INTERVIEW WITH BETINA JEAN-LOUIS (sound file)
Director of Evaluation at the Harlem Children’s Zone

At the meeting at Ed Gordon’s, I had asked BJ whether we could interview someone in leadership at HCZ to talk about it in general. BJ volunteered herself and I said I would contact her to set up a date. I sent her an e-mail on May 22. She never answered. Eventually, Linda arranged for us to meet with BJ at 2 or 3. I asked for 1:30. The response was not immediate. I called HCZ, got her voice mail, and then got a call back saying that it was OK with 1:30 and that she sent a message to Linda about this.

So we arrived at HCZ at 1:30, stopped at the security desk. The man there was on the phone. When he got to us he was very friendly (not “security guard”) and asked whether we were doctors. We said no, but he sent us to the 5th floor (he had not heard of BJ and did not look for her name in a phone book ). We rode to the 5th floor with two white women. There we were told by a receptionist that we should follow these women as we were on the same program. The women looked at us and said “they are not with us” and moved down a corridor at the end of which was a sign saying something about health. The receptionist then sent us to the 6th floor where we were told by another receptionist to take a seat and wait for BJ. We did for less than 5 minutes and then BJ came and walked her to her office.

Once out of the reception area, we entered a business area with a long row of cubicles in the center and private offices with window at the periphery. Many of these offices look the same as the one BJ occupies. They are just big enough for a desk in the divide position, two chairs on the little area on the outside of the desk and a few filing cabinets. Nice view over Harlem looking south (this makes the building one of the highest in for a long way south). I notice some sort of certificate on the wall mentioned a degree for BJ from the Columbia Business School. BJ rearranges the chair, sits behind the desk, and we proceed.

Very little opening chit-chat. BJ asks how we will identify institutions like HCZ and seems satisfied with the answer. She signs the form without ado and I open with a question for a brief history of HCZ. This history starts with 1970 and Murphy’s concern with truant youth and how to keep them in school, the focus on families as key to what prevents youth from staying in school and the development of strong programs with a good reputation.

Then comes 1998 and a “new approach.” “I wasn’t there ... I came in 2002... but I know” There was new “theory of change” and the development of a “business plan” that led to the creation of a middle-management level between the “CEO” and the people in charge of the programs. This involved an increased in budget from around $10 million to $70 million now. The focus was also narrowed to youth and their families which led to the closing of some programs, for example the one for seniors

There are two main parts of HCZ:
1) the “place-based initiative” that started with a focus on 22 blocks and has now expanded to 100 blocks. The focus remains on community and early intensive intervention starting with babies and continuing through graduation from college. They deal with all major issues as they emerge: obesity, asthma, building associations.

2) the “Beacon initiatives” that involve programs in school buildings to open them early and close them later for community activities, intensive preventive programs (e.g. to help against the placing of children in foster care)

“But we should not forget” (paraphrase)

3) the Promise academies consisting of two charter schools

At this point, it felt that none of us quite new how to proceed. BJ made a comment like “well, what has all this do with education?” I gave back some answer and she proceeded to state that “our focus is mostly on academic success, keeping the children in school, passing the regents.” “We are about creating a community for children” in order to achieve academic success.

I said something about the Comer schools and she seemed not to know about this closing the sequence we something to the effect that “HCZ has nothing to do with this.”

{actually I would bet that Canada knows very well who Comer is: his line “it takes a hood” has to be an echo of Comer’s/Clinton’s “it takes a village.”}

BJ continued on community, mentioning outreach programs with HCZ people going door to door. HCZ has a “community advisory board” that meet about every three months in order to get feedback [we need to attend one or two of those...]. It is made of people from “the faith communities” and other community leaders like people in charge of community gardens (“they spend so much time out in the street that they get to know very well what are the problems”), heads of block association or building groups. BJ gave as an example of their influence the emphasis on youth programs. She said that some of the people from the “faith communities” would like more emphasis on faith but that HCZ does not want to do this.

We talked briefly about the staff and the extent to which they are from Harlem. She said that not too many of the “sixth floor staff” are from the area because of the need for professional skills (“but .... exceptions ...”). By contrast many of the part-time people who work for the programs do live in the area. They HCZ does not work with volunteers “because they are hard to control.” HCZ employs something like 1,500 people.

We talked briefly about gentrification. BJ said that the main problem with it is housing cost. People who live, or young people who graduate, cannot afford housing in Harlem anymore. But there will always be poor people because of the many large housing developments.

We starting closing around 2:20. I ask about whether we could talk with Sarah Wessler. It takes a minute for BJ to place her. She says that we can do what we want there as she is head of the program that is not part of HCZ.

We ask about meeting with other heads of HCZ programs. She says she will have to ask “Jef” as he is very protective of their time.

[we need to find out how HCZ is funded; I am actually particularly interested in the level of public funding (city, state, federal)]

{While writing this, I got the sense that we are well on our way to drawing a kind of networked map of the many non-directly governmental institutions that are “doing something for the poor people of Harlem.” The network part is getting very interesting indeed. We are bumping everywhere to Columbia, but it is also fascinating that HCZ is also somehow linked to the Bloomberg administration and thus involved in its fight against the older school powers in NYC, most obviously the teachers’ union. Note also HCZ’s distancing from what BJ keeps calling the “faith community.”

I suspect we will not be able to quantify the strength of the network ties, but, from the point of view of a theory of polity as gravity well, then it might be interesting to map how various people and institutions exert what kind of pull on each other.

Is all this, also, a form of “governmental outsourcing” of what might have been its responsibilities (e.g. schooling, social welfare delivery, etc.)?

Is it also a new mechanism of mediated state-control? After all, HCZ is not a democratic institution and yet becomes a conduit for instructions, controls, and consequences for the thousand of people whom it helps (but who have no formal way of controlling it.

}