Lessons from the Peach State
East Lake, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Atlanta has much to show us about how to revitalize an impoverished community without pushing out current residents.
At Thomasville Heights Elementary, staff is building community ties that bind
As part of Atlanta Public School’s strategy to turnaround struggling schools, Thomasville Heights was in its first year of operation by Purpose Built Schools. The nonprofit group had entered a long-term contract with APS to transform Thomasville Heights into a high-performing school and forge ties with the community it serves.
Sports can play a meaningful role in neighborhood revitalization
Carol Naughton has been a leader in community revitalization for more than 20 years and was a founding staff member of Purpose Built Communities. As president, she leads the consulting teams that support revitalizations in 16 cities, as well as the teams currently vetting opportunities in additional cities, including several in metro Atlanta.
How a Golf Course Is Reshaping a New Orleans Neighborhood
With unbridled enthusiasm, Jonathan Ashford arranged nine plastic foam cups around the rug of the Columbia Parc community center and sank putts on his makeshift course as if his dinner that night depended on it. A day earlier, Jonathan, 9, and his friends in the First Tee of Greater New Orleans, a program that introduces young people to golf, played three holes on the South Course at Bayou Oaks. It is a public golf facility that opened on April 21, several hundred yards from where Jonathan and his mother live. His days of having to putt into coffee cups are numbered.
For Atlanta’s first charter school, the long game pays off
Atlanta’s first charter school will celebrate its first high school graduating class on Saturday—82 seniors who are the proof that sometimes the long game pays off.
This High School’s Entire First Graduating Class Defied The Odds And Got Accepted To College
On Saturday, May 20, a transformation 20 years in the making will be complete when the first-ever senior class graduates from Charles R. Drew Charter School, Atlanta’s first public charter school. Out of 82 students, 100 percent are not only expected to graduate, but have already been accepted to college.
At East Lake, a community built with golf’s help sees a dream realized
With its Frank Lloyd Wright-like glass and stacked-stone architecture, the $45 million Drew Charter Junior and Senior Academy looks more like a high-end resort than an inner-city school in what was once Atlanta’s worst neighborhood. The front door is just a pitching wedge from the 13th tee of East Lake Golf Club, the home course of Bobby Jones that has hosted the Tour Championship since 2004.
Class project could save children from hot cars
Engineering students at Drew Charter School are putting the final touches on a device designed to prevent hot car deaths. They’ve been working for months to develop a three-step warning system that uses a temperature gauge, infrared technology, ignition and weight sensors to detect the presence of a baby left alone in a hot car.
Inaugural Party on the Green Raises $470,000 for Early Childhood Education
The East Lake Foundation hosted the inaugural “Party on the Green” on April 29 at East Lake Golf Club. The Foundation honored its founders, Tom and Ann Cousins, with a tribute presented by the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation. The event netted more than $400,000.
East Lake’s Drew Charter School celebrates graduation, STEAM certification
Charles R. Drew Charter School is gearing up for class of 2017’s graduation, celebrating its first “cradle-to-college pipeline in the East Lake community” over the next few weeks of May. Class of 2017 is a total of 82 students who have been “an integral part of the neighborhood’s holistic revitalization led by the East Lake Foundation.”
Charles R. Drew Charter School will graduate first senior class
Charles Drew Charter School will hold its first graduation since its creation in 2000 as the city of Atlanta’s first public charter school. The class of 2017, made up of 82 students, will complete the cradle-to-college pipeline in the East Lake community.
