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1/3/20, 12:01 PMMovers & Shakers 2020: David Greenberg nurtures Las Cruces schools

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Movers & Shakers 2020: DavidGreenberg nurtures communityschools in Las Cruces

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David Greenberg is pictured at Lynn Middle School in Las Cruces on Friday, Dec. 13,2019. (Photo: Nathan J Fish/Sun-News)

Editor's note: David Greenberg is among the 2020 Movers & Shakers —profiles on people or groups expected to shape Las Cruces in the comingyear.

LAS CRUCES — Since 2017, Lynn Middle School has expanded its approachto education.

Instead of focusing only on delivering academic content on an individualbasis, Lynn also offers a range of social services and connections for

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students, their families and the local community.

At Lynn, 80 to 100 children may be observed eating dinner at their schoolfive nights per week. There is a clothing pantry on campus and free,nutritious snacks. The school offers a dental clinic and other health servicesor referrals by area providers, reducing absences and helping to keepchildren in school.

Lynn's classrooms may host guest teaching from area physicians, attorneysor other professionals. The school collaborates with Cruces Creatives andother nonprofits on mentorship programs for students. The nonprofitFriends of Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks organizes field trips to thecounty's public lands.

The school also hosts food pantries, with the assistance of Casa dePeregrinos and Roadrunner Food Bank, providing food supplies to thecommunity along with opportunities to learn about social services andemployment opportunities.

Don't miss a single local story this year: Subscribe to the Las CrucesSun-News.

Lynn is the city's first "community school," an initiative that opens schoolfacilities to local partners addressing students' health and wellbeing,involving families in their children's education and making school a hub for avibrant and engaged community.

While the community schools project emphasizes collaboration amongnumerous professionals, based on community dialogue and democraticdecisions, sitting at the center of the process is the Las Cruces PublicSchools' community schools coordinator, David Greenberg, gentlyfacilitating a complex project that reimagines how schools serve the public.

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"I see my role … as really being a facilitator and connector," Greenberg said."The grassroots energy around this movement, around this idea, has reallycome together in an organic way. I don't see myself as the leader of themovement."

NMSU adjunct faculty member Rory Rank teaches students at Lynn Middle School "StreetLaw" Friday, March 8, 2019, during a class being taught every Friday this past semester atLynn Middle School. (Photo: Matthew Legarreta/NMSU)

With three more Las Cruces schools introducing community schoolprograms in 2020, backed by state funding and a joint powers agreementbetween the school district and the city of Las Cruces, we are likely to behearing more about community schools in the year to come.

A pivotal moment at Pine Ridge

David Greenberg arrived at a pivotal moment in his professional life during a2011 visit to the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.

He grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of an elementary school artteacher and a social worker. "I grew up around this intersection around



wellbeing and education, holistic mental health and community work," herecalled.

While describing his own childhood and school experience as "privileged,"he glimpsed rougher sides of Baltimore and the intricacies of social needsin his hometown through his parents' work and volunteerism.

Greenberg was a recent college graduate working for a Washington, D.C.legal firm when his work brought him to South Dakota. He went to PineRidge to work with indigenous farmers and ranchers who had won asettlement in a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department ofAgriculture.

For Greenberg, having grown up in what he called the "D.C.-Marylandbubble," his time at the Oglala Lakota reservation was an overwhelming yeteye-opening experience of "beauty, culture and resilience."

In particular, his observations of a local school and conversations with aschoolteacher there clarified his own path.



David Greenberg, at left, poses with fellow Ngage New Mexico staffers Lucia Carmona,Michael Radtke and Executive Director Frank Lopez after being recognized at a New MexicoState University community celebration in 2015. (Photo: Courtesy photo)

"I felt like teaching was a way that I might be able to make a direct impact,"Greenberg recalled. "I wanted to immerse myself and apply everything Ihad, and teaching was a way to do that, so I put my law career on hold andbecame a teacher."

After acquiring his teaching certification, Greenberg took a job teachinghistory at Gadsden High School in Anthony, New Mexico in 2012. After twoyears teaching in this small community in southern Doña Ana County, hejoined the nonprofit Ngage New Mexico as its director of educationinitiatives, where he worked with the Success Partnership, a countywideeducation initiative involving educators, families, nonprofits and thebusiness sector.



"We helped to create a community agenda around education," Greenbergsaid. "Our community wanted an education system that was culturallyrelevant and had a broader vision for the use of school facilities, additionalafter-school and evening programs that helped to focus on the wholechild."

During his time there, interest in community school models was growingamong some Las Cruces educators, including leaders at the school district,the National Education Association of New Mexico and at New Mexico StateUniversity.

MORE: What is a 'community school?' A tour of Lynn Middle School'sgrowing social program

LCPS Interim Superintendent Karen Trujillo was, at that time, anadministrator at NMSU's College of Education. She recalled Greenberg'searly role as "the point person in the community," introducing thecommunity schools concept to city leaders, recruiting national speakers tovisit Las Cruces, and nurturing a growing coalition around the project.

"He’s a good person," Trujillo said. "He has a wider vision of the possibilitiesand he’s willing to do the work it takes to make things happen. He sees thelong game in that he understands that things take time and (he hasan) ability to bring people together and form those partnerships."

Greenberg joined the school district in 2017, just in time to facilitate thelaunch of a pilot community school at Lynn.

Lynn Middle School as the pilot

That opening followed a long "visioning" process involving communitymeetings, hundreds of surveys completed by students and educators,

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approaching parents on parent-teacher conference days, asking all of themwhat they loved about their school and what they would like to change.

The outreach extended beyond the school to reach the neighborhood andlocal community.

"Then we went back and dug deeper into what residents identified asproblems or needs," Greenberg said.

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David Greenberg, the Las Cruces public school district's community schools coordinator,leads a tour of Lynn Middle School on Wednesday, December 5, 2018. (Photo: JoshBachman/Sun-News)

The point was to let the community set the agenda, anddevelop collaborative leadership structures to bring it to fruition: A projectemerging from the community rather than a prefabricated model managedin a top-down, bureaucratic style.



Additionally, the project invites collaboration across the community toaddress broad systemic issues, such as poverty and food insecurity, thataffect students' ability to learn.

MORE: Lynn may be a model for other schools in New Mexico

"There are certain things that a school can control and things they can'tcontrol," Greenberg said. "What we can do is engage the full assets of ourcommunity in problem-solving."

As that process continues at Lynn, three more elementary schools in thedistrict — Booker T. Washington, Doña Ana and MacArthur — will introducetheir own community school projects in 2020, with full-time coordinators ateach site.

'The stars have really aligned'

A year ago, Las Cruces Mayor Ken Miyagishima announced the city and theschool district would embark on a joint partnership to support communityschools, with a public board charged with governing "a network of high-quality community schools to promote student achievement, positiveconditions for learning and the well-being of families and communities."

In the 2019 state legislative session, lawmakers allocated $2 million in grantmoney to seed community school projects statewide. Las Cruces wouldlater be approved for two grants. Additional support came in July, when theLas Cruces City Council approved $100,000 for an additional site.

Kathryn Lynn Gallagher, director of the city's Quality of Life department,told councilors the money was well spent.

Citing research into more than 5,000 community schools across the United

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States, Gallagher said the schools "have been shown to have a return oninvestment of around $10 to $15 based on the amount of money you wouldtraditionally spend on social programming and services that are notconnected and associated with community schools."

With support for community schools strong among lawmakers, the NewMexico Public Education Department and first-term Gov. Michelle LujanGrisham, Greenberg said "the stars have really aligned in New Mexico."

Yet the process needs to move slowly enough to allow the project to be ledby community members, and Greenberg said that begins with addressingmisconceptions about community schools.

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David Greenberg is pictured in Las Cruces on Friday, Dec. 13, 2019. (Photo: Nathan JFish/Sun-News)

"There is a misperception that school is open all the time and anyone cancome in and out as they please, so safety concerns come up," Greenberg


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said. "We reassure people their school will follow the same safetyregulations and security processes like any school. Volunteers go throughthe same background check procedure."

He also said teachers frequently wonder if the community schools will addto their heavy workloads. "Just because there might be programming in theevening and the weekends and the summertime, that doesn't mean that it'seducators providing that programming," he said.

Letting communities lead

As a facilitator, Greenberg said he frequently reminds stakeholders thatcommunity schools are not exclusively focused on addressing poverty, butmeeting the needs of all students while fostering civic participation.

"We're not just trying to deliver a very scripted program or intervention,"Greenberg said, "we're turning on our experimenter hats and then givingthose hats to our students, our staff and families, with an open mind abouthow we solve problems."

Looking ahead to the new year, Greenberg was cautious about settingexpectations or speaking for the community members meant to take thelead in assessing needs and seeking partners in the wider Las Crucescommunity.

He said the measure of the program's success should be up to thecommunity as well, making clear that success would be reflected in theprocess itself as much as the results.

While challenging the notion of schools as limited to delivering content,Greenberg framed community schools as a means of developing close-knitand socially engaged societies, building local resilience such as what he



saw eight years ago at Pine Ridge.

"There's a cost to a society rooted in individualism," Greenberg said. "Oneof the things that community schools help to do is bring people together(into) a more cohesive community, and allow us to recognize that we areinterconnected. It's all of our responsibility to think about individuals andfamilies who are struggling."

Algernon D'Ammassa can be reached at 575-541-5451, [email protected] or @AlgernonWrites on Twitter.

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