Montclair State University is partnering with school and city officials in Paterson, New Jersey, to combine academic and community support in the low-income neighborhood surrounding Eastside High School.
The effort, called One Square Mile, will be paid for with a $1 million grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, distributed over two years. It places the high school at the center of a wave of new community services.
According to an announcement from the school system, the program at Eastside will provide free meals, mental and physical health services, and academic support. Several local organizations are taking part, including Tier 1 Recovery, which offers drug counseling and other mental health services.
Montclair State President Jonathan Koppell said the approach differs from what schools have often tried before. "We say, 'Well, you know, the reading scores aren't what we hoped they would be. So let's do a reading program,'" he said. But he noted that the students being helped also face problems involving health, food and safety, and that their parents often do not hold jobs that allow them to be home.
"And we actually try to pull it all together and show that multidimensional problems can only be addressed with multidimensional solutions," Koppell said.
Superintendent of Schools Eileen F. Shafer said in the announcement that Eastside would become the 11th "full community school where services are made available to families" in the district. "When students succeed, the whole community succeeds," she said. "This not only makes these services conveniently available to students and families, but it also helps ensure our students' success in school."
Koppell developed the specific model for One Square Mile in his earlier role as dean of the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions at Arizona State University. There, he worked with the Phoenix-area community of Maryvale.
The university campus is only four miles from Eastside High School, which became widely known in the 1980s when then-Principal Joe Clark cracked down on violence and drugs, as depicted in the film "Lean on Me." Yet the two places differ sharply. Montclair State sits atop a hill with stately buildings in an affluent suburb. Paterson is a majority Black and brown city where per capita annual income is $21,064 and a quarter of residents live in poverty, according to the latest U.S. Census figures.
The university is already active in the city, thanks to a $5 million donation from Montclair alumnus and Paterson native Chuck Muth. That gift is funding a museum and learning center at Hinchliffe Stadium, once home to a Negro League baseball team.
Koppell said the work reflects a growing push to build ties between the university and Paterson. Such efforts, he said, show a university saying, "We can't be successful if we're not partnering in a city like Paterson that's just, you know, a stone's throw from our campus."
