East Hill Notes: Cornell course connects with Ithaca schools

The Ithaca Public Education Initiative (IPEI) was recently the subject of a research project led by students in the Data and Development course co-taught by Cornell professors John Sipple and Aubryn Sidle.

“It was a wonderful opportunity to have fresh eyes on our organization and to invite ideas and opportunities supported with data,” said IPEI Executive Director Steven Manley.

IPEI is an Ithaca non-profit dedicated to leveraging community financial support towards innovative educational opportunities in the Ithaca City School District and its 12 schools. 

Teachers, staff, students, and building leaders can request funding from IPEI and its affiliates, the Ithaca Fine Arts Booster Group, and the IthacaSTEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) Advocates, to create new experiences for their students and schools.

Manley had briefed the Data and Development class about the organization highlighting its successes and the challenges of collecting data on the impact of IPEI’s annual grants on student performance and experience before the research project.

“We often collect ‘anect-data,’ or anecdotes that suggest the impact of an outside expert engaging with students on a project topic, which has a wonderful value to our storytelling, but we can find it harder to state the long-term impact of these opportunities,” said Manley.

Jameelah El, David Ngam, and Gretchen Hanson, students in the course, spent time using state and local data to argue that more districts could benefit from an IPEI-like organization, while recognizing the philanthropic opportunity to create such an organization could be more challenging in communities with fewer assets and levels of engagement..  

In their summary, the students note: “Because [public] school funding is uniquely tied to property taxes, Ithaca finds itself already having access to greater amounts of funding per school but having a significantly larger population. As the social, economic, and government hub of the county, many resources available to ICSD students are already more ‘at hand’ than if those students attend school elsewhere in the county. The impact of an organization like IPEI, with its ability to support teacher ideas quickly throughout a school year, would likely be as profound, or more so, in other areas of the county.”

Margery Brodhead, President of IPEI, joined the class for the final presentation and was grateful “to Cornell’s faculty for using IPEI as an example of an organization for positive change, and helping us think about the model we can be beyond Ithaca’s schools.”

From Cornell’s Office of Community Relations Associate Vice President Gary Stewart: My team and I will be forever grateful for the support of so many community partners, including Tompkins Weekly, especially in recent years. We connect with college towns around the nation on a regular basis, sharing common interests, challenges and opportunities. We’re often asked about town-gown collaborations on a number of fronts, with a regular question: “How does that happen so often in Ithaca?” The answer is simple and straightforward: “The common good in Tompkins County NY is front and center on a daily basis, and a related commitment to inclusion and excellence is the driver.”

As someone who grew up a couple lakes over in Canandaigua, and has lived and worked in Ithaca for 30 years, including a decade in newspapering, I congratulate area residents, new and old, for their good hearts, great ideas, and world-class engagement, that were especially essential during the COVID years. Thanks and onward.

East Hill Notes are published the first and third Wednesdays of each month in Tompkins Weekly.