Inside Oyler: a conversation with Amy Scott
Residents of Lower Price Hill in Cincinnati decided to turn a troubled neighborhood school into a community learning center, in hopes of battling urban poverty and crime. A new documentary follows the first year of the Oyler School transformation.
Amy Scott first visited Oyler School in 2012 as the education correspondent for Marketplace. Oyler was a neighborhood school in Cincinnati, with a very poor track record for graduating students. But the residents of Lower Price Hill, the “urban Appalachian” neighborhood where Oyler is located, decided to turn the school into a community learning center. It would be a haven for kids in preschool through 12th grade – a place where they could not only go to school, but get free health services, and where their families could get food and other resources, too.
Scott spent a year inside Oyler filming her documentary, Oyler. She examines whether a school has the power to fight urban poverty. Scott joins ARW Senior Correspondent Emily Hanford this week on the podcast.