COMMUNITY SCHOOLS: THE GREAT EQUALIZER

  Family and School Community Partnerships are at the core of successful schools.   Increasing family and community involvement promotes student learning and development.   These partnerships are undergirded by trust, common goals, and open communication.   Trust is facilitated by involved parties doing what they say they will do when they say they will do it.   Common goals are centered around a commonly held belief about what learning should be.   Lastly, communication is multi-directional and grounded in clear processes.   Schools reap many advantages from these partnerships.   Among the primary benefits are improved school culture, enhanced cultural sensitivity, access to additional resources, a positive school image, student retention, and innovative ideas and programs. To facilitate the formation of these partnerships, community schools are intentional when it comes to providing a platform for stakeholders to meet and collaborate. ...

       Integrated student supports address the needs of the whole child.  Not only are students' academic needs paramount, but integrated student supports take into account students social, emotional, and physical needs.  These supports have shown a positive correlation with academic achievement as a result of improved attendance, behavior, and overall, wellbeing. This particular pillar relies heavily upon community partnerships as the supports that students need may be beyond the school's scope of resources.  Coordinating these supports can be a daunting task.  To ease the burden, some community schools have enlisted the support of wraparound service providers to serve as connectors for families and service or resource providers. Source:  Community Schools Playbook (futureforlearning.org)

       Collaborative leadership and practice is fueled by shared values and goals.  These goals create a forum for collective expertise to be leveraged for goal attainment. Collaboration is the vehicle through which strengths and strategies are shared. This practice also creates a synergy around working together for the greater good of students.  Inherent in collaborative leadership is the need for access to information. This access allows for the identification of learning gaps.  The creation of site-based leadership teams is also a byproduct as well as shared decision making and accountability. Source:  Community Schools Playbook (futureforlearning.org)

            Expanded learning time and opportunities creates the conditions ripe for encouraging students/ academic growth.  Students are privy to extended learning time, individualized support and high-quality instructional resources.  In addition to these benefits, students also reap the benefits of a belief that they can learn and a commitment on the part of the learning community to continuously seek out ways to improve their craft.  Learning is not just relegated to the school day.  Both the school and the community demonstrate a willingness to seek out ways to provide additional access to learning opportunities. These opportunities at times appear in the form of camps, internships, and service-learning opportunities.  The end goal of these opportunities is to drive educational equity and close the achievement gap.                           ...

  Community Schools serve as the hub of the community.  They are a vehicle used to meet the academic and nonacademic needs of students, their families, and the community. Community schools have shown themselves to be a dynamic tool to address the issues and problems facing individual communities (Learning Policy Institute, 2017). Initial community schools model included four pillars of support.  Those pillars address expanded learning time and opportunities, collaborative leadership and practice, integrated student supports, and active family and community engagement. These pillars foster educational environments that further students’ holistic development.  Community schools are also said to be an equalizer when it comes to improving academic outcomes for students in impoverished communities.                                                  ...