UB Expands Partnership With Buffalo's Hamlin Park School 74 Program to Be Pilot For UB Partnerships With Other Area Public Schools

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The University at Buffalo and the Buffalo Public Schools today signed a memorandum of agreement designed to strengthen and expand UB's involvement with Hamlin Park School 74, one of Buffalo's few remaining neighborhood schools.

Among those signing the agreement in a program at the school on Donaldson Road were UB President William R. Greiner and Buffalo Public Schools Superintendent Albert Thompson.

Greiner said the project will serve as a pilot for other partnerships between UB and public schools in the City of Buffalo and throughout Western New York.

"It's a superior example of the kinds of collaborations that can bring new strength to our community, our schools and our university," he added.

In addition to Greiner and Thompson, those signing the agreement were Joyce Harrington, principal of Hamlin Park School 74; Mozella Richardson, president of the Buffalo Board of Education; Muriel A. Moore, UB vice president for public service and urban affairs, and Hugh Petrie, dean of the UB Graduate School of Education.

The partnership agreement reaffirms a commitment on the part of the university and the Buffalo Public Schools to nurture an urban school culture that reconnects schools to their neighborhoods and to the larger metropolitan community.

It formalizes and expands a relationship between UB and Hamlin Park's sixth grade that began in 1989. The initial program involved a project in writing and social studies through which those students, and later the school's seventh and eighth grades, participated in a variety of on-campus activities developed by the UB Graduate School of Education.

The new agreement broadens the program to include a wide range of cooperative endeavors involving several UB professional schools and research centers, its libraries and the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

Greiner noted that "UB is very proud of its collaboration with Hamlin Park School 74. This is a project that has touched a lot of people since its inception in 1989 -- not just the students who participate, but the faculty members who work with them."

He added: "We think that UB and School 74 are doing great work together in getting young people like these excited about a college education -- getting them to think about going to a university as an important goal in their lives -- and in helping their school prepare them to pursue that goal.

"It's a crucial priority for institutions of higher education, especially a public university like ours, to support elementary and secondary education."

Thompson said the partnership involving UB and Hamlin Park School 74 is one of the most comprehensive undertaken by the Buffalo Public Schools.

"UB brings the wealth of knowledge its research community can provide and the sum of the experiences of its faculty to bear on the problems of a single elementary school," he added. "This will make the university a real part of the children's lives and, I am certain, help raise their expectations of themselves. The results of this alliance can be awesome."

To date, the collaboration between UB and Hamlin Park School 74 has provided sixth-grade students with hands-on experience in UB computer labs and opportunities to visit the university to watch and report on films, videos and interactive computer presentations in geography, sociology and a number of other topics.

They also have been provided with a first-hand look at university life and learning, with the goal of making higher education a goal for them. Last year, the program was expanded to include seventh- and eighth-graders and a component on jazz was added to UB's in-school activities.

The expanded project, to be directed by Mwalimu Shujaa, UB assistant professor of education, involves specific activities designed and managed by the school's faculty, students and parents; by UB faculty and students, and by members of the Buffalo Public Schools administration and faculty.

Among these activities is the sharing of educational technologies. UB will loan computers and software to the school and provide computer training to Hamlin Park students and teachers. UB and the Buffalo Public Schools will develop joint activities that support culturally relevant teaching. UB faculty will offer training in conflict resolution. Library learning enrichment programs will be presented by the UB libraries.

The agreement also calls for the development of strategies to expand parental involvement in the school's curriculum and policy decisions. Such strategies include student-parent reading projects, parent-teacher study groups and workshops, and the establishment of ongoing support teams and advisory boards made up of parents, teachers, neighbors and school alumni.

Shujaa said that several UB faculty research projects will be conducted at the school as well. One will be a case study of the processes and policies used by Hamlin Park Principal Joyce Harrington in her effort to effect a change in the school culture at Hamlin Park. Another, conducted by the UB Center for Applied Public Affairs Studies, will examine the relationship between the school and its immediate community, with an eye toward improving their interaction.

"I think we all agree," said Shujaa, "that we've worked together well in the past in a way that's benefited the children as well as the UB education faculty and students. We've seen the eyes of these young people light up at their new, previously unimagined accomplishments. And as educators of teachers, we've taken our know-how off of the campus and into the community, where it's taken on new life and energy."

Harrington, the school's principal, said the relationship with UB has had major benefits for the students.

"You must remember," she said, "that a lot of our children never travel outside their neighborhoods. Many of them don't even know what a college looks like, much less have any idea that they could someday go to school at one. Their visits to the campus have increased their comfort level -- they see college as something attainable, their sense of their own possibilities has increased."

Their participation, Harrington added, has encouraged the children to view a college education as a goal. "The first children in the program," she said, "seem to have carried this enthusiasm with them into high school.

"And their writing skills! These students used to think of writing as punishment," she said. "Now they think what they write is important, that what they feel is important! They have such pride in what they've done.

"Our school culture isn't magic," she added, "but it achieves its goal. I want parents and neighbors to know they have this really good school right around the corner. Hamlin Park isn't a magnet school -- we don't have a swimming pool, we don't have an honors class -- but we have very good teachers who care deeply about these children and that makes a difference.

"Everyone wants something fine and special for their children and they should know that those fine, special things can happen in your own community. It's going on right here every day."