The Tacoma Housing Authority launched the McCarver Elementary Special Housing Program (MESHP) in the spring of 2011. This pilot program, largely funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provides five years of subsidized housing to families of McCarver students who are at risk of becoming homeless.  In exchange, the parents pledge to keep their students enrolled in McCarver and to be very involved with their children's education. The theory behind the program is simple: neither parents nor teachers can hope to break the cycle of poverty if families cannot keep their children enrolled in any one school for more than a few months a year.

Spring break, like summer vacation, is typically a stressful time for students in low-income families, but for the 72 students whose families benefit from MESHP,  KBTC's Ready To Learn (RTL) Camp promises breakfast, lunch and fun way to strengthen math and reading skills. All this week, between 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., the students of MESHP will be enrolled in a pilot program funded by the U.S. Department of Education and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The camp instructors are Tacoma Public School teachers and volunteers who will provide administrative and logistical support.

The updated itinerary has grades K-3 (roughly 82 percent of campers) rotating through three daily activities, which range from watching the renewed PBS Series The Electric Company, to play writing- and math-focused computer games. On the final day of camp, adult actors will perform some of the plays the students create. Meanwhile, 4th and 5th graders will become camp reporters, and will spend the week interviewing younger students, taking pictures, writing articles and, finally, publishing a camp newspaper that will be delivered to all students and families on the last day of camp.

Pilot programs like MESHP and RTL are not only innovative and comprehensive approaches to tackling inequality in our community, they reflect a level of collaboration amongst various stakeholders that detracts from the narrative of division that threatened to define the 2011-2012 school year. Despite the teachers strike, the school board races and the resurrection of the charter school movement, our community remains both willing and able to embrace creative approaches to complex problems.