This year's host committee has designed three special off-site opportunities for you to discover just waht makes Baltimore's comprehensive community and education reforms unique—and to delve deep with key local visionaries to learn how their challenges, lessonslearned and successes to date might inform change efforts in teh communities where you fund.  Register for a learning tour on-site at the conference.

Responsible Redevelopment: Building Pathways to Opportunity in East Baltimore
At this in-depth learning tour of comprehensive community change efforts being led by East Baltimore Development Inc.(EBDI), explore how community builders and school reformers can work together to transform a neighborhood into a healthier, thriving community for families and children. Join key EBDI partners New Leaders for New Schools, Expeditionary Learning Schools and Atlantic Philanthropies to hear about this ambitious plan to stabilize and revitalize East Baltimore through collaborations with Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore City Public Schools, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the city of Baltimore, the state of Maryland and others. Together, these stakeholders have worked to expand educational opportunities—including a new pK-8 school and initiatives to strengthen existing schools—workforce pathways and family supports to redefine how community revitalization happens and who benefits.

Patterson Park: School Choices Build on a Diverse Community’s Strengths
Little more than a decade ago, Baltimore’s Patterson Park neighborhood was a deteriorated urban corridor with an unsavory park at its center. Today, with an influx of working-class Latino immigrants, middle-class families, and a revitalized park, it has become a hub for a new multicultural and socio-economically diverse community—a demographic change that creates both tensions and opportunities. Amidst this population shift, an increasing number of school choice options have begun to emerge, from innovative independent schools to charter schools to district “transformation schools.” Join us on this visit to the campus of Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, where you’ll hear from leaders at CristoRey, St. Vincent Southeast Head Start Center, and the K-7 Patterson Park Public Charter School—which togetherrepresent new schools or programs that serve students from age 3 through high school, and their families. They’ll share both success stories and challenges of creating new educational options in a rapidly evolving neighborhood—and address the central question of how public and private schoolsmight work together to serve all ofa diverse community’s students.

Redesigning Education:Innovative School Models Create Community to Reach Students at the Margins
How are innovators in Baltimore redesigning schools to meet the full range of students’ needs and keep them engaged in learning? By challenging the traditional boundaries of school itself. At Baltimore’s New Song Academy, hear from leaders at New Song, Garrison Middle School and the new Baltimore campus of SEED, a college-prep public boarding school, about how each has built a philosophy where school is more than just a school—it’s a community that provides a much-needed sense of place for kids. Through efforts at individual schools such as these, supported by the philanthropic community and other partners, Baltimore has begun to create a “portfolio” of school options for students with different learning styles, academic interests and out-of-classroom needs. Come and find out what this city’s education innovators and partners have learned through their efforts to create such a portfolio of schools.