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Urban Debate Newsblast December, 2006 Vol

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Urban Debate Newsblast December, 2006 Vol Urban Debate NewsBlast December, 2006 Vol. I, No. 3 Editor’s Note: If you are receiving this NewsBlast you are a supporter of urban debate and the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues. We thank you very much for that support. We plan through this NewsBlast to keep you aware of the highlights of the work of the NAUDL, and of the state of urban debate in the U.S. The NAUDL is the nation’s urban debate national organization entrusted to uphold and expand the urban debate mission; your support makes it possible for the NAUDL to serve thousands of urban youth across the country. We hope that they will help you have a closer appreciation of the value and meaningfulness of your support for us. We also would welcome and look forward to your feedback to this NewsBlast. Email ([email protected]) or call (312-427-8101) with your views, which will help us refine future editions. St. Louis and Detroit School Districts Reinstate UDL Coach Stipends About 10 months ago, the NAUDL became extensively involved in revitalizing the St. Louis and Detroit UDLs. The NAUDL had been working closely with these two long- standing Urban Debate Leagues for a couple of years, as they have both encountered mounting challenges to their sustainability several years after the last of their Open Society Institute grants ran out. These Leagues actually faced roughly parallel situations: they have enjoyed solid school district support (though not yet institutionalization) and have had a high degree of teacher and principal investment, but they have not had an external partner – in the form of a collection of civic leaders organized into a UDL Advisory Board or the like – since the years when national OSI funding came to university partners in each city. This void became especially costly last debate season, during tumultuous times at the two school districts as the state governments of both Missouri and Michigan threatened to take control of the troubled school systems and local business leaders brokered the installation of new Superintendents. In both St. Louis and Detroit, UDLs that had been supported by their school districts for at least eight years both experienced the termination of the school-site funding of the UDL by their districts in the fall, 2005. By February, 2006, the NAUDL became fully mobilized in both cities to fill the gap left by the absence of a local UDL Advisory Board in order to work to reverse the decision made by the new district administrations and reinstate UDL support. In St. Louis the NAUDL had three key meetings with the Director of Curriculum and Instruction and the Executive Director of Secondary Schools. In the end, the St. Louis Public Schools agreed to a significant expansion of St. Louis UDL for the 2006/07 school year and to 332 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 500 • Chicago, Illinois 60604 • t. 312-427-8101 • f. 312-427-6130 • www.urbandebate.org restore Coach stipends for Coaches at eight St. Louis Public High Schools for the 2005/06 school year, a total of $42,000 re-invested in the St. Louis UDL. The fulcrum point was in February when the NAUDL led a Coaches’ Seminar in which STLUDL Coaches unanimously agreed to execute the remainder of the UDL program schedule, setting aside the question of funding, so that the district would more likely be persuaded that the UDL continues to thrive, as a result of the dedication of the district’s teachers, and that it was therefore worthy of re-investment. The gambit worked. In Detroit, the Director of High School Curriculum was told in the fall, 2005, that her UDL budget had also been eliminated by the cost-cutting new administration. Here too the NAUDL became activated and by the early winter had reached an agreement with the district that the outside resources it had helped the Detroit Public Schools access, in the form of a one-year foundation grant, would be matched internally by a commitment to fund six schools’ coaching stipends at $24,000. And in Detroit, Coaches had not been paid stipends in the 2004/05 season, so this was an even more significant turn-around. The Detroit Public Schools also funded school-site costs for eight half-day Tournaments and a year-end banquet in June. The aggregate budget for the Detroit UDL, as funded by the district, was as high by June, 2006, as it had been since the period of OSI funding, some five years previous. But in both cities, the NAUDL is currently actively at work on establishing active and capable local UDL Advisory Boards. Vashon High School Head Debate Coach The Detroit UDL squad from Henry Ford H.S., Gwendolyn Giles ponders an argument at th e coached by Bernadette Taliaferro-Cain, poses in 2006 STLUDL City Championship. front of a wall of debate trophies – won by debaters from Wayne State University, not (yet) by Ford. NAUDL Assists UDLs Re-Build, Documenting Significant Participation Gains Over 2005 332 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 500 • Chicago, Illinois 60604 • t. 312-427-8101 • f. 312-427-6130 • www.urbandebate.org A Detroit UDL debater from Northwestern H.S. The Vashon H.S. debate team prepares and makes a powerful point in her final rebuttal at practices before its 2006 City Championship, on the 2006 Detroit UDL Championship. the date of a site visit from the NAUDL’s Les Lynn The two UDLs that the NAUDL helped win back school district investment in 2006 also experienced significant student participation increases by June, 2006, compared with the previous season. The Detroit UDL had six schools, six Coaches, and about 80 debaters in 2004/05 and the same number in 2005/06, though the Detroit UDL did increase its number of Tournaments in 2006 by a third, from six to eight. St. Louis had a very lean year programmatically in 2004/05, in part because of the illness that befell its Coordinator and lead champion Anthony Grobe. It conducted only two Tournaments with four participating schools. In the 2005/06 the STLUDL conducted five full-day Tournaments with six participating high schools and 105 total debaters. This amounted to a 300% increase in UDL participation in St. Louis in 2006, facilitated by direct NAUDL engagement. Additionally, without extensive NAUDL involvement this past season, the Detroit UDL may have been down to a zero programming level – it may have ceased to exist. NAUDL Works with the DCUDL to Gather Large Group of New Urban Debate Supporters in Nation’s Capital A portion of the 60-person gathering listening with piqued interest to the NAUDL- DCUDL presentation at NAUDL Board Member Jonathan Massey’s home last month. 332 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 500 • Chicago, Illinois 60604 • t. 312-427-8101 • f. 312-427-6130 • www.urbandebate.org The NAUDL has been conducting a series of Receptions this calendar year in order to enlist and engage additional individual supporters of urban debate, many of whom are former debaters. Last month the NAUDL partnered with the D.C. Urban Debate League to hold a Reception at the home of NAUDL Board Member and well-reputed Supreme Court advocate Jonathan Massey (winner of the National Debate Tournament in 1985) and his wife, Mandy Katz. The NAUDL-DC Reception on November 5th attracted some 60 new supporters of urban debate in the D.C. area, almost all of whom neither the D.C. UDL nor the NAUDL had previously counted as supporters, volunteers, or funders. The event raised an impressive dollar amount; the proceeds were shared with the DCUDL. Perhaps more importantly, though, the DCUDL acquired direct access to prospective Advisory Board members, volunteers, and other supporters in their community. DCUDL Executive Director Colin Touhy was afterward said, “We were very pleased with how the event came out. It was a significant and worthy collaboration between the NAUDL and a local UDL, and I would encourage more of the same in the future. We have already benefited from our follow up with many new prospective supporters of our urban debate work.” Boston UDL Gains Mayoral Support in Second Year The Boston Debate League (BDL) is in its second full year and is a UDL that the NAUDL helped bring into being. We have worked closely from the beginning with BDL Administrators Andrew Brokos and Laura Sjoberg. And even earlier: both Andrew and Laura worked under now NAUDL Executive Director Les Lynn for the Chicago Debate League, prior to the formation of the NAUDL. The Boston Debate League (BDL) has been growing under the successful direction of Andrew and Laura. This year there are six Boston Public High Schools competing in a full five-Tournament UDL schedule, including the two-full-day City Championship at Boston College in March. And BDL schools have begun to compete at regional Tournaments: Manchester H.S., Lexington H.S., and Harvard University. Overall there has been about a 25% participation growth in the Boston UDL this year over last year. This essential growth figure is complemented by reports and observations from university partners in Boston and regional circuit debate coaches that BDL teams are becoming more competitive and that the quality of debate in the League is steadily and markedly rising. In October the Mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, and his Chief Aide for Education came out to visit the urban debate team at the Dorchester Education Complex’s Academy for Public Service. The Mayor said that he had been hearing very good things about the debate league recently started in the city schools. Head Coach Locksley Bryan and BDL Advisory Board Member Headmaster Zachary Robbins received the Mayor warmly and treated him to a demonstration debate put on by APS debaters.
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