Community Advisory Board of HOME WORKS! The Teacher Home Visit Program

A Community Advisory Board (CAB) of superintendents, principals, teachers, and consultants meets regularly with the Executive Director and Program Consultant to determine strategies for HOME WORKS! Members of the CAB are...

• Linda Summlin Aitch – Nonprofit Services Consortium
• Andy Jay Arbeitman – Superintendent De Soto Schools
• Maris Berg – Funder
• Kelli Best Oliver – South City Preparatory Academy
• Trecia Buckner – Construction Careers Center
• Cameron Coleman – St. Louis Public Schools
• Bob Dillon – MRH Middle School Principal
• Diane Dymond – Principal, Stix Early Childhood, St. Louis Public Schools
• Nan Fritschle – Program Consultant to Home Works!
• Karen Hall – Assistant Superintendent, Maplewood Richmond Heights Schools
• Lynn Hedrick – Former Assistant Principal, Valley Park Elementary School; Program Consultant to Home Works!
• Dr. Linda Henke – Superintendent, Maplewood Richmond Heights Schools
• Wendy Jaffe – Trio Foundation
• Board Chair - Karen S. Kalish – Founder, The Teacher Home Visit Program
• Ralph W. Kalish – Husch Blackwell, Attorney for Home Works!
• Dave Kuschel – Assistant Executive Director, Cooperating School Districts
• Paul Mackay – Turnaround Officer for Construction Careers Center
• Chip Meyer – IT for Home Works!
• Amy B. Murphy – Greater St. Louis Community Foundation; Home Works! Treasurer
• Susie Philpott – Funder
• Dr. Alice Roach – St. Louis Public Schools
• Kevin Stokes – Program Consultant to Home Works!
• Bernadette White – University City Schools
• The Evaluation Team: Dr. Liz Sale, Ginny Weil, and Rachel Kryah

These individuals know the importance of parents in the education process and operate with the understanding that schools can’t educate children successfully without the parents.

About the Founder

Karen Kalish is a serial social entrepreneur focused on literacy, closing the academic achievement gap, and ending racial discrimination. She is Executive Director and Founder of Cultural Leadership and the Teacher Home Visit Program and President of the Estelle W. and Karen S. Kalish Foundation which funds programs in the areas listed above, and of Kalish Communications which does media and speaker training both nationally and internationally.

Karen lived in Washington, D.C. for 27 years, Chicago for five years and Cambridge, Massachusetts for two years. She returned to St. Louis in 2001 (after being gone for 34 years) where she is working on education reform and establishing a level playing field for the minority community. She is a civic volunteer and is the founder and funder of several programs:

• Cultural Leadership is a year-long educational leadership program for high school students to teach them to be activists, community organizers, risk takers and change agents to rid America of racism and all forms of discrimination to make America a country with opportunity for all.
• HOME WORKS! The Teacher Home Visit Program raises academic achievement of students in low income, underperforming schools by sending teachers to the homes of their students to get parents involved in their children’s education. The THVP provides educators with the tools and support that strengthen relationships between a student’s home caregivers and teachers to enhance academic achievement.
• Books and Badges partners St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department police recruits and other reading partners with St. Louis Public School elementary school students to improve reading and language skills.

Karen received an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School in June, 2000 (at the age of 54!) and spent a second year there non-degree taking a full load of classes she didn’t have time to take the first year. She took everything she could in the African American, Leadership and Nonprofit departments. (She was so proud of her degree from Harvard that she took her diploma to Kinko’s and enlarged it to make wallpaper which is on her office bathroom walls!)

Karen taught elementary school for six years in Washington, D.C. before becoming the consumer and investigative TV reporter for CBS-TV there. In 1978 she became the consumer and investigative reporter for ABC-TV in Chicago, and then the Washington, D.C. reporter/producer for Entertainment Tonight. In 1987, she started Kalish Communications to teach clients how to talk to the media without putting their foot in their mouth and how to write and give dynamic, interesting speeches and presentations. She has served on the Boards of Directors of many nonprofits from the NAACP to the District of Columbia Jewish Community Center. She has won several awards for her community involvement and is the founder in 1993 of Operation Understanding DC, an educational, leadership program for Black and Jewish high school students in Washington, D.C.

Karen is the author of How to Give a Terrific Presentation, Dealing Effectively with the Media, and I’ll See You On The Radio. She has traveled wildly nationally and internationally including hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon in 2005.