Coordinated by the school's housing committee, one of six school community
committees involving students, teachers and community leaders,
Franklin High School sponsored public exhibits and films of housing models,
classroom discussions, and civics, economics and history classes.
Essay contests through the English departments.
Studies of local land values and use.
Public rallies, radio broadcasts,
scale modeling of housing options through the art department.
Forums with local experts and translations in Italian and
Spanish through the modern languages departments.
>> Mm, again, the students often played key roles in
the campaigns targeting community problems, coordinated through the school.
In 1948, for example, a student, reacting to a flurry of negative press accounts of
East Harlem, took to the streets to determine the state of their community.
They did not like what they saw.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Sanitation levels described by the mayor as frightful,
that only exacerbated high rates of illness in the neighborhood,
diminishing student development in school and out.
East Harlem air mail delivery, garbage sent flying from windows,
was one infamous culprit.
In conjunction with local agencies and community groups,
the students organized a sanitation parade complete with a 50-piece band and
5,000 leaflets, a conference led by a local congressional representative,
a cleanup contest sponsored by the Daily News newspaper.
An educational campaign, complete with roving sound truck,
broadcasts a science and social science lesson plan for the school.
And a successful effort to change the city's sanitary code
to enforce more frequent and effective garbage collection.
>> Cavallo's reflective practitioner approach to community
problem solving tapped a multi-method urban sociological research tradition,