AVANCE Advances

Of all the commencements taking place this graduation season, none may have been as obscure — or as indicative of the changing shape of public education — as a small ceremony on the front lawn of McKinley Elementary School, where 35 families gathered with children ages 3 and younger to celebrate their completion of the AVANCE curriculum.

AVANCE is an early childhood and parenting program aimed at lower-income Hispanic communities that began in San Antonio, Texas, but has now been operating in select sites around Santa Barbara County for two years. It is funded by a consortium of nonprofits that have pooled their resources into an initiative called THRIVE, its goal being to close the white-Latino achievement gap.

The principal of McKinley, Emilio Handall (who will become an assistant superintendent in July), first read about AVANCE in Whatever It Takes, a book about educational reformer Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone. Handall raised the idea with Jon Clark, executive director of the James S. Bower Foundation, and before he knew it, the Santa Barbara school district had obtained grant money to send a contingency down to San Antonio to learn about the program.