Community Schools
School & District Management
Video
How Community Schools Can Cultivate Hope, Opportunity, and Agency (Discussion)
Education Week's 2017 Leaders To Learn From featured a discussion with Vancouver, Wash., School Superintendent Steve Webb, Chief of Staff Tom Hagley, and Director of Family and Community Engagement Tamara Shoup. They sat down with Education Week's Evie Blad to discuss the district's community schools.
Community schools are a strategy to unite and mobilize families, schools, and communities in educating the next generation. By leveraging an array of expertise and services, community schools can reduce barriers to learning, improve student outcomes, and build strong school and neighborhood assets.
Education
Opinion
Community Schools Are Turnaround Models
Community schools offering wraparound services offer the best hope for failing schools.
Education
Opinion
Response: Community Schools 'Transform the Lives of Children and Families'
Mark Gaither, Dr. JoAnne Ferrara, Katrina Kickbush, and Mavis G. Sanders share their thoughts on Community Schools, and readers who are leaders of Community Schools around the United States also contribute their experiences.
Education
Opinion
What Are Community Schools?
The new "question-of-the-week" is: What happens in Community Schools - how do they work?
Education
Opinion
Community Schools Offer Hope to Disadvantaged Students
By offering wraparound services, community schools have the potential to change the lives of disadvantaged students.
Student Absenteeism
Are Community Schools Part of the Answer to Chronic Absenteeism?
A new report finds that students attending longstanding community schools tend to have better attendance than students attending more typical schools—but only at the elementary and middle school levels.
Families & the Community
ESSA May Offer Megaphone for Parent, Community Voices
Advocates for parent and community engagement see a chance to expand on their impact under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
School & District Management
Video
Blunting the Impact of Poverty With Community Schools – 2016 Leaders to Learn From
Rather than waiting to see how job losses and higher housing costs would impact the schools in Vancouver, Wash., top leaders in the district set out in 2008 to create an “opportunity zone” where schools would focus on addressing the impact of poverty that can affect students’ classroom performance.
In several phases, schools in the opportunity zone each set aside space for a family- and community-resource center staffed by a coordinator to help meet the needs of students and their families. Each resource center developed its own menu of services that are tailored to the specific needs of the school community, offering things like food pantries, free clothing, referrals to mental-health services, family-literacy classes, GED prep programs for parents, and on-site dental care through mobile dental vans.
“We have a vested interest in the success of young people,” Superintendent Steve Webb says. “Too many of our young people have barriers to student success in their homes and in their neighborhoods. ... If not us, then who?”
City leaders and school volunteers credit Webb and his chief of staff, Tom Hagley, with helping make that vision a reality.
This video was produced as part of Education Week’s Leaders To Learn From project, recognizing outstanding school district leaders from around the country.
More at http://leaders.edweek.org. Education Week Video
Equity & Diversity
Leader To Learn From
Community Schools Blunt the Impacts of Poverty in Vancouver, Wash.
Superintendent Steve Webb and Chief of Staff Tom Hagley saw big economic changes coming to the Vancouver, Wash., district, and undertook a major initiative to place a range of supportive services for students and families in the city’s schools. They are recognized as 2016 Leaders To Learn From.
School & District Management
Can Technology Help Community Schools Go To Scale?
Proponents of community schools say better tools to facilitate the sharing of student data between schools and community partners can help the model take root.
Federal
Opinion
A Failing Grade for K-12 State Takeovers
School turnaround plans that replicate unsuccessful state-takeover models are a disservice to students, argue Kent McGuire and three researchers.
School & District Management
Report: How Five Schools Infused STEM Lessons Into After-School Programs
A new report from the Noyce Foundation offers some lessons learned from a project that partnered schools with after-school providers to boost students' interest in and engagement with science programming.
School & District Management
Senate Bill Keeps After-School and Community Schools in ESEA
The U.S. Senate protects the largest federal after-school funding source in its reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, setting up a conflict with the House of Representatives, which wants to eliminate the program.
Student Well-Being & Movement
After-School Cuts on the Table in Congress
Next year's federal funding for after-school programs could be cut, eliminated or kept at the same level under four ESEA reauthorization and education spending bills being debated in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.