Evansville Promise Neighborhood makes significant strides in first year of federal grant
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More than one year after Evansville was selected to create a Promise Neighborhood—a support network for underresourced communities—stakeholders have made great progress in setting up infrastructure for the long-term project.
In March of 2023, the University of Evansville announced the community received a $30 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education for the initiative. After partner agencies matched those funds, the total amount invested in the Evansville Promise Neighborhood (EPN) topped $62 million.
“It’s a 5- to 20-year effort. Some communities try for decades to get one of these things. Our community has tried for a long time, but the forces just came to be at the right time when we were ready to do this,” said Erin Lewis, executive director of UE’s Center for Innovation and Change (CIC).
So far, EPN’s accomplishments include hiring a full-time team, securing Memorandum of Understanding agreements and establishing a sustainability council. In a news release, a DOE spokesperson said EPN has “put forth a sophisticated approach and plan,” and is an example for other grantees.
“From all the conversations we’re having with folks in Washington and other Promise Neighborhoods, this community is doing it unusually well, particularly for a first-time Promise Neighborhood. And that’s a testament to the decades of work that have come before this to build all those relationships and UE’s unique ability to bring people together and do this kind of work in an innovative way,” Lewis said.
What is the Evansville Promise Neighborhood?
Lewis describes EPN as wraparound care for multiple generations in the community from cradle to career.
“It’s a big, transformative investment from the United States Department of Education in communities around the country that have shown both high need and high capacity to deliver collaborative services,” she said.
EPN includes select census tracts and six schools based on areas of most concentrated need. Kim McWilliams—chief officer of family, school and community partnerships for the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corp.—coordinates support for students at Evans Elementary School, Lincoln School, Delaware Elementary School, Lodge Community School, Glenwood Leadership Academy and Bosse High School.
“My role is bringing the people together, whoever needs to be at the table to build a greater understanding of how we can improve and meet the outcomes that we’ve set forth within the Evansville Promise Neighborhood,” he said.
EPN is tasked with achieving 10 outcomes that span the cradle-to-career journey. Derek McKillop, EVSC director of community learning centers, said five outcomes are focused on academics.
“The other five are more surrounding neighborhood and community revitalization. They will paint a clear picture of success markers. We hope to see things like school day attendance and academic performance improve. We hope to build a measure of progress in the neighborhood, but we have other markers to hold ourselves accountable for,” he said.
The outcomes will be measured by Government Performance and Results Act indicators. Lewis gave an example of an endeavor that could be calculated under the Healthy Students outcome: increasing the percentage of fruits and vegetables that students can access.
“There are a number of ways the school district will handle that through our partners. But in addition to that, because we’re a Changemaker campus, we can look at that in some creative ways,” she said. “Through our Changelab activities, we hope to have one of [Evansville-based anu’s smart gardens] in each of the six schools and that we can partner with creative chefs in the community to teach kids what to do with those vegetables to help them get them home.”
Year one accomplishments
Since securing the grant, EPN has hired and onboarded a full-time staff, consisting of a director (McKillop), program coordinator, marketing coordinator, data program and evaluation manager and accountant.
MOU agreements have also been signed, with 22 partner agencies coming together with UE to outline program and service provisions, data sharing and frequency, and budget approval procedures for fund distribution.
“Even though a year has passed, not a lot of Promise Neighborhoods across the country get to the point of having all of the contracts completed within that first year,” said McKillop. “One of the strengths that Evansville has—and something that was central as we wrote the application—is we have a number of community-based organizations that are ready and willing and able to step in and do this type of work.”
At the first partner agency meeting, the group discussed more than 65 unique programs and services they wanted to offer.
“To get to a high level of function, everyone who’s involved in this initiative has to know what everyone else is doing so that we can align those programs and services,” McKillop said.
Each program and service was mapped into one of four focus areas: early health and education, student achievement and success, postsecondary education and workforce readiness, and neighborhood and community revitalization.
“All of that is impactful to building a resilient and a successful community within that Promise Neighborhood, but also that in turn increases and builds a strong, vibrant school system,” said McWilliams.
In addition, a sustainability council of dozens of regional leaders from all sectors is already in place, headed by UE president Christopher Pietruszkiewicz.
“You can’t use any of the Promise Neighborhood funds to sustain the effort, and they require you to sustain the effort. So the university has separated that work entirely from the execution of the outcomes and started right away on it, which we’re learning is unusual. Some grantees might wait until a little bit later in their grant, year three or four, to try and figure out how to sustain this,” said Lewis.
Year two expectations
While other grantees take three years to achieve full implementation, McKillop believes most if not all of EPN’s programs and services will be in operation by the end of the second year.
“We have early education case managers that work with the youngest kids. We have transitional case managers, we have attendance case managers and then we have some administrative staff as well that are coordinating all of those programs and services at the school level,” he said.
Lewis said these academic initiatives translate to more students being signed up for kindergarten, which profoundly impacts their educational career and can lead to fewer attendance issues.
“One of our Promise Neighborhood schools has been experimenting with incentives, using field trips to get kids to come to school. And it’s working dramatically. It could be part of the answer to get kids to come to class. So we’re getting that information out and sharing it,” she said.
UE is also setting up a K-12 ChangeLab ecosystem at each of the six schools, which Lewis expects to be complete by the end of year two.
“We’re operating at a K-12 level for the first time. And not just the kids who normally raise their hands to engage in social innovation or entrepreneurship work. This will find ways to engage every kindergartner through 8th grade for middle school and every 9th through 12th grader for high school,” she said. “We’ll be having the kids and families tell us what they want to see done in their neighborhoods. Then, it’ll be this office’s job to make that happen for them.”
McWilliams plans to focus on continued success and understanding of the EPN initiative as the second year progresses.
“We were one of three in the country awarded this grant in 2023. That speaks highly to the Evansville community,” he said. “We’re starting to gain that momentum, that we’re all in this together. It’s not, ‘The community has to do this. The school corporation has to do this. Our families have to do this.’ It’s all of us in there together to meet those standards of success.”