources, identifies holes and proposes some things Omaha can do.

SRI found that of the roughly 10,000 students that are in the ninth grade in Douglas and Sarpy Counties in any given year, nearly 2,000 won't make it to graduation. The vast majority are in the Omaha Public Schools, the district that includes most of the metro area's minority students and where more than half of the students have family incomes low enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

There's a high cost for that failure, both for the individual and society.

For dropouts, it means an average of $11,000 a year in reduced earnings over a lifetime, the SRI study found. Over time, dropouts contribute to billions of lost earnings and economic activity in the metro area.

In addition, dropouts are more likely than graduates to commit crimes, more likely to end up on public assistance and will pay almost $100,000 less in taxes over a lifetime.

"The human toll on the lost youth themselves is striking," the SRI report says, "and the toll on the city of Omaha is just as great."

Kids at risk of dropping out must be reached early, SRI said. Studies indicate poor and minority children enter kindergarten 19 months to two years behind their peers without a solid preschool background.

Yet only about a fourth of the nearly 5,000 eligible children in Douglas County receive services through Head Start, the federally funded kindergarten-readiness program for the poor. There aren't enough dollars for more.

Such holes in available services can be found right down the line, SRI said.

It is those holes that Building Bright Futures intends to fill, Cavanaugh said, by working with current providers to increase capacity and by helping to launch new providers if needed.

So far, the initiative has reached out to community leaders. Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey has been serving on the executive committee, and OPS Superintendent John Mackiel praised the comprehensive approach.

The reaction generally has been one of hope and excitement.

"Every student - oh my gosh - that is the American dream," Rebecca Valdez of the Chicano Awareness Center said of the scholarship promise.

Tommie Wilson, president of Omaha NAACP, said: "This is gonna be dynamite! . . . We're looking at putting the whole big puzzle together."

Westside Community Schools Superintendent Ken Bird likes the two-county approach. The problem of at-risk youth is communitywide, he said, and the solution must be, too.

"Hearts and minds are in the right place to help us have a better community," he said.

The two-county structure of the initiative is similar to that proposed by state lawmakers who are debating how the metro schools should be organized. Cavanaugh said the structure is not patterned on that proposed learning community, but comes out of a shared belief that the focus needs to be on all metro kids.

John Langan, a former OPS school board member and current dean of the University of Nebraska at Omaha's education college, believes much good will come from the effort. But there's also reason to be skeptical, he said.

Sustaining funding for such a major push will be difficult, he said. And no outside group can control the biggest void behind youths who fail: their home life.

"What do you do when the parents aren't there?" he said. "You can't regulate that stuff."

Fred Schott, president and CEO of Boys and Girls Club of Omaha, said the initiative is focusing on "the right six things to make a long-term impact."

He said, however, that the organizers should be prepared for some suspicion in the community. There's understandable anger, he said, that it's taken so long to recognize the area's poverty.

"Our north Omaha community has seen many task forces," he said.

The founders of Building Bright Futures all have funded successful education programs before.

Susie Buffett, daughter of Omaha investor Warren Buffett, is a proponent of early childhood education and helped to establish a model preschool in north Omaha. Others have contributed significantly to programs that mentor, provide scholarships and recognize school achievement.

Based on their experiences, all share the belief that a far wider and more direct assault on the achievement gap is needed.

"I wouldn't involve myself or my family's fortune unless we were able to do it that way," said Holland, a retired advertising executive who was among early investors in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Given Omaha's size, generous citizens and track record for getting things done, the goal is achievable, Susie Buffett said.

"I hope we're going to touch every base here," she said. "What an opportunity for Omaha."

The next step is formation of task forces in six specific areas, all addressing points where disadvantaged youths are falling behind or dropping out. Cavanaugh expects them to start meeting by June and each to work for six to 12 months, depending on the topic.

Those groups will be asked to come up with specific goals and plans, work through the details - such as how to define eligible youths - and arrive at final price tags. Executive committee members pledge to then raise funds, possibly drawing on federal and state as well as private dollars.

The task forces also will serve another vital role: taking what started as the brainchild of some wealthy individuals and turning it into a true communitywide drive.

"The answers have to come from the community," Cavanaugh said. "Together, let's find the best way to deal with it."

Cavanaugh said the early childhood and mentoring initiatives probably will focus initially on OPS, where the majority of at-risk kids attend school. But he said the scholarship promise from the start will apply to all poor kids in the two counties.

That promise has proven to be a powerful incentive.

During the first year a similar promise was made in Kalamazoo, Mich., the number of dropouts dropped from 265 to 21.

While Kalamazoo and other cities have attacked the achievement gap from various angles, "nothing comes close" to the systematic, preschool-to-college approach under discussion in Omaha, said Patrick Shields, director for SRI's center for educational policy.

"It would be misleading to say this can be easily done," he said. "But if it can be done, it will be in Omaha."

World-Herald staff writer Jeffrey Robb contributed to this report.

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