For those who think the City isn’t doing enough to support District 150 schools, take a look at the Neighborhood Impact Zone that was adopted as part of the Comprehensive Plan Tuesday night. This was a collaborative effort of the City, School District, neighbors surrounding Glen Oak School, and Tri-County Regional Planning, led by Third District Councilman Bob Manning and At-Large Councilman George Jacob. You can download a PDF of the zone/plan from the city’s website.

Here’s what I found most impressive: it includes measurement and follow-up. They’ve set incremental four-year goals for homeownership, crime reduction, neighborhood satisfaction, business retention, infrastructure improvement, community involvement, and education. They measured all these before the plan was adopted so they had a baseline from which to evaluate changes from year to year.

I hope that this type of planning effort is next applied to the area surrounding the new Harrison school, as it could certainly benefit from a focused effort to improve all the items on the measurement list.

Kudos to the City, which has really gone the extra mile to improve this area. Although I’m still disappointed that the school district felt it necessary to purchase (for $3.2 million) and tear down three blocks of housing stock, an historic school building, and local business structures in order to build a suburban-style mega-campus, I applaud the fact that at least they stayed centrally-located in the neighborhood and are willing to open up the campus and building as a community center.