Abig bomb with a short fuse is how Vincente Weaver describes himself a year ago. With each of life’s disappointments, he ticked away a little more.
A field trip for his sons that he couldn’t pay for. Tick.
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A string of decent-paying jobs that didn’t come his way. Tick.
Another night of watching his family live in government-subsidized housing, knowing he couldn’t afford to move them. Tick.
“It got to the point where I was bitter,” Weaver, 32, says. “I started seeing it bleed into my relationships.”
Desperate, Weaver walked into an unlikely place, but one where he says he knew he could find help: J.C. Nalle Elementary School.
The school, perched on a hill in a part of Southeast Washington where gunfire is common, holds a unique place in a city where schools constantly struggle to counter the chaos beyond their doors. For years, Nalle has been the District’s sole community school, partnering with a nonprofit group and a private corporation to serve not only the children who walk its halls but also adults in the area in need of food or job assistance or simply a sympathetic ear.
The D.C. Council has decided that the city needs more schools like it. Council members this week gave preliminary approval to spending $1 million in the 2013 budget for a pilot program to establish five yet-to-be chosen community schools.
“Schools have always traditionally been the anchor in the community,” says Michael A. Brown (I-At Large), who sponsored the measure. “And you can’t be an anchor if you’re just open from 9 to 3.”
In the council’s vision, he says, schools would serve as neighborhood beacons, catering to the needs of their communities. One might offer an adult literacy program, another a job-training services. At Nalle, adults have been offered everything from conflict resolution classes to help with obtaining their GEDs.
The day Weaver walked into the school, he found a social worker who sat with him for an hour and a half, leaving him with a list of phone numbers and a renewed sense of hope. It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last time that his family sought help at the building on 50th Street. They, perhaps more than most, understand how at its best, a community school can change not just a child, but also a family.
A safe place
Kaedun Brown-Weaver is the talker in the family, speaking in wise nuggets that make him sound much older than other third-graders.
“It’s going to get harder,” he says of school, thinking ahead to college. “My mom says, ‘If you can learn more, you can do more.’ There are no shortcuts to life.”
Without prompting, he excitedly pulls from his backpack a report card. “Four is the highest grade you can get,” he says, showing off mostly fours. “I want to be an engineer. I don’t really know what it is, but my teacher says I should try it when I’m older.”
He and his brothers watched one day from their bedroom window as two neighborhood teenagers were gunned down — a fact that pains their mother, Octavais Brown. She knows she can’t control everything they are exposed to, but she says she can influence how her children see their place in the world.
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