But we don't put enough into the kind of prevention this problem really needs. In the Murphy area, that effort to rethink prevention has been going on for some time. Unlike anywhere else in Phoenix, it is the school district that has taken the lead. For more than a decade, the district has scrambled for every available dime to expand the traditional schoolhouse role from that of teaching children to educating and caring for families. Community leaders contend that it makes good sense to turn schools into all-purpose community and youth centers.
Schools are where the children are.
And in economically depressed districts like Murphy and Isaac, they are about the only public agencies in the neighborhoods. However, years of inadequate funding by the state have left the schools barely equipped to cover basic academic standards, let alone assume the role of community organizer and protector. And traditionalists in education have resisted opening their schools to anything but basic education. They bring it right in with them. Some of the narrow thinkers said that all we were doing with the DES office was putting in a welfare center.