Non-profits and school districts nationwide will soon vie for $200 million that President Obama envisions as seeding the next generation  Harlem Children’s Zones. A local school superintendent and organizers of the Santee neighborhood in south San Jose, a mix of poor Vietnamese and Hispanic immigrant families, hope to be one of them. They’ve lined up philanthropic dollars and persuaded agencies to come together to form their own Children’s Zone.

The Harlem Children’s Zone is matrix of interwoven schools and social services for children and adults, spanning from cradle to college, that its visionary, Geoffrey Canada, hopes will wipe out intergenerational poverty in New York City’s famous uptown neighborhood.

Hope is the operative word, because, while the commitment is inspiring,  resources are massive,  and some early data of young student are impressive, Harlem Children’s Zone is still years away from fulfilling its mission of getting children to and through college. And researchers can’t yet determine whether positive test scores of elementary students can be attributed to the charter schools that Canada operates, with its extended day and $4,000 per child in extra spending, or from affiliated preschool, parent education and counseling programs.

Nonetheless,  the concept of creating a pipeline of schools and services insulating children from harsh realities of the neighborhood has captured attention of policy makers and politicians, including Obama, who wants Congress to appropriate money over five years for 20 Promise Neighborhoods.

It’s not clear whether Harlem Children’s Zone can be replicated; certainly its scale can’t. Canada is a prodigious fund-raiser; his organization has a $70 million budget and an endowment of $170 million. It spends $19,000 on the 1,2000 students in its two charter schools and $5,000 per child on other children in the 70-block Zone. Compare that with about $7,000 in per student funding in California and the $2 million to $2.5 million per year, matched by private philanthropy, that each Promise Neighborhood will receive.

Services in Harlem start with prenatal care but the first big outreach is Baby College, a nine-week program for parents of children to age three. Then comes Harlem Gems, an intense preschool with a low student-teacher ratio at twice the cost of federal Headstart, followed by, for those with the lucky draw, a spot in Canada’s Promise Academy charter schools, with their extended day, long school year and Saturday programs.

For those not attending the charter schools, Harlem Children’s Zone offers after-school programs for middle schoolers, arts literacy for 12-19 year olds, the Harlem Children’s Health Project, Learn to Earn for high school juniors and seniors, who get a stipend while learning about college and job readiness; and Beacon centers on weekends and afternoons offering tutoring, pregnancy prevention programs and drug counseling. For their parents,  there’s an employment and technology center, Single Stop legal services, a family support center, the Healthy Living Initiative to thwart obesity and TRUCE, a fitness center offering martial arts and nutrition courses.

Franklin-McKinley custom-tailors a model

Franklin-McKinley School District Superintendent John Porter had been envisioning a scaled-down Harlem Children’s Zone in San Jose before Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced Promise Neighborhoods. With $100,000 from the Packard Foundation and an equal amount in government grants, he’s been sowing the seeds for a Franklin McKinley Children’s Zone. Initially it will be a 24-block area with about 1,200 school-age children. Catholic Charities will administer it, and Susan Meyers, a retired dean of education at San Jose State, will direct it. As opposed to past diffuse anti-poverty initiatives, under Promise Neighborhoods, schools will be the hub, and education will be the focus, with college as the goal.

Porter has already shown an ability to break down traditional school barriers in his 11,000 student K-8 district. He has started College Connection, a small seventh through 12^th grade school in which students will take high school courses at the local community college. He has invited in two high-performing Rocketship Education charter schools and plans to convert the district middle school to a charter school.

The police, social service agencies, churches, the juvenile courts, and neighborhood associations have pledged to collaborate. Already there has been one visible result: police foot patrols, at neighbors’ request. This summer, there will be “tiger boot camp” for the 60 percent of kids who don’t attend a public or private preschool.

Regardless of whether it becomes a Promise Neighborhood, Franklin McKinley Children’s Zone will happen in one form or another. That effort, multiplied in hundreds of neighborhoods, can create a checkerboard of change in urban America.