In school districts and neighborhoods across the country, we find ourselves struggling to find answers that will help us achieve the goals we have for our children and communities. are looking for resources, consistent staffing, and effective learning opportunities. Teachers want help, trust and respect. Families and students want consistency, excellence, and a sense of belonging. Communities want security, fairness and prosperity.
Often we are looking for simple technical solutions to complex and adaptive problems, but not together. You can’t just focus on schoolwork, take care of your health only, or deal with your time outside of school. Our students are complete children and need comprehensive, multi-faceted strategies that can help them thrive. , everyone who needs understanding and support.
Superintendents play a key role in creating, sustaining, deepening and sustaining community school initiatives in all regions of the country.
The pandemic has only exacerbated our existing challenges. As one article noted, “The pandemic has sent American students back in the last century in math and reading.” Schools are reporting an increase in students seeking mental health services, Only 56% said they could provide effective mental health services to their students.
When looking for a solution, you should make sure that any community has vast resources. Our neighbors, families, nonprofits, local faiths and institutions of higher learning, and youth represent our strength. We can mobilize resources, provide enriching opportunities, enhance learning, provide integrated support and help the whole child succeed.
For more than 20 years, district leaders and their community partners have turned to community school initiatives as a system-wide approach, and the idea has accelerated significantly.
Today, advocates support successful policies that help fund and create community schools in states such as New York, Maryland, Vermont, New Mexico and California. Since 2008, the US Congress has supported a federal full-service community school grant program that has provided 84 awards in 26 states. In addition to policy wins, local organizations and organizers continue to campaign and build community school initiatives. All of this means that more district leaders are involved in starting and sustaining community school initiatives.
What do these district leaders and the community members they work with need to know about the important role they play in community school strategy? do you need?
Tips for Creating a Community School District
To answer these questions, I spoke with school district superintendents, their leadership teams, and experts in the community school field to understand why and how community school districts have been created and maintained. did.
A new resource released by the Brookings Institution and The School Superintendents Association, “Starting and Sustaining Local Schools: 10 Tips for District Leaders,” With a track record of creating sustainable community school initiatives, these leaders share important lessons for their peers.
This resource is for the growing number of superintendents who are taking leadership in community school strategies. Also for community her partners working with superintendents who want to better understand the superintendent’s role in transforming the system into a community school district.
The leaders I have spoken to encourage district leaders to:
- Recognize that the challenges faced by students and families will present themselves at school.
- Develop a shared vision and strategy for community schools.
- Mobilize community stakeholders and resources to share responsibility for student success.
- Align the community school strategy with the district’s strategic plan.
- Transform the culture of your school district through dedicated staffing, organizational change, and building knowledge and capabilities for implementation.
- Help the principal to become a community school champion.
- Communicate the vision and commitment of the community school.
- We support sustainable financing through resource coordination and utilization.
- Evaluate and continuously improve community school approaches, systems and practices.
- Sustain the initiative through policies that codify the community school’s approach.
In addition to these tips, new resources are emerging to support leaders and help your community school succeed. As a member of the Brookings Task Force on Next Generation Community Schools, I worked with other professionals and organizations to adjust the framework and create new resources like this one. The Task Force will soon release updated resources on costing and capacity building, as well as a new framework. Each of these resources helps develop community schools that respond to the academic and other challenges facing students and communities.
Superintendents play a key role in creating, sustaining, deepening and sustaining community school initiatives in all regions of the country. They are not just adding programs, they are mobilizing parts of the district and communities to transform the way the district operates and create something new. Achieving this is not always easy. But we can’t wait. We must find the answer together. Looking to the fellows who created community school districts is a good place to start.
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