A School of Our Own : Parents, Power, and Community at the East Harlem Block Schools

A School of Our Own shows how in 1965 a group of Puerto Rican "homemakers" created better schools for their children and built a community that enabled many adults to transform their lives. Including both educational and political struggles, this engaging story addresses timely topics how to provide good early childhood education in a way that simultaneously strengthens families; how to create an organization strongly committed to countering race, class, and gender prejudice and discrimination; how to strengthen civil society and engage people in public life; and how to eliminate poverty-specifically, how to address the unfinished business left by the 1996 "reform" of welfare.