The Concept

New schools should be centers of neighborhoods and, likewise, neighborhoods and communities should serve as centers of learning.

Working with another civic-minded project of Community Partners, Los Angeles businessman David Abel said he began to see how desperately in need California’s urban school districts are for an innovative approach to new school construction. New Schools Better Neighborhoods (NSBN) was created to promote the idea of designing smaller school facilities that will function as community and social service centers in a more efficient and imaginative use of limited urban land.

The Challenge

To raise enough awareness and support among all stakeholders to effectively upend the outmoded “factory model” of school construction that has defined public schools for decades. “We want to be a catalyst for change in other institutions,” David Abel says. “We’re not in the business of creating new ones.”

How Community Partners Has Helped

NSBN grew out of David Abel’s work with the Metropolitan Forum Project, which addressed a “smart growth” agenda and fiscal reform of state and local governments. “Community Partners allowed us to be creative in changing focus and adapting our funding, our civic partners and resources,” Abel says.

“They have been an indispensable partner...not only have they been our fiscal sponsor, but also our collaborator, particularly in our interface with the philanthropic agencies, nonprofit community and civic entities that have supported NSBN.”

Though NSBN’S mission is daunting, there have already been successes. A school construction bond set aside $100 million for just the kind of innovative school site planning and development NSBN advocates.

“This project has fundamentally changed the conversation around the way school districts build schools,” says Community Partners’ President Paul Vandeventer, who works closely with David Abel on the NSBN project. “There’s never been any kind of citizen-led pushback like this before.”

SOURCE: Community Partners 2001-2002 Biennial Report

PROJECT STATUS: NSBN has been a project of Community Partners since 2003.

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